Nostalgia is a common feature of modern advertising. Research from the University of Michigan suggests that this is a potent strategy, as nostalgic social media content can drive high levels of engagement for businesses.

The author trawled through nearly 65,000 Instagram posts from the NFL. She divided users into either NFL fans or more general social media users and found that nostalgic posts were far more likely to entice general social media users, whereas NFL devotees were more drawn to informational posts.

Nostalgia wins

Obviously, user engagement is central to any kind of social media strategy and it directly ties into things like revenue and brand awareness. While the study was conducted on NFL-related content, the author believes that there are clear lessons that can be learned by businesses of all kinds.

“You always receive some attention from your own fans and then some who are just looking around and see the post,” they explain.

They believe that nostalgic posts offer a degree of low-hanging fruit to help engage with users. NFL franchises tapped into this with features like Flashback Friday, where elements of the history of the team or the city were shared. It’s a theme that other businesses can tap into.

“The fans used informational posts for real-time discussions about the game, so when a game is going on, they were using it as another platform to discuss the game together,” the author explains.

Lack of awareness

Interestingly, the NFL teams themselves seemed to be largely oblivious about how effective nostalgic posts were in actually engaging users. This was reflected in their activity, whereby the content most frequently posted was actually the least engaging.

For instance, the study found that around 6% of content was either gratitude or holiday greetings related, which were effective at building relationships. 19% of content was designed around quizzes or soliciting comments. Neither were particularly effective in engaging users.

“So simply asking people to engage, or conveying care with text or basic photos or video content, did not seem to be very effective in engaging social media users,” the author explains. “The ones I did find to be very effective in engaging users were the nostalgic posts, and that was only 1.7% of the sample.”