Mona Hamouly from American Express: The images our cards appear in are the ones that perform the best in Instagram

American Express has a social content strategy that has turned out to be very successful. Instagram is their fastest-growing platform. In the last quarter of the year their audience increased 18% and they currently have 98 thousand followers. Mona Hamouly, VP of Social Media Communications at American Express, explained the keys of their strategy. “We noticed that people really loved posting pictures of their American Express cards on Instagram. I took that insight and applied it to the brand’s own Instagram channel. It’s bizarre, but images where the card is included are our highest-performing images” she said.Now, the company is much more visual in its content for social networks. Among their latest campaigns is Card Art, an initiative for which they invite artists to design images. Those images typically get twice the number of retweets on Twitter and double the likes on Instagram—photos with cards average about 1,000 likes.Snapchat still isn´t among the credit card company´s platforms. “There has been a lot of conversation, and there is interest in it” she said. “But we’re always looking for an ‘elevated’ experience on social and right now, there isn’t one with Snapchat.” By elevated Hamouly is talking about Americn Express use of platforms to connect what she calls the offline experience with the online.This social media strategy has allowed American Express to democratize the image of the brand, known for being exclusively for cardmembers.