K-Pop Social Media: Instagram gets a 7x BTS Boost

With individual accounts on Instagram, BTS members are opening up avenues for seven individual brands, in addition to the band's team power.

Twitter and Spotify have benefitted a great deal thanks to BTS's presence on their platforms. While the micro-blogging platform has facilitated connections between band members and fans, BTS has been a top performer for Spotify across the world. These platforms have also contributed to the brand value of BTS — enabling them to get various brand deals, including those with McDonald's, Hyundai, and Samsung. Now, it's Instagram's time to leverage the existence of BTS.

The seven members of BTS have made individual accounts on Instagram this Monday, garnering about 16 to 18 million followers each. Band's main account on the platform has over 55 million followers.

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Though fans are bound to have favourites, till now BTS had one brand identity — that of a band/team. The storytelling was also shaped that way. Now, they are seven brands with solo monetisation and greater, deeper storytelling. Look at global UK-based content creators, Sidemen for instance.

Sidemen is a YouTube channel consists of 7 creators - Olajide "JJ" Olatunji, Simon Minter, Joshua "Josh" Bradley, Zerkaa, Tobit "Tobi" Brown, Ethan Payne, Vikram "Vik" Barn, and Harry Lewis. While the 7 of them together consist of brand Sidemen that creates content, has a clothing merchandise platform, and is now in the process of dropping a QSR brand, individually each one of them represents different brands.

Tobi represents Adidas individually as a professional model, Ethane Payne represents fitness brand Gymshark as a fitness influencer.

With individual accounts and presence, the members of BTS too have the potential of grabbing individual deals on a global level.

While the news has created waves among followers, one aspect has stood out in conversations — Jungkook's Instagram handle: @abcdefghi__lmnopqrstuvwxyz. It's quirky enough to be noticeable in a clutter of news about the band, signalling at an era where each member would be just as capable of generating headlines as the band.

Individually — Jungkook, Suga, V, RM, Park Ji-min, J-Hope and Jin — are all people brands can partner with now. And it seems likely that they would.