PM Modi beats Donald Trump as world's most followed leader on Instagram

Modi clocked 6.9 mn followers on the photo-sharing app, followed by Trump with 6.3 mn followers

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as the most followed world leader on Facebook's photo-sharing app Instagram with a whopping 6.9 million followers, surpassing US President Donald Trump, a new study revealed on Wednesday. 

Modi, who was at third spot on Instagram last year, is closely followed by Trump with 6.3 million followers, said the study, titled "World Leaders on Instagram", that analysed the activity of around 325 Instagram accounts of heads of state and government and foreign ministers over the past one year. It was conducted by global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.

Having put out 101 posts till date, Modi is also the most "effective world leader" on the platform, a conclusion that was reached based on the comments and likes that his posts garner. Each of his posts receives an average of 223,000 interactions.

At third place is Pope Francis with 3.7 million followers, a place ahead of the White House account that has 3.4 million followers.

With a whopping 673 per cent growth in his followers over the past 12 months, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo occupies the fifth position with 3.4 million followers.

In terms of average interactions per post, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds the second position with 141,000 interactions, while Pope Francis' Instagram posts receive 138,000 interactions on average.

"As of April 1, 2017, the accounts have a combined total of 48.7 million followers and published 61,281 posts in the past 12 months which have garnered a total of 371.7 million interactions," the report noted.

All the photos posted on the White House Instagram account set up under Obama in 2012 were archived on the @ObamaWhiteHouse Instagram account on January 20 this year.

"Leaders around the world are creating online communications that convey global social and political context while also sharing a sense of personality and creativity. Leaders of business and all other sectors can learn from governments' use of Instagram," said Don Baer, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, in a statement.