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As an American TV actress, lifestyle blogger and aspiring humanitarian, Meghan Markle worked hard at cultivating a strong social media presence.
Now, she’s the Duchess of Sussex and one of the most photographed women in the world. On April 2, she and her husband, Prince Harry, launched their official Instagram account. Already, the @sussexroyal account has shown a “mastery of the Instagram game,” Vanity Fair reported. It has generated numbers that demonstrate the couple’s star power, with the account breaking the record for the fastest account to accumulate a million followers, Vanity Fair added.
As of Friday, @sussexroyal had 4.5 million followers, and royal observers agree that the timing for launching the account was pretty genius.
Meghan is due to give birth any day. The @sussexroyal account seems to be the likely venue for announcing Baby Sussex’s arrival, after the royal couple announced Thursday that they were keeping details of the baby’s birth private.
They also said they would not participate in a photo call soon after the baby’s arrival, as Kate Middleton and Prince William did after the births of their three children.
But Meghan and Harry could satiate fans’ curiosity by releasing a photo of the newborn on Instagram, along with his or her name. A carefully crafted, stage-designed post could be the ultimate celebrity P.R. power move.
It’s what the Kardashians do, and it’s what Beyonce has done. Instagram offers a way for celebrities to control the narrative and preserve their privacy. It can also lead to tons of good will and increased social media presence.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Be3rTNplCHf/
Until early January, the most-liked photo on Instagram was the one Kylie Jenner posted Feb. 6, 2018, to announce the birth of daughter Stormi, according to Brandwatch.com. The photo, showing only Kylie Jenner’s well-manicured thumb holding the hand of 6-day-old Stormi, is currently the second most-liked photo on Instagram, after a photo of an egg. With 18 million likes, the photo of Stormi’s hand remains the most popular birth announcement on Instagram.
Yes, people like celebrities’ baby- and kid-related photos on Instagram. Three other photos of Kylie Jenner with Stormi are in the top 20 most-liked photos, Brandwatch.com reported. Beyonce’s announcement from Feb. 1, 2017, that she was expecting twins Rumi and Sir Carter has garnered 11 million likes, while four family photos posted by Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo have earned a combined 45 million likes.
It’s easy to imagine a birth announcement from Meghan and Harry receiving similar numbers.
Sure, the Sussexes’ Instagram account is pretty new, and its number of followers is massively dwarfed by the number of followers amassed by Kylie Jenner (131 million), Beyonce (126 million) and Ronaldo (161 million).
Still, their account is probably on the ascendence. Meghan also knows a thing or two about being an internet sensation. In 2018, when she married Harry in a globally televised wedding, her name was the no. 1 trending search in Google’s people category.
“As their follower count only increases, and a royal baby enters the mix, it’s probably more likely the like counts will in fact climb,” Vanity Fair said. “That the account launched right before the baby was to arrive also shows a certain bit of savvy on the part of the royal apparatus (or at least, on the part of Meghan and Harry).”
