Name ONE thing essential for marketers and businesses to establish a strong social online presence.
Followers!
Without followers, you have no audience. And without an audience, you have no business or profits! Just as performers and athletes thrive amidst fans, Instagram follower growth is imperative for social media presence.
The more followers you nurture on Instagram, the more eyes there are to see your content, propel its reach, boost awareness, and eventually convert customers.
In this blog, we will walk you through the complete basics and the importance of Instagram followers’ growth, and then hand you the tools that will help you track it effectively for your marketing performance and business growth.
Follower growth rate, expressed as a percentage growth, measures the speed at which your social media account is gaining (or losing) followers relative to your previous follower count.
In simple words, tracking followers’ growth rate serves as a health check on the efforts and performance of your campaigns.
Having said that, you must know: the percentage of social media follower growth rate is more important than the actual number of fans. Why? because it directly reflects growth proportional to your existing audience size.
If you’re running a business on Instagram, it’s important to track your follower growth metrics. This will help you see how well your business is doing and whether or not you need to make changes.
There are a few different Instagram follower growth metrics you can track. The first is your total number of followers. This number should be increasing over time if your business is doing well.
You can also track the new followers you gain each day or week. This will give you an idea of how rapidly is your business growing. If you’re not seeing much growth, it may be time to make some changes.
Finally, you can also track engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares. These will give you an idea of how popular your content is and how engaged your followers are. If engagement is low, it may be time to produce better content or run some promotions.
Related Post: A guide to Social Media Metrics for you need to track
To calculate the follower growth rate on Instagram, you need to know the number of followers you had at the beginning of a specific time period (let’s say the previous month) and the number of followers you have at the end of that time period (the current month).
The formula for calculating the growth rate is:
Example – Suppose you have 1000 followers in the beginning and you gained 1200 followers in a month, then they’ve achieved a growth rate of 120%.
There’s no doubt that a strong Instagram following can be beneficial for businesses and individuals alike. Not only can it help you promote your brand or products, but it can also be a source of income. But how do you grow your followers on Instagram?
Here are a few tips:
In modern times, hashtags are the perfect way to reach new users and get your content to reach more people. Use relevant hashtags (e.g., #fashion, #travel, #food) and location-specific hashtags (e.g., #NYC, #LA) to expand your reach.
This may seem obvious, but it’s worth repeating: if you want people to follow you, you need to post interesting, engaging content. Whether it’s beautiful photos, informative videos, or helpful blog posts, make sure your content is worth checking out.
Bonus Tip: 12 Sources to Look for Social Media Content Inspiration
Everyone loves a good contest or giveaway, so this is an excellent way to increase engagement and grow your following. Ensure that the prize is relevant to your target audience.
Collaborating with other influencers, users, and brands is a great way to introduce your content to new audiences and get some exposure for your account. Find accounts in your niche that have a similar following to yours and see if they’re interested in doing a shoutout or takeover on your account.
Related Post: How to Begin With Influencer Marketing?
Keeping tabs on your followers’ growth means you have the potential to convert this fanbase to your customers. Well, the question is how!
If you have ever heard of the term chain reaction – this is precisely what happens with followers’ growth. Just the way one atom initiates the whole mess of response, in the same way, if your followers are satisfied with your service, they will act as your marketer.
But this can only be to your advantage if you have accurate data on your fans’ growth rate – and know when it’s changing and on which platforms.
Unless you have an eidetic memory, Vaizle’s social media analytical tool can be really handy for getting precise and up-to-date followers’ growth rate information across all social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Vaizle’s social media analytics dashboard gives you a complete overview of your followers’ growth rate by week, month, and even by day – across all social platforms. For easily navigating the data for the fans’ growth rate, we have a dedicated metric, “Fans Growth”, where you will get all the information you need to grasp the trend of your fans’ engagement – without you needing to spend any additional time or resources for scouting information from different sources.
Choose to measure your brand fans’ growth rate and compare it to your competitors – you have the option for all (for that, you need to choose the landscape mentioned on the top right-hand corner of the dashboard). You can also select dates (in case you want to check the growth of your fan over a particular period) and then get detailed data by date.
With Vaizle’s social media tool, you will understand on which dates your fans are engaging the most with your content, on which platform, and on which dates it’s declining. Based on these findings, you will understand what is working for your followers and what’s not. Use this invaluable data to craft a robust content strategy and hike your followers’ growth on your social platform.
Now you have the data to conduct an in-depth analysis on a daily and monthly basis. The Channel Share option also allows you to track your social media follower growth rate across different social channels.
For instance, if you want to track Instagram follower growth rate – all you need to do is:
Check Channel Share, and the diagram will help visualize your Fans’ Change across Instagram. This will help you understand what’s working and what’s not. And accordingly, you can tweak your social media strategy if you witness a sudden drop in followers in any of the channels.
In a similar way, you can track the Twitter follower’s growth rate. Also, read our guide on “How to manage your Twitter Followers?”
Social media is a highly competitive landscape. To master this social game, you have to be good at knowing your competitors and their activity and performance – and benchmarking your competitors against yours will help you see where you stand compared to your competitors and how audiences are engaging with your competitor’s brand, compared to yours.
In the same context, tracking your competitor’s Fans’ Growth is equally essential as monitoring your social media follower growth. And the easiest way to do it – is with Vaizle’s social media analytical tool.
From one single intuitive dashboard, you will be able to track your and your competitor’s Fans’ Growth Rate – on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. To track your followers’ growth against your competition, you have to select your Landscape as Brands and then enter your top competitors, against whom you want to measure and benchmark your performance.
Another fantastic feature that Vaizle’s social media analytical tool offers- it allows you to compare your Fans’ Growth against your competitors The dashboard will provide you with a complete analysis of your competitors’ Fans’ Growth rate compared to your business and benchmark it to see how your business is performing compared to your contenders in social media.
With over 200 social media platforms available at your fingertips (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter being the dominant ones), you cannot expect these channels to perform equally and have the same growth rate.
Some channels will perform better and have a higher social media follower growth rate than others. And tracking followers’ Growth on these platforms will help you know which channel is getting better engagement in terms of Fans Growth and which social media platforms are not getting the growth rate you desire to achieve.
You will get this information on Vaizle’s Channel Share. Once you select the channels, you’ll have detailed data on your average Growth of fans across various social channels. This will help you understand which social platforms your fans are engaging on the most – and which platforms cannot capture your followers’ attention.
Whether you want to know about Instagram follower growth, Twitter follower growth rate, or Facebook follower growth – you will get the most accurate data. The tool also has an option for checking Total Fans in case you want the information for your marketing strategy.
Tip: A complete guide to knowing which social media channel is best for you using Vaizle.
Now that you know how our platform works and the significance of tracking the followers’ growth, the next step is to incorporate this into your social media strategy and improve your social media ROI.
Your Instagram follower growth is an important metric in your marketing strategy. Tracking your audience growth signifies whether your audience loves your content or not. When tracking your followers, ensure to look at both your followers’ and net followers’ growth. Additionally, Instagram fans’ growth is highly exponential – meaning once you get going, tracking, and adjusting – things will grow rapidly, just like a snowball rolling down a hill and getting bigger as it goes. But consistency and patience are key!
Hope you find this write-up helpful! Thanks for reading!
Siddharth built two bootstrapped companies from the ground up: Vaizle and XOR Labs. He’s personally managed over Rs 100cr in ad budget across eCommerce, D2C, ed-tech, and health-tech segments. Apart from being a full-time marketer, he loves taking on the challenges of finance and operations. When not staring at his laptop, you’ll find him reading books or playing football on weekends.