Think Like A Follower
Getting a new Instagram follower is a nice feeling. It’s one more person that will see (and hopefully like!) your latest and greatest posts.
But as you see your audience grow, do you ever find yourself wondering what you really know about your Instagram followers? Other than your loyal supporters and friends liking your company’s posts, you probably have at least a handful of followers you don’t even recognize.
Instagram Insights are here to help. Let’s break down what Insights can (and can’t) tell you, to help demystify your audience.
We’ll start with the basics. But first, there are probably some of you that won’t see your Follower Insights. These stats are only unlocked after you have at least 100 followers. Keep reading, though, to learn what to do once you hit that lucky 100!
Just like last week, click on the bar chart at the top right corner of your Instagram profile. This will lead you to your Overview page, where you can see your overall stats, top posts, stories, and your Follower Insights. Tap on See More (next to Followers). You’ll see demographic information that makes learning who your followers are less of a game of “Guess Who?”
The first thing you’ll notice at the top is your overall follower count. Keep an eye on this number to hopefully see it slowly increase, as people like, comment on, and reshare your posts. The number may fluctuate, but if you see your followers suddenly say sayonara to your account en masse, you might want to reevaluate what you’re posting.
The next thing you’ll see is gender. This is an obvious demographic to check, especially if your target customer is specifically a man or a woman, but you may also be surprised. Keep in mind that this is Instagram’s best guess; not all users report their gender or have significant indicators.
Age range comes next. This one is obvious; if you’re aiming to target millennials and you see that most those in the 45-54 range are following you, you should reconsider either your audience or your posts. Tap “Men” and “Women” to get more specific.
Using top locations, you can toggle in between cities and countries to learn where your followers are based. If you’re a local brand, pay attention to this to see just how effective you’ve been at targeting the right people.
Last but not least is the ability to break down when your followers are online by hours and days. We cannot reiterate enough just how helpful this feature is. Through using this feature you can pinpoint exactly what time and on what day your followers tend to be scrolling through their feeds. Now you can post when you’re likely to get seen, to ensure you stay at the top of your followers’ minds. You can also test posting at less busy times, when there might be less competition for those eyeballs.
You know how you sometimes get followers with usernames like “followers123” or “followme”? If you couldn’t already tell, these lovely accounts are spam accounts. Unfortunately, their promises of randomly increasing your following by thousands in mere minutes are false. Cut down on fake followers by:
Checking your top posts to see who is liking your photos and following your account. If you’re picking up a lot of spam accounts, take an inventory of what hashtags you’re using. While #instadaily might get you a lot of followers, are they real?
Keep an eye on your followers’ top locations for anything a little out of the ordinary. Are you targeting Baltimore, but a chunk of your followers are in countries on the opposite side of the world? This might be another indicator that you need to rethink your posts or hashtags to get followers that really care about what you’re trying to say! Research hashtags before you use them by using a tool like Hootsuites’ free Instagram hashtag generator!
Now that we’ve finished a three part series on Instagram (read Part 1 here on sprucing up your Instagram and Part 2 here on other Instagram Insights), we hope you are posting with a little more confidence! And remember, we’re always here to help.