Follower Reports for Instagram: Properly Assess Your Fanbase

Your followers on Instagram can tell you a lot about how your business is doing. Is your follower count growing or declining? Are your fans real or fake? Do they fall under the target audience you had in mind when you first launched your brand? The answers to these questions can all paint a picture of how well your brand is performing on the platform. You can find this data, and more through follower reports on Instagram.

Keeping tabs on your followers and their activity in relation to your page might not be conventional. However, assessing audience data is a terrific way to better understand your followers.

Today, we’ll talk all about how follower trackers and reports about your Instagram audience can help your account flourish. Keep reading to learn about the valuable insights they provide and how you can use them to improve your page!

Followers vs Following on Instagram: What’s the Difference?

Before we talk more about follower reports and the valuable insights they hold, let’s have a refresher on Instagram jargon. What are followers vs following on Instagram? We throw these words around a lot when we talk about social media. But what do they actually measure in terms of a brand’s online presence?

Let’s tackle followers first. Your followers are the people who “subscribe” to your Instagram page. So, when you publish regular feed posts, Instagram Stories, and Reels, these people will see them on their feeds. If they have their notification setting turned on for your page, Instagram sends them an alert for each new post.

A high follower count means that you have a wide audience that sees your content. It means your page is interesting enough to attract the attention of a large pool of users. It could also be indicative of your influence on a specific target audience on the platform. That is likely the case if you’re a content creator operating within a specific niche, industry, or hobby.

Next, we have the “following” count. This number on your profile represents how many people you follow. Posts uploaded by these accounts will show up on your feed.

The number of people you follow dictates how busy and crowded your feed is. The more accounts you follow, the more some content might drown out others. That’s why some people like to regularly “clean up” their following list and remove accounts they’re not interested in anymore.

While there’s no limit to the number of followers you gain, you can follow only up to 7,500 accounts yourself. According to Instagram, this is an effort to reduce spam. So, don’t be surprised if you try to follow over 7,500 accounts and find an error message.

Why Do You Need Follower Reports for Instagram?

Follower reports allow you to have a deeper, better understanding of your audience. In these analytics reports, you’ll see a myriad of information about them. This includes personal data, such as their age, gender, location, hobbies, and more. However, you might also be able to gain valuable insights about their Instagram behavior.

By understanding your fanbase better, you can tweak your Instagram content strategy to ensure it’s well-suited to their tastes. By doing so, you can communicate key messages that you know will be relevant to your followers. This can give you stellar engagement rates for future content.

Follower reports can also show you important information on how your followers are acting in relation to your brand. They can depict follower growth patterns to give you an idea of how fast or slow you’re growing your community. They can tell you other pertinent information about your fanbase, like who unfollowed you and whether you have fake followers.

The best part is that data backs up these follower reports. Whether you utilize the in-app reports on Instagram or a third-party app, these reports rely on your account’s information. That way, you can rest assured that the numbers and insights are precise every time you pull them up.

What Info You Should Know About Your Target Audience

Investopedia groups target audiences into four different types. Based on your regional location preferences, you have geographic audiences. Then, there are psychographic audiences, which take into account a user’s hobbies, interests, lifestyle, values, and more. There are also behavioral audiences that consider people’s shopping motivations and habits.

However, the most common type of audience used for social media marketing is demographic target markets. Demographics refer to the basic, statistical characteristics of an audience that narrow them down into a specific segment. These include their age, sex, job, income level and more.

It’s important to know your target audience’s key demographics and geographic location before anything else. Only then can you do a deep dive into their psychographics and shopping behaviors.

Understanding these facets of your target audience allows you to build a genuine connection with them. By having a basic understanding of who your target market is, you can craft relevant content for them. That makes them more likely to follow your Instagram page, engage with your content, and be loyal to your brand.

How To Check Demographics on Instagram: Get To Know Your Followers More

So, how do you check on your current follower base’s demographic data? Easy. The best way to see a demographic analysis of your followers is through Instagram Insights.

Here’s how to check demographics on Instagram to know your audience better. Note that this feature is available for professional (business and creator) accounts only.

1. Open the Instagram app and go to your profile.

2. Click on the hamburger menu on the upper right of the screen. Scroll down and click Insights. You can also simply tap the Insights action button on your profile.

3. This takes you to your professional account’s Instagram Insights page. Keep scrolling until you see the Audience tab. Here, you’ll see information such as your follower growth, your fans’ top locations, gender split, age range, and more.

Aside from the basic demographic charts, Instagram Insights also shows you valuable insights into your followers’ engagement with your posts. You can see an overview of how people interact with your page overall and with each of your posts. You’ll even see the times of the day your followers are most active on the platform. This gives you an idea of the best time to post on Instagram.

Invest in an Instagram Follower Tracker: Learn About Followers & Unfollowers

Although Instagram Insights is the easiest way to generate follower reports, the data there can be quite limited. So, many brands and creators invest in third-party apps and software that help them track their follower info and activity. This is called an Instagram follower tracker.

Follower trackers are apps that you link to your Instagram account so they can monitor pertinent information on your fanbase. They have a wide range of features and give you a plethora of specific insights you can’t get from Instagram. These can include a list of your recent unfollowers or maybe mutual followers you share with a competitor brand. Some trackers might even provide engagement analysis features to show you how users interact with your posts.

Do you want to learn all the other features you can take advantage of when you use a third-party Instagram follower tracker? Here’s why you should invest in apps that generate follower reports for you:

They Provide Insightful Data on Your Instagram Follower Activity

Third-party trackers provide a wealth of valuable insights about your Instagram follower activity. They show key metrics you might see on Instagram Insights, like how many users your posts reach and growth trends. But you also glean super-specific metrics and data that you can use to refine your social media strategy and content.

For example, FollowMeter is a popular analytics follower tracker that shows you way more than just the basics. They show you the insights you’ll see on your professional dashboard on Instagram. But they’ll get into the nitty-gritty of your follower activity and even pinpoint users doing specific actions.

The app shows you who has unfollowed your account and how many users have done it recently. It also shows who has blocked your page. This helps you understand whether you might be doing something wrong on Instagram and if you should improve your content.

You’ll also see people you follow that don’t follow you back. This info can guide you in tweaking your following strategy if you want a more impressive follower-to-following ratio.

The follower tracker also shows you who your top likers are and who watches your Stories the most. They even show your “secret admirers” — people who interact and scroll through your content without liking or commenting on posts.

On top of all of that data on follower activity, FollowMeter also does engagement analysis on your content. This bonus feature helps you analyze your posts and see which ones are performing the best. It’s a great way to glean learnings that can help you improve your overall Instagram strategy!

Aside from all of these, you can also make in-app purchases to get even more insights into your followers.

They Affirm Whether You’re Gaining the Targeted Instagram Followers You Want

Every Instagram brand has a specific target audience it wants to attract. That’s why companies pay big money for ads pushed out to people who fall under particular demographics and psychographics. Follower trackers can help you assess your community to see if the users within it fall under your target market.

These trackers analyze your fanbase’s demographics to see if you’re gaining the targeted Instagram followers you want. That way, you can get an idea of whether your content resonates well with the people who see it.

And if you learn that you’re not getting followers from your target audience? That just tells you that you need to change your promotional strategies and content to reel those users in.

Remember, having thousands of followers isn’t worth anything if they don’t fall under your intended target audience. It’s important to regularly assess your followers’ demographics to see whether you’re meeting your goals of winning over targeted followers.

They Help You Assess Whether You Have Ghost, Bot, or Spam Followers on Instagram

Just because you have a high follower count doesn’t mean you have a high-quality community. The cold, harsh truth is that you might have a few low-quality followers in your fanbase.

These include spam followers on Instagram, who send unsolicited promos and phishing links via DM. It can also mean bot or ghost followers. These followers don’t really have active users or real people behind them, thus driving zero engagement for your content.

These fake followers might balloon your follower count and make it look impressive. But in the long run, they’ll only do your page harm. These accounts don’t engage with your content, so all they do is bring down your engagement rates. And when that happens, Instagram de-prioritizes your content on people’s feeds, lessening your visibility on the platform. Yikes!

That’s where follower reports from trackers come in to save the day. These trackers analyze your fanbase and detect if you have any spam, bots, or ghost followers hiding in plain sight. You can choose to remove these flagged accounts to “clean up” your fanbase.

This can help improve your engagement rate—and consequently, your visibility on the Instagram feed—moving forward. It also preserves your credibility and integrity as a brand because you know all your followers are real and legitimate.

They Let You Visualize Your Growth Through an Instagram Follower Chart or Report

Not everyone is good at numbers. Some people are totally blank when you hand them a spreadsheet full of metrics, key performance indicators, and hard numbers.

That’s the beauty of using follower trackers. Instead of overwhelming you, they organize valuable insights into Instagram follower charts and graphs that are easier to digest.

These graphs and charts help you visualize data that might be difficult to grasp when presented in mere numbers. Information like your follower growth trend and spikes and dips in engagement are easier to understand when presented in charts. It also makes pinpointing key movements and changes in the data that much quicker.

Lost Followers on Instagram? Gain Them Back With the Help of Path Social

One of the most anxiety-inducing findings to read about in follower reports is that you’re losing fans. Maybe you were inactive on the platform for a few months, or you just haven’t nailed your creative content strategy. Regardless of the reason, it’s a bummer learning that a lot of previously loyal fans have unfollowed your page.

Have you lost followers on Instagram recently? Don’t stress. There are plenty of ways to pick up where you left off and gain fans again. Remember to churn out high-quality content and leverage the hottest Instagram trends to engage users. You can even try running paid content to promote your brand to a specific audience efficiently.

But if you really want to get followers back fast, work with a growth service like ours. Here at Path Social, we use a proprietary targeting algorithm to find your niche audience and promote your content to them. As a result, you’ll gain tons of new followers—all of them 100% real and engage with your content.

Next time you generate follower reports for Instagram, you’ll surely breathe a sigh of relief at the rapid follower growth! So, what are you waiting for? Grow your Instagram community with us today.