How to Track Instagram Follower Growth Over Time

napoleoncat.com/blog/track-instagram-follower-growth

11 May 2021

Measuring Instagram statistics is one of the keys to success when it comes to growing your
business on this social platform.

In this article, we’ll show you how to track Instagram follower growth over time and how
your business can benefit from using analytics tools for Instagram.

What is Instagram follower growth rate?

Growing your business on Instagram from scratch may not be easy, but if you make the effort
to develop a good strategy and produce appealing content, you will definitely start to see
some movement on your business profile.

Regardless of whether you are only just developing a new Instagram account or you’ve
already been driving business communication on Instagram for some time, sooner or later
you will discover that just staying active is not enough to grow your results effectively.

At this point, you will start to seek methods to optimize your account1 to better suit your
business needs.

The first thing that comes to mind here is, of course, measuring your profile’s
performance, drawing conclusions, and making adjustments to your strategy.

This is obviously the right thing to do on every social media platform, although many
marketers focus too much on their content’s performance.

They overlook a statistic that might be even more important. That’s right – I’m talking about
Instagram follower history.

Instagram follower growth rate indicates how fast your follower base grows and may have a
positive or negative value, depending on the new follows vs. unfollows ratio.

In other words – measuring it gives you clear information if your follower base is growing or
shrinking. But how do you calculate you Instagram follower stats?

Instagram follower growth rate is based on a simple equation. To make it work, you’ll
need the following data:

The number of followers at the beginning of the chosen time period

The number of new followers gained throughout the analyzed period
(new follows minus unfollows)

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Once you have those written down, perform this simple calculation:

Instagram follower growth rate formula.

Example: Suppose you gained 100 new followers in a month. If you started out with 1000
followers, the equation would look like this:

Follower Growth Rate = 100/1000 ∗ 100% = 10%

That means that your follower growth on Instagram was 10% – which would be a very good
result!

Why is Instagram follower growth an important metric to track?

Instagram follower growth rate tells you if your content is reaching new people and grabbing
their attention.

You probably wonder, how is keeping track of this metric going to help?

Looking into your fan base statistics will provide you with insights that can:
Help you assess your content strategy
Inspire adjustments to your communications
Show you if your business is growing at a satisfactory rate
Add another dimension to your competitive analysis

Now that you know how tracking Instagram follower growth can support your social media
management efforts, let us have a look at how to actually do it!

Instagram Follower Count History

Set a completely custom time range for your Instagram analytics in NapoleonCat. Track your
own profiles and your competitors, too! Try it for free:

Try NapoleonCat free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Using native Instagram analytics tools

Instagram provides a built-in analytics tool called Instagram Insights. Instagram Insights is
available for all Instagram accounts that are connected to a Facebook Page.

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You can access it by clicking the three lines in the upper-right corner of your screen. Then go
to the ‘Insights’ tab and start exploring your profile’s statistics.

Tap the three lines in the top-right corner of your screen and choose ‘Insights’ in the dropdown menu.

Instagram Insights – Overview

Overview is the main tab within Instagram Insights. You’ll be able to access the main metrics
from the last 7 or 30 days:

Instagram’s free tool organizes data into three categories that you can access inside the
Overview tab:

Accounts Reached (Reach tab)

Content Interactions (Interactions tab)
Total Followers (Audience tab)

Each one of them gives you an insight into a different category of performance. Let us go
quickly through these functionalities one by one.

Instagram Insights – Reach

The reach tab is where you will find some basic information about your content’s reach from
the past 7 or 30 days. You’ll see the number of impressions, profile visits, website taps, and
call-to-action button taps.

Inside the reach tab, you can also check your top posts and Stories. If you click on “See All”,
you’ll find all of your posts from the last 2 years.

Instagram Insights – Interactions

Inside the Interactions tab, you’ll be able to check some very basic metrics from the last 7 or
30 days:

Below these metrics, you’ll also be able to access Top Posts, Top Stories, and Top IGTV
videos (same as inside the Reach tab).

Instagram Insights – Audience

The audience tab pertains to user demographic data on your account. Keep in mind that this
section only analyzes your own followers.

Later in the article, we’ll show you how to easily analyze other Instagram accounts.

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Anyhow, you can check your Instagram follower count history (how many users followed and
unfollowed you on a specific day). However, this “history” is limited to only the last 7 or 30
days:

So why can’t we just use the last tab of Instagram Insights as it contains the most valuable
information and can work as an Instagram follower tracker app?

Well, that’s because only having a full overview of your account’s performance will let you
draw the right conclusions.

It is not the sole metrics that matter, but the ability to find links and interconnections
between them and your actions.

If you manage to combine this tactic with other tricks for boosting Instagram follower
growth, success is almost guaranteed.

Is Instagram Insights good enough?

The free Instagram tool for analytics is for sure a handy feature. Although, one might argue
that it is pretty basic and doesn’t offer any sophisticated functionalities.

Let’s have a quick look at the pros and cons of the Instagram native solution.

Pros:

Built into Instagram app = easy access

Free of charge
Covers the basic metrics, good for a start
Let’s you track the results of your everyday activities

Cons:

Difficult to establish a broader view of your metrics

Most charts aggregate data only from the past 7 or 30 days
You can track Instagram follower growth but only for your own account
Doesn’t track your business across other platforms
Analysis has to be performed manually

Instagram Insights are definitely worthwhile for beginners, but this solution might not meet
the needs of dynamically growing companies.

Upping your social media game might require using external social media management tools
that’ll help your business flourish. And we’ve got just the thing.

In-depth Instagram Analytics

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Measure your marketing results on Instagram and other platforms. Track competitors and
improve performance using one simple tool. Try it for free:

Try NapoleonCat free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Instagram follower growth tracker

If you’re serious about using Instagram as a business management tool, then you definitely
want to use its potential to the fullest. To achieve that, you must not leave anything to
chance.

Using the best tools available is one of the cornerstones of success in any environment. And
this also applies to Instagram analytics. Where Instagram Insights fall short, third-party tools
can deliver.

NapoleonCat’s Analytics tool is a great tool you should try out, especially if you manage
multiple accounts and use more than one social media platform for your business.

Amongst its many features, it can also serve as an Instagram follower tracker.

Once you access our Analytics module, you’ll see tabs that pertain to specific metrics. Go to
Summary or Followers to check how the number of your followers changed:

With NapoleonCat’s Analytics, you can analyze the performance of your own Instagram accounts and
other social profiles, e.g., your competitors.

NapoleonCat’s Instagram follower tracker feature

You may be wondering “How many Instagram followers did I have on a certain date?”. We’ve
got you covered.

As opposed to Instagram Insights, NapoleonCat is not limited to only 7 or 30 days back, and
you can easily set a custom time range for your analysis to find more historical data.

Once you set the time frame for your Instagram analysis, simply click on any given Instagram
followers graph, e.g., Followers daily, and you’ll see how many Instagram followers you had
on a given day.

NapoleonCat’s Instagram followers growth graph.

Reminder: After you connect your Instagram accounts to NapoleonCat, please wait up to 24
hours for the tool to fully sync your Instagram analytics data.

You can also check your daily Instagram follower change:

Daily Instagram followers change.

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Having all of this in one place will save you a lot of time and effort as you won’t need to jump
between platforms to check your follower stats.

Another handy function is the automated reporting that’ll keep you as well as your team,
business partners, clients, and stakeholders updated about all your key metrics.

Below you can check how quickly you can create an Instagram analytics report (sample
report is at the end of the video):

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/EJskmF-_Ths

Obviously, NapoleonCat gives you all the functions of Instagram Insights, and more.
Measuring your social media reach and engagement, identifying top posts and the best times
to post, or learning about your audience demographics – all of this found in one easy-to-use
tool.

To see our full Analytics feature in action, you can also check out this video.

Instagram competitor analysis

One of the biggest drawbacks of Instagram’s built-in analytics tool is the inability to compare
yourself with your competitors, including their follower growth rate.

This might be especially frustrating when they’re far ahead and you just can’t figure out what
they do better.

NapoleonCat’s comparative sets enable you to easily set up a comparative analysis and
peep your competitors’ strategies so it is much easier to catch up and outrun others.

Set up comparative sets to compare yours and your competitors’ follower growth rate

Track Instagram Follower Growth Over Time

Set a completely custom time range for your Instagram analytics in NapoleonCat. Track your
own profiles and your competitors, too! Try it for free:

Try NapoleonCat free for 14 days. No credit card required.

Don’t use mass follow and mass unfollow apps – here’s why
You may have also heard about Instagram follower bots – a seemingly quick way to gain new
followers, which has grown especially popular in some circles of influencer marketing.

These bots basically follow and unfollow users, making your profile seem like a ghost
account. The bots’ targeting system is based on hashtags, which can bring somewhat less
valuable traffic to your account.

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But that’s not the reason why we strictly don’t recommend them. Using such Instagram
bots is a direct violation of Instagram’s terms of service and can get your
account shadowbanned. You can read more about it in our article about Instagram bots
here.

Wrap up
Summing up, getting your analytics right is just as important as putting in the effort to
produce quality content. Keeping track of your follower growth and other metrics is crucial to
manage your Instagram profiles, make educated future projections and
maintain good results.

If you’re just starting your business adventure with Instagram, get to know the native tool
first. Once you get comfortable with different metrics, don’t be afraid to try some third-party
solutions.

This is what will give you a significant advantage over countless competitors who weren’t
bold enough to invest in this type of solution. Good luck!

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