Ever wondered how quickly your social media followers should be growing? Everyone wants to expand their presence on social media by increasing their follower count. But it’s crucial to understand what a healthy follower growth rate looks like.
Do you have to be a celebrity or influencer to achieve thousands of followers quickly? Or do you need to be a company with big budgets to boost social media brand awareness?
The truth is that follower growth rate depends on the platform you’re using and your strategy.
In this article, we’ll discuss how quickly followers should grow across different platforms and offer actionable tips to get more followers.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Understanding Follower Growth Rates
- Benchmarks for Different Platforms
- Four Factors Influencing Follower Growth Rates
- How To Increase Followers on Social Media
We’ll look at industry benchmarks and best practices to help you sustainably increase social media followers.
Understanding Follower Growth Rates
Let’s break down what exactly we mean when we talk about “follower growth rates.”
Social media follower growth rate is the percentage at which your followers on social media increase over a specific period. This metric provides insight into how effectively you capture your audience’s attention and convert them into followers.
Social media follower growth rate can also be used alongside other social media metrics, such as:
- Follower count: The total number of individuals following your social media profile. This is a base figure that helps in understanding your reach and potential influence on the platform.
- Engagement rate: It quantifies how actively your followers interact with your content. This can include actions such as likes, comments, shares and more. A higher engagement rate indicates that your content resonates well with your audience.
- Reach: This metric represents the total number of unique users who have viewed your post or story. Unlike follower count, which is a static number, reach can change from post to post.
Reputation also plays an important role in your follower growth rate.
“A better reputation will probably lead to a lot of social media followers and vice versa,” said Tim Clarke, Rize’s Senior Reputation Manager.
These social media metrics can be important in understanding how your content is performing and where it has the most potential to reach.
How To Calculate Follower Growth Rate
Here’s how you can calculate your social media follower growth rate:
Follower Growth Rate (%) = [(Number of followers at end of period – Number of followers at start of period) / Number of followers at start of period] x 100
While the formula stays the same across platforms, it’s crucial to note that how to calculate follower growth rate depends on several factors, most notably:
- The platform’s overall user base
- Your industry or niche
- The type of content shared
- Your target audience’s demographic and behavior
For example, engaging visuals and short videos increase social media followers more quickly on visually-driven platforms like Instagram and TikTok. In contrast, LinkedIn, a professional network, might experience steadier and more gradual growth as connections are often based on professional relationships and interactions.
Industry Benchmarks for Different Platforms
So, what’s the ideal growth rate? Turns out, there’s no correct answer since each social media platform has unique social media audience targeting, preferred content types and algorithm structures. Here are the ideal growth rates on how to increase followers on social media today:
- Instagram: 1.69% per month (Source: HubSpot)
- Facebook: 0.64% per week (Source: Social Hospitality)
- X/Twitter: 0.76% each month (Source: Social Status)
- LinkedIn: 1.58% (Source: Social Status)
- TikTok: 2 to 3% (Source: Rival IQ)
If you want to grow your social presence, it’s essential to keep these industry benchmarks in mind and strive to reach or exceed them. While growth rates will differ from account to account, aiming for the ideal rate for each platform will help you stay competitive.
Four Factors Influencing Follower Growth Rates
The trajectory of your follower growth isn’t a result of mere chance. It’s often shaped by several elements that play significant roles across platforms. Let’s take a look at the four factors shaping your follower growth rates.
1. Content Quality
High-quality content is paramount. The content you share should be not only engaging but also valuable and relevant to your audience. It should:
- Reflect your brand’s voice
- Be aesthetically pleasing
- Encourage users to interact
On platforms like Instagram, your visuals and captions must complement each other. Captivating visuals paired with compelling captions can significantly boost engagement and increase social media followers.
2. Social Media Posting Frequency
Each time content is posted, it stands a chance to be seen and engaged with by followers. Frequent posting keeps a brand or profile active in the feeds of users. However, too frequent posting may saturate users’ feeds and lead to unfollows.
Here are the latest best practices for social media posting frequency from Hootsuite:
- Instagram: 3-5 times a week
- Twitter: 2-3 times a day
- Facebook: 1-2 times a day
- LinkedIn: 1-3 times a day
- TikTok: 3-5 times a week
Social media audience targeting algorithms often consider the regularity of posts to determine content visibility. A dormant account may not get as much visibility as an active one.
3. Reviews and Reputation
While this may not be obvious initially, reviews and reputation management are vital to social media success stories.
“Being proactive to monitor, respond and generate 5-star reviews will help with a high follower growth rate,” said Clarke.
Social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn now have business review sections. And even if other social media platforms don’t have reviews yet, many potential customers or followers may check your profile page for customer feedback.
Your audience also uses your website to determine your credibility. Displaying review widgets, testimonials and endorsements from recognizable brands or influencers will add credibility to your business.
Monitor your reviews and ensure that you respond to all feedback promptly. This can also be used to engage with customers and build relationships.
4. Niche and Audience Demographics
Profiles catering to specific niches or demographics tend to have more defined content strategies. Focused content can strongly resonate with a particular segment of users, accelerating follower growth within that segment.
Different platforms attract varying demographics. LinkedIn, for instance, attracts professionals. Knowing the platform’s primary demographics can influence the nature and tone of the content, impacting follower growth.
Five Strategies On How To Increase Followers on Social Media
So, how do you effectively manage your reputation and grow followers?
Here are five tips to gain sustainable growth and enhance social media brand awareness:
1. Set Realistic Goals and Expectations
The first thing you can do is set a realistic and achievable goal. An excellent framework to use is the SMART Goals Framework. This will help you define what results you are looking for and how best to achieve them.
- Specific: Set goals that are focused and relevant to your mission.
- Measurable: Set objectives that you can measure in terms of success.
- Attainable: Establish realistic social media audience targeting goals within a reasonable timeframe.
- Relevant: Your goals should be relevant to your brand and mission.
- Time-bound: Establish a timeline for when you expect to reach your goal.
Goals differ from one company to another, considering the growth stage, type of product, industry and target market. Therefore, you must define your goals before beginning a growth strategy.
2. Focus on the Long-Term Perspective
While short-term trends can provide bursts of growth, long-term strategies ensure sustainable growth and audience engagement. A long-term perspective can be achieved by doing the following:
- Creating a content calendar. This ensures that your team schedules regular content throughout the year and does not just focus on short-term trends.
- We are developing a consistent branding strategy across all channels. A strong social media brand awareness helps customers recognize a product or service and can help build trust.
- Analyzing customer feedback to tailor future products and services to their needs. Understanding customer’s needs will help ensure that you meet their expectations and provide them with the best possible experience.
A long-term, sustainable growth plan is always better than a quick gain. With careful planning and execution, you can ensure your followers continue growing.
3. Create Shareable Content
The best way to get your message out to a broader audience is by creating content that is easy to share.
But what makes content share-worthy?
Simply put, your content should be interesting and engaging to grab people’s attention. It should also include a clear call to action (CTA) that encourages people to take the next step.
High-quality infographics, videos and images are all examples of shareable content. As long as people find your content informative, entertaining and value-adding, they’ll be more likely to share it.
4. Engage With Your Followers and Other Profiles
Social media success stories are a two-way street – you can’t expect your followers to be engaged with you if you’re not engaging with them!
Start conversations, respond to comments and ask questions. All these activities help foster relationships and build trust between your brand and its audience.
You can also expand your network and audience by collaborating with thought leaders on the same vertical. Share their content, mention them in your posts and engage with them to get more visibility.
5. Monitoring Performance and Adjusting Strategies
All strategies aren’t bulletproof – one way or another, you’ll need to keep tweaking them. Monitoring performance, audience engagement and other social media metrics to see what works best for your brand and its followers.
Social media platforms like Meta (for Facebook and Instagram) have dedicated features to monitor reviews and feedback and track their interests and preferences. Utilize these native social media analytics tools to further refine your strategies and audience engagement.
There are also tons of social media analytics tools that provide insights into your follower growth, such as:
- SproutSocial
- CoSchedule
- Buffer
Paying attention to follower feedback, whether it’s through comments, polls or direct messages, can also offer valuable insights.
Grow Your Followers With Rize
Your reputation is tied closely to your followers on social media. These strategies and insights give you the ability to grow your follower base.
If you need a proactive solution that monitors your reputation, generates reviews and grows your followers, Rize is for you. We’re a team of reputation experts that provides software and services to help you identify potential customers, engage with them and turn them into loyal followers.
Give us a call today and get started on your path to success.
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