Track the growth of social media followers

Business Benefits

Increase your social media follower count.


Define a goal for the follower growth of each of your business’s social media channels.

Begin with a clear goal before you start tracking your follower growth to help inform the strategies you will implement to achieve it.

For example, you might set the goal of increasing brand awareness by growing your Facebook following by 200 new followers per week by the end of the year. To reach this goal, you can consider creating content and ad campaigns that are optimized for improving reach and brand awareness.

View the number of new followers over time directly from each of your social media platforms’ Analytics dashboard or Page Insights.

Consider HubSpot Marketing Hub, or a social media management tool like Sprout Social or Hootsuite.

Review your page followers report in the social channel’s analytics dashboard or a third-party tool.

This report provides a breakdown of how many followers you gained or lost on that social channel, and displays a timeline of these changes.

Calculate your follower growth rate on each social channel with the formula New Followers / Total Followers x 100 = Growth Percentage.

Calculate this follower growth percentage on a monthly basis for each social media account you use to market your business. Compare the growth rate for each platform to previous months to see how the growth of your social channels is progressing.

Identify the cause of changes in your follower growth by comparing the analytics report to post engagement and ad campaigns on each platform.

Here’s how:

  • Review the follower growth graph in your Analytics dashboard or Page Insights.
  • Identify specific dates where you notice any increases or decreases in followers.
  • Reference your social media content calendar and look at what content, stories, contests, and ads were posted on those dates.
  • Review the engagement metrics for these posts to see how your audience responded, and to help identify what strategies caused an increase or decrease in followers.

For example, you see you had a spike in Instagram followers during the same few days when you were running a photo caption contest. To enter to win the prize you were offering, your audience had to make sure they were following you, and then tag a friend in a comment below the post.

You look back at the post and see that it attracted significantly more engagements than your other recent posts. You might reasonably attribute the increase in followers during this specific date range to the Instagram contest.

Track your follower growth monthly and analyze your engagement on each platform in tandem.

Review and analyze both sets of information by comparing changes in follower growth with the performance and engagement metrics of your social media content. Use this information to identify trends that influence an increase or decrease in your follower growth on each social channel.

Use this data to identify what is working in your social media marketing and ad campaigns, versus what doesn’t resonate well with your audience and should be adjusted for future efforts.

Review these metrics consistently and take action to optimize efforts to increase your follower count. Doing this regularly will help you continue to increase the number of followers you earn on each social channel and work towards meeting your follower growth goals.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T12:35:28Z