There are plenty of myths, doubts and questions about Instagram followers. We’ve decided to gather the most frequently asked ones and provide you with brief, but decent, answers. 

1. How can I monitor the number of followers?
2. Is it safe to buy followers in 2022?
3. Who are my Instagram followers and where are they from?
4. Can I quickly increase the number of Instagram followers?
5. Will my Instagram followers stay with me forever?
6. How can I attract more valuable followers to my profile?
7. How do I know if my Instagram followers are engaged?

Why wait? Let’s jump right in and debunk those myths and clear doubts!

How can I monitor the number of followers?

Even though for some marketers the number of followers is a vanity metric in 2022 (this is what vanity metrics are) and shouldn’t be obsessively checked and increased, it’s also not like you should completely ignore this metric. 

It’s partially true that in 2022 the number of followers on Instagram isn’t, on its own, a measure of success. However, it’s important to know if your account is, in general, growing, or if you’re constantly losing followers.

So how can you check that easily?

Here come social media analytics tools. For example, by creating an account in Sotrender, and connecting your profile to the app, you’ll get a bunch of metrics informing about your Instagram performance. Of course, one of these metrics is the number of followers.

Checking the number of followers on Instagram in Sotrender app

In Sotrender, on a separate chart, you can also monitor how many followers you were gaining or losing on a daily basis. Once you combine this data with what you were posting those days, the peaks will inform you what kind of content was the most effective in bringing new followers to your profile. 

What about Instagram Insights you may ask? 

Well, of course, you’ll find there some data about the number of followers, however, this built-in solution has some drawbacks:

• you can go back up to 90 days only (access to historical data is very limited),
• you won’t be able to find out how many followers you had on a specific day, e.g. May 1st (which is a huge blocker when you need to report your performance).

Checking the Instagram followers number in Instagram Insights

Is it safe to buy followers in 2022?

You know how to check how many followers you have now, and how many you had in the past. Now you may wonder how to increase this number significantly, and one method recommended by some people over and over again is simple: buy them. 

So should you just buy new followers? Is it even safe to do so?

The answer is very simple here: it’s definitely not safe, and you shouldn’t buy followers, neither in 2022, nor in 2025. 

It’s not only about the safety of such a process. Most probably you’d like to buy followers to grow your profile and become more competitive and more visible on Instagram. But you won’t become. And buying followers, in the long run, may bring you more harm than good. 

So, why shouldn’t you buy followers?

1. Bought followers are usually fake followers. That means they won’t be engaging with your content. They will also not stay with you forever, because Instagram is regularly deleting such fake or inactive accounts.
2. Once Instagram knows that you’re not really following its terms and conditions, your account may be banned, and you may suffer from a decreased reach for some time. 
3. Your data may leak or you may even lose access to your account, depending on the process and app you’ll use in order to buy followers.  
4. Overall, you’ll just waste time and money, while these can be spent on building loyal followership from scratch. 

Who are my Instagram followers and where are they from?

You may need an answer to this question for several reasons, for example:

• your profile is already big enough and brands start to be interested in collaborating with you – they will be asking for your profile and audience stats,
• in the process of crafting your strategy, you’ll be interested in who your followers really are in order to prepare content that is relevant to them (meaning it answers their needs, problems, etc).

And to answer these two questions, you basically need to check the demographics of your Instagram followers.

You can easily do that in the majority of social media analytics apps. This is how it looks in Sotrender.

Checking the demographics of your Instagram followers

Apart from learning more about your followers’ sex and age, in Sotrender you can also monitor:

• which languages are they using (based on their app language),
• which countries are they from,
• which cities are they from.

Alternatively, you can also monitor your follower demographics in Instagram Insights, but again the historical data range is limited. 

Followers’ analysis in Instagram Insights

Can I quickly increase the number of Instagram followers?

We’ve talked about buying followers, and we know it’s not the best way of growing your follower base. But are there other ways of getting new followers quickly?

The answer is pretty simple again, as, in general, it’s rather hard to grow your profile quickly. 

The truth is, growing an Instagram profile is a process and may last even for years. You have to be patient and keep on doing what you’ve planned.

There are some proven methods of gaining many new followers quickly, however, usually, they can’t be planned. One of them is the situation when your profile (or a single post) is recommended by a much bigger profile. Usually, it happens if you do something exceptionally interesting or valuable and another Instagram creator believes that it’s worth sharing with their community. 

But as we stated, this can’t be planned and is strongly connected to the quality of your content.  

Will my Instagram followers stay with me forever?

You should know that… they won’t. 😉 Many of your followers will be ‘migrating’ between your profile and other similar profiles. It’s completely natural and you have to be prepared that at the same time you’ll be gaining new followers, but also losing some part of your audience. 

Why is that? Not only you and your profile will be changing over time but also your followers’ preferences will be evolving. 

At some point your content may no longer be funny for someone, they may find it not useful anymore or simply start to disagree with what you’re saying. 

Or maybe in the past, you were creating content mostly related to traveling but as you become a parent you started posting more child-related content? That will have a great impact on your follower segmentation. 

How can I attract more valuable followers to my profile?

Let’s get back again to the process of gaining new followers.

You should already know that rather than how many followers you have, it’s more important how engaged they’re. A smaller but highly engaged audience is what you should be aiming at and this is also why micro-influencers are becoming more and more popular these days. 

What should a strategy for attracting new followers to your profile look like then? 

• Make sure you’re consistent and regular. A potential new follower should know what they can expect to see on your profile and how often. If you’re posting only once a month, why should someone even start following you? 
• Post high-quality and interesting content, which is especially important when getting new followers. They should immediately believe that what you post is worth their time. 
• Stand out from the crowd. There should be something unique about your profile: either your style, sense of humor or the niche that you specialize in.
• Remember that engaged users attract engaged users. Start with engaging the followers you already have, and their engagement and interest will soon start to pay off.
• Last but not least, make sure you actually have a strategy in place and you know both your goal and the way to achieve it. 

Another way of attracting new followers to your profile, is, of course, by setting ads. This paid type of promotion is available to everyone on Instagram unless you have a budget to spend. 😉 

Ads can be exceptionally effective but can be also a waste of your time and money. It all depends on your goals and knowledge about them. Even if you decide to set ads aiming at increasing your follower base, those ads should be supported by other activities aimed at engaging new followers.

If you’re not familiar with setting Instagram ads, check our guides on:

• how to create Instagram ads,
• what you should prepare before setting up your first ad.

How do I know if my Instagram followers are engaged?

Having an engaged Instagram community should be one of the most important objectives, if not the most important one. 

Before you start analyzing your engagement, you should remember that users may engage with your profile and content in many different ways. For example, they can:

• like your post,
• save your post,
• share your post,
• comment on your post,
• visit your profile,
• reply to a story,
• send you a direct message.

The more ways that your audience engages with you, the better

So how can you actually monitor and analyze your overall profile engagement?

Of course, you have Instagram Insights at your fingertips, in which you can quickly check stats for each of your posts or stories. But what you won’t be able to see is your profile’s total engagement.  

Luckily, we’ve got that covered in Sotrender and we provide our customers with the Activity Index metric that measures the total engagement on a profile in a selected time period. As within this metric, every user activity has a different weight, it’s a much better indicator of your profile’s performance.

In Sotrender you can also monitor the segmentation of all users’ activities. 

Analyzing user activities on Instagram in Sotrender

By looking at the chart above we can tell that: 

• followers of this profile like, in general, the content that is posted there, however, they are not highly engaged (lack of comments or shares),
• posts that are published are rather helpful for this profile’s audience, as there are quite many saves. 

Turn your Instagram followers into an engaged community

We hope that with all this knowledge you now feel fully equipped to start getting new Instagram followers at a pace that feels reasonable to you. Remember that you shouldn’t be just collecting followers but rather building a community of loyal people.

And if you happen to have more Instagram-related questions, we’ve already debunked a few more myths about how Instagram and its algorithm work. 

Good luck!