Instagram follower count is probably the most ‘valued’ marketing metric on Instagram, but how important is it, really? And what does it even tell us?
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri posted last week about why marketers should focus less on how many followers they have and more on whether their content engages Instagram users.
Why does Instagram follower count matter less?
While Instagram follower count can be a great indicator of whether your HR content marketing is reaching new audiences and whether they like what your account represents and offers, for long-term value, we must be more concerned about the quality of each new follower.
The quality of your follower base on any social media platform is key to getting reoccurring value out of that social media.
Your account could have 1000 followers but if 999 of them will never consider doing business with your company or become your employee, 999 of them are worth nothing for your business.
That’s why we should not stare blindly on the Instagram follower count.
Following the growth of your account is a great employer brand marketing metric, but you must always connect it with a regular assessment of the quality of those new followers. Alone, it doesn’t mean much.
If your content is not reaching new relevant audiences, you have a content problem that needs fixing, but your data helps you to fix it.
What Instagram metrics you should regularly assess?
Engagement metrics are the most important metrics to regularly track and improve on Instagram.
Metrics such as likes, comments, saves and shares are engagement metrics. Out of those, conversational comments are most valuable for you business-wise.
When you build your employer brand on Instagram, you want to understand the long-term nature of employer branding and how the Instagram follower count reflects your employer branding success on this platform.
It’s not about how many follower you have, but about how many relevant followers you gain and how you can nurture them on Instagram to help them connect with you as a potential future employer.
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How to successfully grow your Instagram follower count?
Reverse engineering is my favorite hack for creating processes and paths to my goals. So, let’s reverse engineer a successful Instagram growth journey for employer branding and recruitment marketing purposes.
The goal is to achieve a growing trend in quality Instagram follower count.
How do you create a growth strategy for your employer branding profile on Instagram? I’m going to make this very straightforward.
In reality, growing in such a quality matter on Instagram is not so straightforward, and that’s why you need two things: a sensible Instagram growth marketing plan and perseverance to stick to following that plan.
A sensible Instagram growth marketing plan for employer branding
Successful growth on Instagram is based on the cadence of timing of your posts and the content itself.
- Best type of content for growth: Reels
- Timing the posting of your Reels: A predictable (for your audience) and engaging rhythm keeping your feed active, resonating with your audience and aligning with Instagram’s algorithms.
A rhytmic posting schedule is realistic to maintain and gives your audience something to wait for. Think my podcast with a new episode coming out every Wednesday (apart from tomorrow due to my back surgery rehab).
It’s just a once a week piece of content, but my listeners know when to expect the next episode and some even have their weekly routines built around this schedule!
According to Instagram, such a rhytmic schedule is more effective than irregular bursts of content.
What should you post about?
For a growth strategy on Instagram, your Reels content should focus on topics where you meet your ideal audience on mutual grounds.
Remember, they don’t know you and you are a business account. That’s two strong reasons to give your content zero time.
During the growth phase, the topics are at the intersection of these three things:
- If your organisation was a person, what kind of a person would they want to become known as (the key personality traits of your organisation)?
- If this organisation-person sat at the local pub enjoying their favorite after-work juice and engaged in a conversation with a new person, what would they like to chat about with this new person?
- If this organisation-person wanted to become friends with this person, how would they behave in the coming months to build a friendship with this new person?
Your Reels content should be about those topics and your organisation-person’s behaviour on Instagram and in your Reels should match with the behaviour fruitful in building new friendships.
The 6 benefits of short-form videos
How often should you post to grow on Instagram?
The more often you post, the better your Reels content match the Befriending Strategy the faster you see growth.
But, when you weigh this between achieving a predictable rhytm and ending up with sporadic bursts, less is more.
What you need to generate enough data to assess whether your strategy works or not, is a regular posting rhytm of minimum 1-2 Reels per week on the same times of the week for a minimum of three months.
Then you assess, adjust and continue with the same schedule for another 6-8 weeks to see if you now quality-grow faster, or not.
What do you think about this?
If you are looking for an employer branding partner, drop us an email to book a chat to discuss if we are the partner you are looking for!
Read also: “Instagram chief says Follower count is not a good indicator of account value.”
