Follower counts on social media don't matter

Or do they?

I’ve seen a lot of commentary on Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s AMA last Friday, reductively boiled down to the idea that follower counts don’t matter. Here is what he actually said:

“The engagement rate of the content is more important than the follower count. Now it’s not that the follower count isn’t important. It is important, but it definitely correlates with reach. The more followers you have, the more reach you can get on average.

That said, a better sign for how well you’re doing online is how many likes you’re getting for posts, how many views you’re getting for photo or reel or carousel. If your followers are going down but your engagement is going up, that’s actually good. That means more people are seeing your stuff.”

I have 194 followers on my cooking account. My “best” video got 2.5k views. HUGE NUMBERS. Going to be able to quit my day job soon. It’s also the one that took the least time and is arguably the stupidest, but it did have something that really matters now. Many people with, say… 15k followers are also regularly pulling those views or fewer, and it might be because they have a little less of something that really matters now.

Instagram is leaning particularly hard into saves and sends as signals its omnipotent algorithm God picks up when deciding how far your post will go. Content with utility and shareability has always mattered, and it matters even more now. Not just because the algorithm says so, but because being audience-first and driving engagement (ergo, reach) means thinking like an actual human and not a strategist or marketer.

Saves sends a signal that suggests utility is a valued feature of content by human beings, something you’ll come back to. I save style, makeup, skincare, and food content.

Sends are a signal that the content works as a marker of human self-expression, thought, values and identity. I don’t save funny videos. I send them as a way of saying hi, or I think this is funny. I am saying something to you, the recipient of “dog does funny thing” about myself or our relationship.

The thing is, none of this should be new to people. From an audience perspective, unless your content is useful, entertaining or can be used to express something about you - your sense of humour, being in the know (see the numbers on news clips), you thinking of someone, you believing in something (see news clips spliced for political commentary) - then it’s not content for audiences. It’s broadcasting.

This has been an immutable truth since ye olde days of having Google talk to social media managers about YouTube in the mumble, mumble, mid-2010s.

Mosseri is not saying anything radical; he’s saying that audience response and judgment are the most critical factors in the success of social media content.

The hot tip for figuring this out? Would you, in a personal capacity as a nobody on Instagram, save it or send it? Not enough people run that test.

Followers do equate to reach, as Mosseri says, they just don’t guarantee it anymore. The algorithm decides and, if we’re being benevolent, acts as a leveller, but follower count is still a signal of trust and loyalty. Of people who chose someone, more than once, over the thousands of other things competing for the same attention. That doesn’t disappear because the algorithm has decided to jiggle the levers on reach.

Audiences take time to build, and what Mosseri accidentally underscores is the risk of building your house (audience) on other people’s land (platforms). The rules of engagement change overnight. Content aggregators just got a massive serve from Instagram. That’s a big ecosystem involving a lot of money that’s just been algorithmically deprioritised.

This is why I tell clients to have at least one platform or format where you actually own your audience. In most cases, that means a newsletter, which is code for a way to build a properly owned audience. Relying on any platform with an algorithm, a locked ecosystem, or a built-in “network effect”, where some unexplained signals are making or breaking you, is risky.

The through-line here is your audience. “Follower counts don’t matter” is a reduction of what Mosseri actually said. They do indicate an audience that chose you. But what drives reach now is the same thing those followers indicated in the first place by following: they value what you’re making enough to engage with it. If stuff isn’t reaching people, it’s because it’s not engaging them, i.e. it’s not moving them, helping them and ultimately, prompting them to do anything with it. The number of followers you have isn’t going to change that equation for you. Your content has to work for them.

To make things work for you, I recommend also building elsewhere - on land you do own and don’t rent. Grow reach and engagement somewhere where you’re not 100% beholden to the whims of an algorithm. After 15-plus years doing this, the one thing I can guarantee is that the rug will eventually get pulled out from under you on rented land.