Follower counts still matter

Every now and then, the same question resurfaces: whether the number of followers you have on social media actually matters. As someone who produce content for social media, we're sometimes asked this question too - does it still matter how many followers you have? This piece is our take on the matter.

Last night, I came across someone arguing that followers are irrelevant - because all content is distributed through personalised feeds anyway. On the surface, that makes sense. Most of us rarely visit a person's or brand's profile directly; we consume what the algorithm serves us.

But on the other hand...

When I open my own feed, I see how much of what I see actually comes from accounts I choose to follow. Out of curiosity, I ran a (completely unscientific) test on my Instagram feed. Out of the first 20 posts, 9 were from accounts I follow, 7 were from accounts I don't, and the remaining 4 were ads. Interestingly, the first three posts were consistently from people and brands I already follow.

That tells me something: a follow still matters.

Following is a signal

When I think about my own behaviour, I follow two kinds of profiles. The first are people I know. The second are brands - and that includes famous individuals - whose content I find genuinely good. In that second category, I'm quite selective. If a brand starts posting too frequently or sharing content that doesn't resonate with me, I unfollow.

In that sense, my follow isn't random. It's a small but intentional signal: a polite "yes, this is good - I want to see more."

Maybe that's just me, but I suspect many users behave somewhat the same way.

Followers as a quality indicator

So yes - followers still matter. Not as the ultimate measure of success, but as an indicator of quality. A growing follower count shouldn't be treated as a vanity metric, but rather as a signal that you're doing something people like. It's a form of validation - an endorsement that says, what you publish has value; it's something people want to see again.

Engagement will always be the more meaningful metric to optimise for. But to dismiss followers entirely - including follower growth - is, I think, a mistake.

A follow represents interest and attention. It can be compared to a subscribe. In a landscape defined by noise, that's absolutely worth something.