Are follower counts starting to matter less than they used to?

Not saying they mean nothing, but I do feel like follower count has become a weaker signal than it used to be compared to a few years back.

Recently, I've been seeing accounts with solid number of followers that have weak actual traction, while smaller accounts sometimes get better reach and better engagement.

However, I get why people still place a lot of importance on having a lot of followers. Even I would like to have more, but it feels like having a decent follower count nowadays does not equate to having decent engagement.

I do the usual stuff for my videos, but maybe I'm missing something when it comes to engagement. Other than increasing your follower count, what other things have you tried to improve the odds of interaction on your content?

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Low-Oil7883•3 months ago•1

Big accounts be ghost towns now. Kinda wild tbh

Remarkable-Remove988•3 months ago•1

Yeah, I think so. Follower count still helps for first impression, but now saves, shares, watch time, comments, even profile clicks feel more real than just raw followers.

From what I’ve seen, content that gives people a small reason to react does better than content that is just “good”. Like asking something very easy to answer, making the first 2 seconds more clear, or posting stuff that people want to send to a friend. I do small indie projects and same thing happens there, small audience but active people is way better than big silent audience.

No_Procedure8667•3 months ago•1

yeah the shift is real. platforms are pushing content to non-followers way more than they used to, which means your reach is less tied to who follows you and more to whether each individual post performs.

the downside is nothing compounds anymore. you can't just build a following and coast. every post is basically starting from scratch which is exhausting but also means small accounts can compete if the content hits.

Kopfi•3 months ago•1

Follower havent been a relevant KPI since 2017

heyrostr•3 months ago•1

Totally agree with your observation about follower counts becoming a weaker signal. I managed 30+ TikTok creators and saw this firsthand - some with 50K followers had lower engagement than accounts with 5K. The algorithm seems to reward consistent quality over raw follower numbers.

For improving interaction odds, I found tracking actual engagement rates (not just likes) was key. We'd look at comments per video, shares, and watch completion rates to identify what resonated. One practical tip: try analyzing your top 5 performing videos - what do they have in common that your lower-performing ones don't? Sometimes it's as simple as posting time or hook structure.

When I was managing all those creators, I got tired of manually tracking everything in spreadsheets, so I built rostr to get TikTok analytics without the enterprise platform price tag. It just shows follower counts, engagement rates, and per-video stats - auto-updated weekly. Free to try if you want to track your own metrics more easily.

What specific metrics are you currently tracking to measure engagement beyond likes?

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