Technology provides a unique window into people, whether they’re people you’ve known your entire life or people you’ve just met (or haven’t met in person). Think about what you can learn about someone from seeing who they follow on Instagram, for example. You learn who they’ve recently become acquainted with, what their interests are, what their aesthetic may be, and so on.
Of course, finding out that information isn’t always as easy as a few clicks. Let’s take a closer look at why you might want to see who follows who and how to get the data you want about who’s following who.
Why Might You Want to Know Who Follows Who?
People use Instagram to keep track of the people in their lives and do business-related research, among of purposes. Why might it be helpful to know who follows who? There are many reasons, in fact.
See Who Your Significant Other Interacts With
Instagram is a helpful way to keep an eye on your significant other to make sure that your trust is not misplaced, especially if you’re trying to rebuild trust that has been broken. By seeing who your significant other follows, you can see who they’re in contact with and whether they’re in touch with anyone who might have the wrong motives.
Know Whose Content Your Kids are Seeing
If your kids or teens are using Instagram, it’s important to keep tabs on them and their activity. Kids can be exposed to age-inappropriate content as well as people and information that will have a negative influence on them, and kids usually don’t have the social media savvy to see red flags.
As a parent, you can keep an eye on who your kids are following to get a sense of who they’re interacting with and what type of content they’re seeing. You can also stay up to date on what other kids they’re interacting with online.
Research Your Target Audience
If you’re an influencer or a marketer, one of the best tools you can have is knowledge about the people you’re trying to reach. Your content or product might be an ideal fit for people in a certain age range, people in a certain area, and so on. Digging into the social media activities of people in your target audience will give you powerful insights.
By seeing who those people often follow, you’ll find out what type of content and topics appeal to them. From there, you can create content that’s better optimized to engage your target audience.
Research Your Competitors
For marketers and influencers, getting to know your competitors is just as important as getting to know your audience. It can also inform your social media marketing strategy.
If you take a look at who your competitors are following, it could give you a view into their online interactions. You might spot some accounts that you should be following and engaging with too, or you might see that there are certain users who are involved with several of your competitors, meaning they might have a special interest in your industry.
Get Insight into Your Favorite Accounts
Instagram isn’t just for marketing products, building a following, and staying in touch with people you know. It’s also a place where people can feel closer to their favorite celebrities and public figures, getting to know them through their posts.
If you’re interested in getting more insight into your favorites, their following activity can tell you a lot about them. You can learn more about their interests by spotting trends in the types of accounts they follow, for example. If you have similar tastes to them, their following list could also give you ideas for other accounts you might enjoy following.
What Can Instagram Tell You About Who Follows Who?
With so much to be gained from seeing who follows who, the natural next question is, “How do I find this information?”
Luckily, Instagram isn’t quite as secretive about people’s follows as it is about people’s likes, so you can learn some information from Instagram with ease. If you want to know who someone follows, go to their profile and click “Following.” This shows you a full list, in random order, of all the accounts they currently follow.
What Information Doesn’t Instagram Offer About Following?
While you can see a list of all the accounts someone currently follows on Instagram, there’s some helpful information that is conspicuously left out. Instagram shows the list of followed accounts in random order. It gives no indication of who they followed most recently or when they started following any of these accounts. It could have been yesterday or it could have been years ago.
This is very limiting because you have no way of picking up on recent trends of who and what the person is currently interested in. Just as your music collection from ten years ago doesn’t have much relevance to the music you listen to today, the accounts you followed on Instagram years ago probably aren’t relevant to your life today.
The Best Way to Know Who Follows Who on Instagram: Snoopreport
If you want the real scoop on who someone is following on Instagram today, Snoopreport is the way to go. This online tool tracks Instagram activity such as posts a person likes, hashtags that frequently appear in the posts they like, top interests, and yes, recent follows.
Snoopreport allows you to track any non-private Instagram account you choose. Each week, it gives you a report of the account’s activity, including new accounts they followed in the past week. You can even download the full data to see when they followed each of those accounts.
This makes it far easier for you to pick up on trends and see not what someone was interested in five years ago but what they’re interested in right now. With the downloaded data, you can also analyze the data in any way you choose too, such as comparing lists from multiple accounts to look for common trends. This can be invaluable in market research.
Using Snoopreport for Your Following Data on Instagram
If you want to start getting truly relevant following information on Instagram, fortunately, Snoopreport is as simple as can be. Just sign up for a Snoopreport account and purchase the plan you want depending on the number of accounts you want to track. You can track up to 100 accounts at a time. Then, just type in the accounts you want to track and you’ll start receiving your reports. It’s that easy to get started with Snoopreport today.