Before you collaborate with an influencer, you want to know if their follower count is growing, plateauing, or even shrinking.

Let's look at how you can check creator's growth rates: the manual way, and by using software (Modash).

First though, let's clarify the definition & formula.

What is influencer follower growth rate?

Follower growth rate indicates how quickly an account is gaining or losing followers in a given time period.

The metric tells how well an influencer's content is performing and how engaged their audience is — helping you decide if you should collaborate with them.

While follower count isn't always the most important metric in influencer selection, the rate at which it is growing matters.

How to calculate follower growth rate (formula)

To calculate influencer follower growth rate, you need to take the difference in follower count over a given time period, divide it by the starting follower count, and multiply by 100. Here's the formula:

(Follower count at time A - Follower count at time B / Follower count at time B) x 100 = Growth Rate (%)

In reality, you're probably not going to do this in every influencer selection process -- but it's good to know where the metric comes from.

How to check influencer follower growth rate

There's 2 main ways to do this. The first is to have an influencer check their own data & send you a screenshot (slow, but free), and the second is to use an influencer analysis tool (faster, but costs).

Let's start with the former, using built-in analytics tools. You can contact an influencer, ask them to find this information, and send it over.

For Instagram, they/you can access Insights through the menu (≡) in the upper right corner of your app. Select the Insights tab, and you will get access to various metrics like engagement, reach, audience, and interaction.

The process is quite similar for other platforms as well. YouTube Studio shows a channel's subscriber growth, and TikTok's Creator Tools can help you find TikTok growth data.

But the real problem is — you can't access an influencer's insights. Having to go to all the trouble of reaching out & requesting this data is time consuming and tedious.

The situation becomes even worse if you are trying to recruit many influencers or you want to check growth rate at regular intervals.

So, what's the best solution? Use software.

Check influencer growth rate in 30 seconds with Modash

With Modash, you can quickly check any influencer's analytics (including follower growth rate) with just a few clicks. Here's a snapshot of what it looks like using a food content creator, @razofoodie as an example:

From the Modash dashboard, in the Discovery tab, you can input an influencer's username. Open the profile, and click 'View Full Report'.

There, you'll find: follower growth, fake followers, engagement rate, and audience demographic, including their location, age, and gender. For follower growth specifically, you'll see a chart showing change over time. To get the specific percentage, you can apply the formula above.

Modash gives you in-depth accurate influencer data for all three major platforms — Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

This ☝ works well if you already have an influencer profile in mind that you want to check. If you don't, you can also use Modash as an influencer search engine, to find fast-growing influencers that meet your criteria.

Filter your influencer searches by minimum growth rate

Modash has a discovery platform for finding and analyzing influencers, letting you search and filter through a database of 200M+ creators.

You can add filters to set your criteria, and minimum growth rate is one of them. You can adjust the filter by specifying a specific growth percentage and time period.

For example, if you are looking for an Instagram influencer in the US whose growth rate over the last three months has been equal to or more than 30%, this is how it would look.

Modash will then find & display every IG influencer in the world who match the criteria.

In case you're wondering: Modash calculates growth rate in exactly the same way, just automatically!

✅Pro-tip: Add the growth rate filter with other filters like audience demographics & engagement rates to get the best results.

Why Modash? 

• You don't have to ask the influencers you collaborate with for any data. Just go to Modash and have a detailed overview of all the analytics. 
• Modash enables you to see the follower growth of an influencer on three major platforms, making it easier for you to access insights all in one place. 
• You can specify the growth rate when looking for influencers — making your search easier and more accurate. 

4 tips on partnering with fast-growing influencers

Fast-growing influencers are all the rage. Brands see an influencer's content go viral and immediately jump on that to ride the "viral" wave.

But before you reach out to a fast-growing influencer, there are a few things you should know about.

1. A fast growth rate isn't enough

While there's a massive potential in rapidly growing influencers, an influencer's follower growth rate isn't the only thing that counts.

Collaborating with a future mega influencer helps set the foundations for long-term success, but other metrics are equally important like:

• Audience demographics: Check their audience's location, age, gender, interests, etc., to see if you have a common target audience 
• Engagement rate: Having more followers is good when those followers interact and engage with an influencer's content, so the engagement rate is essential to check beforehand 
• Content style: Each influencer has a particular style and tone of voice. Before collaborating with any influencer, ensure their content style matches your brand guidelines.

Dr. Suhail Mohiuddin of Dentologie, a Chicago-based dentist, went viral in February 2020 when his first video had half a million views in 24 hours. Only 2% of his 742.5K followers are from Chicago, but 1 of every 4 of the customers at Dentologie come from TikTok.

This clearly shows that more important than fast-growing followers are audience interest and their willingness to engage with and listen to an influencer. 

2. Use performance-based pay

Paying per post or per campaign with influencers can have it's place, but generally, it isn't the most scalable strategy.

Performance-based payments (rewarding creators a percentage of sales they drive) is an excellent, scalable compensation model.

And when a creator is rapidly growing, this is even more useful. As their influence grows, their rates will change rapidly and lead to constant renegotiations. If you can negotiate a commission-based deal from the start, then the creator's income will scale rapidly along with their reach. You'll develop a strong long-term relationship, and never have to worry about your profit margins.

Anniyah N Rogers is a fast-growing influencer with (>150%) who partnered with Sincere Sally, a jewelry brand, on a performance-based collaboration.

Her discount code, “Anniyah-R15,” gives her audience a 30% discount on every purchase and helps Sincere Sally keep track of every sale coming through Anniyah. The brand, in return, pays her a percentage of every product bought through her code.

Performance-based campaigns help you materialize the effect of your influencer marketing campaigns rather than just rely on brand awareness, which is a lot harder to calculate. 

3. Nurture the relationship

The key to working with fast-growing influencers is to continue growing your relationship. It's not uncommon for a nano or micro-influencer to go viral suddenly and have a sudden influx in their follower count.

So, how do you ensure you continue getting the best out of a partnership?

Collaborating with a growing influencer at the initial stage of their success and strengthening your collaboration with more exciting partnership opportunities later down the line guarantees a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

You want to be there to capitalize on their growth as an influencer while ensuring your affiliation is fruitful and results in success.

So, how do you ensure a successful and long-term collaboration? Here are a few tips:

• Start a brand ambassador program — get your fast-growing influencers to become your brand ambassadors for a long partnership. 
• Do different types of collaborations — experiment to see other ways you can collaborate with them. 
• Support their growth as an influencer — comment on their posts, share their work and send them congratulatory gifts when they reach milestones. 
• Personalize your relationship — remember their birthdays and other significant days and send them a gift.  

4. Find more similar influencers

If you have found some good influencers and are looking for similar ones, Modash's lookalike tool can help you.

Go to Discovery and add the username/link of the influencer. Modash will give you a list of various lookalike influencers to choose from.

The lookalike tool is important if you already have an influencer you love working with and are looking for someone quite similar to them. You don't have to do much research or in-depth analysis and sort through the lookalike influencers to find your next collaborators.

Conclusion

Smaller influencers with a consistently increasing follower growth rate are more invested in creating engaging and captivating. With a consistent, steady increase in followers, new people are more likely to discover and engage with their brand.

When looking for which influencers to collaborate with, keep the follower growth rate in mind, along with other metrics like engagement rate and fake followers and their content style.

And with Modash, you can do it all — discover new influencers, keep track of all your campaigns, manage fast-growing influencers to ensure a long-term collaboration, and monitor all the analytics. Sign up for your 14-day free trial today!