Instagram API: Get Followers To Drive Engagement and Growth

Written by:

Vira Larionova

min read

Date:

August 19, 2024

Updated on:

November 29, 2024

Each month, 1.4 billion people use Instagram, which is not only a social network but a mega-market of interesting opportunities. In addition, statistics show that more than 200 million businesses strive to attract attention on this network, 90% of visitors click through the business account, and the business accounts on Instagram gain on average monthly followers by 1.46%.
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If the figures have impressed you, do not leave the article just yet: here, we are to go over the Instagram API Followers feature, why your business needs it, its primary functions, and what options are there to help boost your business and upgrade your social presence.

Basics of Instagram API: Get Followers Smartly

No matter you are looking for the ways to increase your followers on Instagram or need to gain more insights about your followers, the Instagram API with its features is what that may be useful.
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There are two options: Instagram Basic Display API and Instagram Graph API. And it’s the latest to be used by companies to tackle the issue of brand management within the Instagram platform.
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Yet, let’s start with some basics to learn more about this API and the way it can benefit your business or project.

What Is Instagram API Followers?

So, it’s a well-known fact that the Instagram API is a tool that lets you access the social media data. You can use it to understand your audience, engage with them better, and improve your social media strategy. In its turn, the Instagram API Followers feature is a part of the Instagram Graph API that allows access to detailed information about a user's followers such as:

The total number of followers;
Follower growth over time;
Insights into follower demographics, etc.

What Are Key Features?

Below you will find the list of the most important followers-related features of the Instagram API with which businesses can explore their audience and understand who exactly follows them and why.

Feature	Description	Benefit
Follower Count and Growth Tracking	Optionally receive real-time updates of the followers list and examine the growth patterns. Use the data to analyze changes that have occurred in past periods.	Understand follower growth trends and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Demographic Insights	Collect follower information like age, gender, follower, and location.	Adapt the promotional campaigns according to realm demographics.
Audience Engagement	Online engagement activities include the likes, comments, and shares that guests post on social media platforms. Determine what content promotes engagement amongst the users.	Increase engagement by focusing on content that resonates with your audience.
Active Times and Activity Patterns	Find out when the followers are most likely to engage in any activity on the pages/feeds. Maximize the optimal times of posting popular topics.	Optimize content strategy for maximum visibility and engagement.
Follower Interactions	Track Posts, Reels, Stories, and tagged mentions. Could identify followers’ preferences amongst other benefits.	Gain insights into follower preferences and improve content strategy.
Customizable Insights	Create personalized reports that align with specific business goals and metrics.	Get data for your business and reports about your followers.
Integration with Business Tools	Link Instagram data to business analytic solutions, automating the collection and generation of reports about the data.	Streamline data analysis and reporting processes by integrating with existing business tools.
Benchmarking and Comparison	Conduct a gap analysis between followers and their numbers in the context of the industry. The next action is to discover strengths and weaknesses.	Identify competitive advantages and areas for improvement by comparing against industry standards.
Follower Sentiment Analysis	Judge the followers’ sentiment in the comments and various interactions to modify the marketing approaches.	Enhance brand perception and engagement by responding to follower sentiments effectively.
Automated Reporting	Organize the follower metric data and schedule reports that will be automatically sent out.	Automated reports save time and keep teams informed.

Instagram API Followers: Applications and Benefits

Okay, now you know what the Instagram API Followers feature is and what it can give you as a tool. However, what about the reasons and actual use case of it? So, why should you use Instagram API to analyze your followers? And how can you do that? That’s exactly what we’re going to cover next.

Instagram API Followers: Practical Applications

And it's time to learn the how-aspect: what to do as soon as you get followers with the help of the Instagram API? Here are a few fictional use cases to check.

Use Case 1: Designing Content for a Fashion Brand

Background: StyleChic is an online fashion brand and currently, they are seeking to gain more insights about their followers to create more relevant content.

Application: Through the Instagram API Followers, StyleChic identifies profiles and their follower lists to extract more data points, including age, gender, geographic region, and interests.

Outcome: Other analyzes show that a large percentage of StyleChic’s audience is users under 35 years of age who care about sustainable fashion. The brand targets posts which bring out its green collections and sustainable practices, and this leads to a boost in engagement and followers.

Use Case 2: Improving the Customer Relation Management of a Travel Agency

Background: The travel agency Wanderlust Travels seeks to improve its follower management as a way of strengthening customer relations.

Application: Through the use of Instagram API Followers feature, Wanderlust Travels categorizes its followings according to traveling preferences, previous interactions, and level of activity.

Outcome: The travel agency notices some followers that are inclined more to adventurous activities such as hiking. This segment is customized travel packages and special promotions for Wanderlust Travels and its effect on the number of bookings and repeat visitors.

Use Case 3: Optimizing marketing plans for a fitness brand

Background: FitPro is a fitness brand that aims to improve the effectiveness of its advertising by determining its audience’s likes and interactions.

Application: For instance, FitPro acquire follower lists with the Instagram API and analyze the results for popular trends, including workout programs and content that is relevant to its audience.

Outcome: This way, using follower interests as campaign themes in its marketing, FitPro gets better results in the campaigns and gains more followers. The specific focus of the brand also helps drive customer loyalty, which in turn will increase repeat consumers.

What Are The Benefits?

Here are some benefits of Instagram API to get following list to name:

Retailers can gain deeper insights into consumers and target campaigns more effectively using demographic and behavioral data.
Hospitality and travel companies can encourage users with targeted promotions and user-generated content.
This is important for healthcare and wellness brands, which can tailor content to followers' fitness and health preferences.
Technology businesses can include followers in beta testing and product reviews to develop products and enhance brand image.
Non-profit organizations and social causes can use the API to create awareness and supporters for different causes.

Instagram API: Get Followers List By Alternative Solutions

Even though the official Instagram API returns comprehensive data about followers, aditional opportunities are hidden in other solutions that can be useful for businesses and developers. So, if you want to get followers, Instagram API is good but third-party APIs and social media monitoring tools provide additional features like cross-platform compatibility, real-time data feeds, and customized capabilities based on your requirements.

Finally, let us consider Data365 as an example of a third-party solution. It offers a highly scalable structure where one can easily get wide data from several social media platforms, e.g TikTok, Instagram, Twitter(X) and even Facebook. Since the data is in real-time, the system is able to give immediate feedback on the audience and actions can be taken immediately. In addition, Data365.co presents the data in a way that aligns with other systems already in use, allowing your team to focus on realizing the full value to the business.

Whether you’re looking to retrieve posts, profile data, track engagement metrics, or gather insights from various social media platforms, solutions such as Data365.co contain features to enhance your social media operations. To learn more about how Data365.co can help you meet your individual business requirements or how you can avail of a trial period, please, contact our live support now.

Wrapping Up: Is It Easy to Get Followers on Instagram Using the API?

In conclusion, it is indeed possible to draw numerous advantages of the API of Instagram to get a followers list. This way, businesses are able to generate better followers’ lists and insights, enhance marketing strategy, increase customer satisfaction and expanding. Such insights into follower demographics, their participation, and preferences prove to be useful for the business in ability to develop more specific and efficient campaigns necessary for the enhancement of brand image and sales generation.

While the follower data can be as simple as counting the number of followers, it goes far beyond that and opens a door into understanding the fans. Small business is not the only one who wants to expand its audience, large enterprise wants to make their marketing more effective. And the Instagram API is the solution that offers all the instruments to convert the data you receive into actions.

That being said, it is important to understand that many different solutions provide equally great options. Data365 is one to be mentioned. In addition to extensive data retrieval initiatives, it is integrated into the system for businesses/projects to make better choices and reach their goals.

To learn more about the specifics of how Data365 can assist you in getting the most of the social media networks, we welcome you to contact our customer support team.

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FAQ

How to fetch data from Instagram?

You can fetch data from Instagram using the Graph API. Start by creating a Facebook Developer account, set up an app, generate access tokens, and make API calls to access user profiles, media, and insights. You can also opt for a third-party solution, like the one Data365.co provides.

What data can you get from Instagram API?

The Instagram API provides access to user profile information, media insights (likes, comments), engagement metrics, and follower insights, which can help enhance business strategies and improve engagement. It must be noted that there are certain limits for this API, so it is wiser to choose a third-party solution, e.g., Data365.co, to get a better understanding of your target audience's needs.