How to See Where Your Instagram Followers Are From

If you’re a local, brick-and-mortar business, how do you know if your followers are coming from the right geographical area for your business?

Because if your followers aren’t coming from where your paying clients or patients are, what’s the point?

And, should you be removing followers who aren’t in your location?

How to check:

Tap “Insights” from your Instagram Professional-Business Profile

Tap “Total Followers”

You’ll see your Reached audience here

If it looks ok, then awesome! Keep on doing what you’re doing. If it doesn’t, then here are a few things you can do.

1) SLOWLY remove followers. If you perform too many actions at once, Instagram will think you’re a bot and freeze your actions.

There is no set number we know of, so our rule when doing this for clients is no more than 20 unfollows at one time.

From your profile page, tap Followers at the top.

There will be a rectangle “Remove” button next to each one, and you can see if you are following them, too.

How to know who to remove? Look for accounts that:

• Have odd usernames with lots of numbers or underscores
• Have no profile photo
• Have no posts or very few posts
• Are following a ton of people but have very few followers

I think it’s perfectly fine to keep friends and family as followers, even if they aren’t in your area or if they aren’t ideal clients. They will usually be your biggest cheerleaders, so keep ‘em!

2) Use local/regional/geographical hashtags on your posts

• Write down a list of all the cities, towns, counties, attractions, etc. that are close to you
• Type them into the Instagram search bar with the hashtag symbol in front of it like #raleigh
• You want to use hashtags with less than 500k uses, preferably less than 250k if you’re a smaller account. If you’re in a larger area, chances are your city’s hashtag will be oversaturated and useless (#raleigh has 3.6M posts) so you can try adding things like:
  • #raleighmom or #raleighmoms
  • #raleighlocal
  • #raleighsmallbusiness
  • #raleighchiropractor
• If you’re in a small town, then adding those specific terms after like “moms” or “local” likely aren’t necessary.
• Use all variations, and try adding the state after as an abbreviation or spelled out like
  • #pensacolafl
  • pensacolaflorida

3) Collaborate with local businesses and referral sources

• Try a collaborative Reel or a post where you tag all your favorite local spots. Ask if they can do the same for you.
• Share local businesses or local blog/travel Instagram accounts to your stories
• Create a “Pensacola Love” or whatever town story highlight 

If you STILL feel like you’re only drawing in spam or bot accounts, then it could be your Reels. If you’re only creating “viral” type Reels with trends, then rethink your core content strategy. I talk more about that HERE and you can grab 101+ Reels Prompts for Health and Wellness Professionals HERE.

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