This week I decided to look at what top creators were doing differently than creators like us or that are related to us. I really wanted to do an in-depth analysis of what differences profiles had for larger creators vs. creators that are still growing. If there are trends, then they can be applied to growing creators accounts to potentially grow faster.
I took the Hype Auditor top 1000 list to get the top creators and removed anyone with more than 1.5M followers. Most of the accounts above 1.5M were celebrity accounts and wouldn’t have the information that we are after, which is building a following for essentially an unknown creator.
The Creators
The average top creator in our sample has just over 1,000,000 followers. The average creator that is related to our account has about 250,000 followers.
Related accounts are primarily made up of interior design and DIY creators, whereas top creators come from all niches and categories.
I also decided to throw in about 50 random micro-creator accounts into the data. These random accounts have about 10,000 followers on average (median of 5,000).
Let’s dive into the differences between the three groups and see what we can learn.
What’s Different Between Top Creators and Growing Creators
Following Count
This one is always interesting to me, especially with the popular follow-for-follow hack, which doesn’t usually work in the long run, that many creators try out when they are first starting out.
Top creators are following the fewest accounts, with a heavily skewed distribution. This means that some top creator accounts follow a lot of other accounts but the majority follow under 640 other accounts.
Creators related to our account plus our account, follow just under 1000 other accounts on average. What I found interesting was the bi-modal distribution (two bumps). The 1000 barrier and the 2000 barrier really seem to be psychological barriers for a lot of creators.
Smaller creators have a wider distribution, likely because some creators have just started out. There is broader representation in this group than in the group of accounts that are related to our own.
Highlight Reel Count
This one is really interesting to me and I’m not sure if this is related to the niche of creators or if it is really a difference between Micro, Mid, and Macro creators.
Large creators have, on average, 27 story highlight bubbles. This is almost right in line with the average for smaller creators.
To see if this is truly different, I looked at a couple of the top creators that are in our niche. These accounts had 77.5 highlight bubbles on average. I think this metric being different has to do more with the niche and not actually creator growth.
Are They a Business Account?
Not surprisingly, as you get bigger, the more likely you are to have a business account.
However, something a lot of creators haven’t picked up on yet is that by having a business category listed on your profile, you make “see more” appear on mobile if your bio is using all of the characters. This is valuable real estate being taken up on your profile. We’ve done a lot of a/b testing with this and the business category is a disadvantage to your profile for conversions.
Are they Verified?
The timing on this metric makes things a little interesting with Meta currently in the process of rolling out their verification service. It seems like it was rolled out based on when you signed up on the waitlist. Many of the accounts that we are related to are in a group chat together and all signed up at the same time.
I think if we looked at this metric a couple of weeks ago we would have seen higher verification rates for top creators, in the middle for related accounts, and lowest for micro creators.
As far as we can tell so far, verification has made no impact on our profile metrics and profile conversion rate. We’ll see if that remains the case going forward.
How Many Posts Do They Have?
The number of posts is related to the time since the account was created. Many accounts do clean up their posting history, though.
Top creators have 1,617 posts on average on their Instagram profiles. Accounts related to us have 1,062 posts on average, and micro creators have 612 posts on average.
It takes a long time to build an audience. Most of us look at the viral overnight success story but those aren’t actually the norm. The top creators, and the larger creators, have just been doing this for a longer period of time. That’s how you get good at something, is doing it for a sustained amount of time.
The Bio
Top creators use a way shorter bio on average compared to micro and accounts related to our own. Let’s dive into this a little bit more and see if there is something here.
How Easy is the Bio to Read?
This past week I did an analysis on LinkedIn where I looked at top creators and the opposite results showed up on Instagram, which I find interesting.
On LinkedIn, top creators write way more simply than the rest of us do. They write in their posts and about me sections using smaller words and shorter sentences.
On Instagram, the opposite is true. To measure how easy text is to read, a Flesch score is used. A score of 90-100 indicates a text that is very easy to read, while a score of 60-70 indicates a text that is fairly easy to read. Scores below 30 indicate a text that is very difficult to read.
Here are the Flesch scores by group:
The average top creator has a Flesch score of 51.19, accounts related to ours have a Flesch score of 61.73, and micro-influencers have a Flesch score of 65.49.
One theory I have for this is that my filter of top creators <1.5M didn’t really filter out everyone that wasn’t recognizable and gained an audience through a means other than instant recognization.
I filtered the top creators again to that list of creators in our niche that I knew had grown an audience, and weren’t instantly recognizable:
The Flesch score for this group jumps back up to 66.71, which is higher than all other categories.
I think there is something to writing more simply that can help you convert more profile views to followers.
Bio Sentiment
Depending on the profile we’ve seen both positive and negative sentiment have an impact on a creators reach. Sentiment overall on Instagram is usually extremely positive.
Top creators are slightly more negative than the other two group but not by much.
The most negative profile in our dataset has a curse word, which pulled it all the way down to the low end of the score range.
The most positive profile in our data set used a lot of adjectives to describe what they do and those adjectives brought them up to the high end.
As far as I could tell there is no relationship between bio sentiment and the number of followers.
Bio Emoji Use
Top creators use more emojis on average than the other creators. Top creators use 2.32 emojis on average in their bio. Accounts related to ours use 2.05 emojis on average. Micro creators use about 1.75 emojis on average in their bio.
There does appear to be a slight correlation between audience size and emoji use. The more followers you have, the more emojis you use. This highlights an important element of your bio to test to see if it leads to higher conversions.
In Depth Profile Analysis from ChatGPT
I’ve been experimenting a lot with ChatGPT these past couple of weeks and have been trying to integrate it into my work as much as possible. For this exercise, I’ve asked ChatGPT to conduct an analysis of every profile in the dataset.
The prompt that I used for this analysis was the same for each creator. It was, “Act like a social media analytics expert. What is the following profile doing well to optimize their profile to obtain more
followers? Do an analysis of the profile page based on the following:”
And then I listed a bunch of data from the account including all of the stats above, and their full bio.
I also took a screenshot of each of their pages and used an image recognition model to identify common objects and any words found when you first visit their profile and gave that list as part of the prompt.
Example Prompt for 1776 Faux Farmhouse
Act like a social media analytics expert. What is the following profile doing well to optimize their profile to obtain more followers? Do an analysis of the profile page based on the following:
Username: 1776fauxfarmhouse
Full Name: Nicole Francis | DIY Home
Follower Count: 160800
Following Count: 939
Bio: • Follow to make your builder-grade, custom-made!
- Home is what YOU make it
- Mama by day, DIYer by night ⋮ TikTok 145K
- Find a DIY project below ⇩
Bio Number of Words: 27
Bio Number of Sentences: 2
Bio Number of Emojis: 0
Bio Average Sentiment: 0
Number of Highlight Reels: 53
Are they a bussiness account: No
Are they a verified account: Yes
Number of Posts: 411
Primary Category:
Objects detected on profile screenshot: File, Webpage, Person, Computer Hardware, Face, Monitor, Screen, Furniture, Living Room, Text
Words detected on profile screenshot: Instagram, Search, Log, In, Sign, Up, 1776fauxfarmhouse, Follow, Message, …, 411, posts, 160K, followers, 939, following, Nicole, Francis, DIY, Home, Follow, to, make, your, builder-grade,, custom-made!, Home, is, what, YOU, make, it, Mama, by, day,, DIYer, by, night : TikTok, 145K, Find, a, DIY, project, below, J, www.1776fauxfarmhouse.com/instagram, !!, Please, Read, Simmer, Pot, Product, Links, Basement, Concrete, Bar, School, Info, Hal, POSTS, REELS, TAGGED, Log, into, Instagram, Log, in, Log, in, to, see, photos, and, videos, from, friends, and, discover, other, accounts, you’ll, love., Sign, and Up
Example Response from ChatGPT for 1776 Faux Farmhouse
Based on the information provided, it seems like the profile owner is doing a few things well to optimize their profile to obtain more followers:
- Clear Bio: The profile has a clear and concise bio that highlights what the page is about and what audiences can expect to find on it. Additionally, the use of emojis could help this profile come across as more friendly and approachable.
- High Engagement: The profile has a remarkably high engagement rate, with a massive following and a good number of posts. This indicates that the owner is doing something right in terms of content quality, timing, and interaction with followers.
- Highlight reels: The profile has an impressive 53 highlight reels, showcasing various DIY home projects. This not only helps to keep the content organized but also makes it easier for the audience to find the specific content they are interested in.
- Visual aesthetics: The profile appears to be well-curated and visually appealing, with an emphasis on clean and simple aesthetics. This could help attract more followers who are drawn to this type of clean visual style.
Overall, the owner of this profile seems to be doing quite well in terms of optimizing their profile to obtain more followers. They have a clear message that speaks to their target audience, have a high engagement rate, and present content in an organized and visually appealing manner.
What’s Different Between the Groups?
Top Creators
Accounts Related to Ours
Micro
Top Creators vs. Related
I look at what words show up more often for the different categories. The following words were used more often in the individual analyses of the top creators compared to accounts related to ours:
- Attract (0.7% for top creators vs 0.4% for related creators)
- Followers (used in 1.6% vs 1.4%)
- Large (used in 0.3% vs 0.1%)
- Category (used in 0.5% vs 0.3%)
- Niche (used in 0.2% vs 0.07%)
Top Creators vs. Micro
The following words were used more often in the individual analyses of the top creators compared to micro creators:
- Large (used in 0.3% vs 0.07%)
- High (used in 0.5% vs 0.2%)
- Verified (used in 0.4% vs 0.2%)
- Credibility (used in 0.3% vs 0.1%)
- Emojis (used in 0.3% vs 0.2%)
Top Creators vs. Related
I look at what words show up more often for the different categories. The following words were used more often in the individual analyses of the top creators compared to accounts related to ours:
- High (used in 0.7% vs 0.2%)
- Bio (used in 0.4% vs 0.2%)
- Followers (used in 0.6% vs 0.3%)
- Highlight (used in 0.5% vs 0.4%)
- Audience (used in 0.4% vs 0.2%)
Key Takeaways
Top creators, related creators, and micro creators all do things just a bit differently when it comes to their profile pages. Some of the things that stand out as being different for top creators include:
- Number of accounts following
- Percentage of accounts that are using a business account
- Verification
- More posts
- Bio length
- Bio Emoji use
- And a focus on a niche
It’s important to test everything when it comes to your profile page. What works for one account isn’t guaranteed to work for another.
When You Are Ready, There Are 3 Ways I Can Help:
1 – If you’re looking to further improve & grow your social media using analytics, I’d recommend starting with a course:
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3 – Promote yourself to over 140k+ followers/subscribers by collaborating with me on a project!
