A client asked me last year, “Can you just send me a list of who follows us?” I said sure, give me ten minutes.
It took a lot longer than ten minutes.
Instagram will tell you that you have 4,382 followers. It’ll let you scroll through them, one by one, until your thumb hurts. What it won’t do is give you that list as a file. No download button. Nothing. Which is strange, because that list is probably the most useful thing on your account.
So here’s what I’ve learned about getting an Instagram follower export, why it’s worth doing, and where people tend to mess it up.
Why would you even want this?
Honestly, I used to think this was agency stuff. Big brands, big budgets. Then I looked at the follower list of a small account I was helping with, and half my assumptions went out the window.
Take a home bakery account. You’d think the followers are mostly local people who want a birthday cake. Fair guess. But when you actually read the bios, a lot of them turn out to be other bakers. Cake decorators. Food bloggers. People who will never order from you, but who’d happily save a frosting tutorial.
You don’t see that by scrolling. You see it in a spreadsheet.
Backups are the other big reason. I’ve seen two accounts get hacked in the last couple of years, and both owners said the same thing afterwards: “I wish I knew who my followers were.” A file from last month won’t get your account back. But at least you know who your people were. Once a month is plenty.
Then there’s competitor research, which is the bit I personally enjoy. A competitor’s public following list is a little window into what they care about. Which creators they keep an eye on. Which suppliers they follow. It’s a bit nosy, sure. It’s also public.
And if you’re about to pay an influencer, please look at their audience first. 50,000 followers sounds great until you realise most of them are in a country you don’t even deliver to.
What do you actually get in the file?
Usually two choices.
A basic export is just usernames and profile links. Quick. Good for backups.
A detailed export pulls in the public stuff from each profile: display name, bio, follower count, website, and any contact info that person has chosen to show. Slower, but that’s where the useful patterns are.
I’d start basic. Seriously. Get a feel for the data before you go big.
How to export Instagram followers to Excel
There’s no built-in way, so you’ll need a browser extension. The one I’ve been using is an Instagram follower export tool called Exporter for IG. It sits in Chrome and gives you an Excel or CSV file at the end.
The steps are pretty boring, which is a good thing:
- Add the extension to Chrome and pin it.
- Log in to Instagram in that same browser.
- Go to the profile you want.
- Pick followers or following.
- Choose fast or detailed mode.
- Export, download, done.
Detailed mode on a big account takes time because it’s visiting each profile. Go make tea. Don’t keep clicking the button.
Don’t forget the following list
People skip this, and I get why. But exporting your following list to CSV is weirdly satisfying. It’s like clearing out a wardrobe. You’ll find accounts you followed in 2019 and forgot about completely.
You’ll also find out who doesn’t follow you back. You were going to check anyway. We all do.
For competitors, the following list is often more revealing than the followers list. Followers are random. Who a brand chooses to follow isn’t.
Making the spreadsheet actually useful
A file with 3,000 usernames is just a long list until you poke at it. A few things I usually try: sort by follower count to see who your “big” followers are, search the bio column for a word like “photographer” or a city name, and add a quick column marking accounts as business, creator or personal. Even tagging the first hundred tells you a lot.
If you run exports every month, compare them. Did that March campaign bring in the people you wanted, or just random accounts? The numbers will tell you pretty quickly.
Pivot tables help here. If you’ve never made one, it’s a twenty-minute YouTube video, and you’ll use it forever.
The part people skip (please don’t)
This is real people’s information, even if it’s public. So a few ground rules.
If someone put an email in their bio, that’s so customers can reach them. It’s not permission to add them to your newsletter. Don’t do mass cold emails from an export. It annoys people, and depending on where you and they live, privacy laws like GDPR can get involved.
Read Instagram’s terms. Don’t run giant exports back to back. Your account matters more than one spreadsheet.
Keep the files somewhere private, and delete old ones.
And nothing to do with fake followers, bots or mass-following. That stuff hurts your reach anyway, and it’s just not why you’d want this data.
So, worth it?
For me, yes. Without much doubt.
Most of us post based on gut feel and whatever worked last week. Having your actual audience in Excel, even once, changes how you think about what to post. Try it on your own account first. Then maybe have a peek at a competitor or two.
You might be surprised who’s been following you all along.
