Content Engagement > Follower Count
Let's explore the reasons why engagement metrics matter more than follower counts
So, on almost every client discovery call I get some version of the same question - how many followers does this creator have?
I get why people ask it, because it’s the easiest number to find and it’s the one metric everyone understands. Here’s my attempt to explain why it’s the wrong FIRST question, and what I’d ask instead.
A follower count tells you how many people clicked follow at some point in the last decade, and it doesn’t tell you how many of them are still active on the platform, still care about the topic, or are still being shown that person’s posts.
LinkedIn shows a post to a small slice of the people who follow the account, and that slice moves based on how the first few hours go, which means two creators with identical follower counts can have very different reach on the exact same Tuesday.
I have 178k followers and that does NOT mean 178k people see my posts. Nobody’s account works that way, so if someone is quoting you their follower count as a reach estimate, that’s a red flag.
The three numbers to focus on:
1. Median impressions per post. Ask for the median rather than the average, because one viral post will drag the average somewhere unrealistic, and ask for it on the FORMAT you’re actually buying since text post impressions and video impressions aren’t the same thing.
2. Engagement rate, calculated as engagements divided by impressions. Some people calculate it against follower count instead, which inflates the number for small accounts and crushes it for large ones, so pick one definition and apply it to every creator you’re comparing or you’re comparing nothing at all.
3. Comment quality. Take some time to actually READ the comments on a creators post. You’ll notice that some creators boost their content with comments from their friends, other creators, random people, bots, or pods.
What a real comment section looks like:
Open the last five posts, read the comments, and look for a few things.
Are the comments specific to the post, or are they “Great post!” and “Well said 👏” from the same eight accounts every time? Pods are extremely easy to spot once you know the pattern, because the same names show up within four minutes of every post with the same generic praise. Also - you’ll notice some creators have A LOT of AI-generated comments that take a long time to say nothing at all.
Are people disagreeing, adding context, telling their own story, or asking follow-up questions? A comment section where someone writes three sentences about how this played out at their own company is worth more to you than 400 likes.
And most importantly, WHO is commenting? Pull up ten commenters and look at their titles, because if you sell a data catalog to enterprise data leaders and the comment section is students and job seekers, (or hairdressers) the reach is real but it’s the wrong reach.
Some of the strongest results I’ve seen have come from creators in the 8k to 25k range who write about one narrow thing for one narrow audience. Their impressions tend to be lower, but their comment sections are full of practitioners and buyers, and their audience actually reads the whole post instead of scrolling past it.
I’m not saying to only book small accounts, because larger creators do real work for awareness plays and event coverage. I’m saying that a creator with 100k followers and a dead comment section will usually lose to a creator with 12k and a live one, and the follower number will tell you the exact opposite.
Five questions to ask before you buy creator posts:
What are your median impressions over the last 5 posts, by format?
How do you calculate engagement rate?
Can I see three recent posts on a topic close to ours?
What does your audience do for work, roughly what titles and industries?
What happened after your last sponsored post, beyond the public metrics? (did people actually click, sign-up, make a purchase, etc.)
Any creator worth booking will answer all five questions easily.
Follower count tells you the room might be big; but it tells you nothing at all about whether anyone in that room is listening, or whether they’re the people you actually sell to / connect with.
If you need help figuring out which creators fit your audience - contact ME (Kate Strachnyi) or check out DATAcated.com