Does Your Follower Count Really Matter in 2025?

Followers definitely mattered back in 2015, but do they still hold the same weight in 2025?

While follower counts give your organization credibility, social platforms have changed, especially over the past five years. Video views and engagement metrics like comments, shares, and reactions have become far more important indicators of your nonprofit’s social media success.

This month, we’re continuing our unofficial series exploring what really matters in nonprofit marketing. Back in April, we dove into whether size matters, and in May, we explored why stories matter.

Here are our thoughts on nonprofit follower counts in 2025 and what metrics you should consider prioritizing first.

What Meta's Strategy Tells Us

We can learn a lot about the importance of followers in today's social media landscape from how Meta has purposefully changed their platforms over the last few years.

In an earnings call in 2023, Zuckerberg was candid about their goal to transition to a “discovery engine” to compete with the short-form content king, TikTok.

To accomplish this, Meta trained their AI to recommend interest-based content to users, regardless of whether they were following the creator.

Meta’s AI Transparency Center is an incredible resource if you’re interested in diving into how the platform recommends content and boosts the reach of creators regardless of follower size. Meta has an exhaustive list of the signals their AI listens for when ranking content. They are constantly evaluating content served to users based on interest, engagement, and viewing habits.

A year after Zuckerberg’s earnings call, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri used his platforms to directly address follower counts. In this Reel, he encouraged creators to focus on engagement metrics.

 

 

 

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A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri)

His main message? Followers aren’t as critical as engagement and views, even though follower counts are still the easiest metric for most people to see.

Meta, and their competitors, want engaging content and reward creators for keeping users on their apps for longer.

So what should your nonprofit do with this information?

In this new discovery-driven social media landscape, your audience doesn't need to click follow for you to reach them with your content. If you focus on speaking to their interests and needs, your content has the potential to reach more than your followers and even gain virality.

And if you’re dealing with stakeholders who still fixate on followers, you’re not alone. The typical social media user can find your follower count, but they can’t calculate your engagement rate on the fly. Some platforms even go out of their way to hide engagement metrics from viewers.

The best way to challenge this old-school way of thinking is to be proactive.

Show them why engagement metrics truly matter by connecting them to your mission and your current goals:

• Fundraising? Track clicks and engagement on donation appeals.
• Brand awareness? Look at profile visits and post views.
• Advocacy? Focus on shares, views, and comments.

By sharing more meaningful metrics and providing clear context, you’ll help your team and well-meaning stakeholders understand why engagement metrics matter more to your mission than follower counts in 2025.