Bronto Explores
Visualizing My Journey to 100K Followers
An analysis of 72 Instagram posts from June 2024 to October 2025
22 Nov 2025
Virality: The 70/30 Rule
What growth on social media really looks like...
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Cumulative lifetime followers gained per post
Since account launch
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Source: Chartosaur Instagram Analytics
70%
of followers came from only 5 posts
Not all posts are created equal. After analyzing 72 posts over our account lifetime, a clear pattern emerged: a small number of viral posts drove the majority of growth.
What Content Format Works Best?
Is there a strategy to posting a carousel vs a reel?
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Lifetime Followers Gained vs Post Reach
Log scales, by content format
Reel
Carousel
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Source: Chartosaur Instagram Analytics
Log scales... scary!! I've added an un-log button for those of you that don't like them, but to better understand the patterns, we use log scales so that 'viral' videos don't dominate the entire chart. Looking at the data, reels consistently reach a wider audience. They sit higher on the reach axis, which fits what we would expect from video content since it is generally considered the most effective way to reach new audiences. Particularly in our case, our reels have a lot of animated effects and are edited for retention, which likely helps boost their reach.
Our carousels, on the other hand, tend to be quite focused on a specific educational topic. While they may not reach as many people, we believe them to be very effective at keeping our followers engaged and coming back for more. Although there are two clear outliers in the data!
Overall, if you're looking to get started on content. I would recommend on reels for reaching new people, and carousels for deepening engagement with your existing audience.
When was Chartosaur Most Active?
The schedule behind the scenes
Posting Time Heatmap
Distribution of post publish times across the week, EST Timezone
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Source: Chartosaur Instagram Analytics
I guess I really like Mondays and Wednesdays! But there's actually some strategy to this...
Since our content is educational, I started with this belief that people would be more receptive to learning at the start of the week when they are more focused. Wednesdays were chosen to maintain mid-week engagement. Although seeing my data being this imbalanced makes me think it's time to test out some new schedules!
The timing of the post during the day is something I see a lot of online creators talk about. If you're looking to reach a local audience, perhaps that may matter. But if you're aiming to reach a global audience like me, I'm not really convinced there is a best time. To test this though, we need to check back in next year with more even data across the board.
How long should my reels be?
Reel Length Insights
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Comparing Reel Durations by Follow Gain Performance
Duration of Reel (seconds)
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High Performers Cutoff:500
Source: Chartosaur Instagram Analytics
"Do longer reels lead to more followers?"
To explore this, we categorized our reels into high and low performers based on a follower gains cutoff of 500.
Comparing the shape of the data, I'm not entirely convinced there is a strong relationship between reel duration and follower gains. Although there does seem to be a lack of really short reels in the high performer category. Maybe building enough authority for a follow requires longer content?
The number 500 here is arbitrary, so I encourage you to play around with the cutoff slider below to see how the distribution changes with different thresholds.