Export Instagram Following List

By 2025, Instagram will take 28% of the overall internet presence with more than 1.4B active monthly users. Although many platforms emerged in the past few years, Instagram’s extensive user base provides valuable information to marketers, businesses, and influencers to be ahead of their competitors.

As a company that knows how to find and leverage social media data for growth, in this article, we’ll talk about the main benefits of exporting the Instagram following list. So keep reading to find out:

• Why businesses export Instagram following list
• How to export the Instagram following list manually
• 5 Best tools to export Instagram following list of any profile

Let’s dive in!

Why Export Instagram Following List

Exporting Instagram following list has many advantages for both individuals and businesses. Here’s an overview of the benefits, plus details for those who want to better understand how to leverage the following list of someone’s Instagram profile.

Get audience insights and spot trends

Exporting the Instagram following list gives you access to relevant audience insights such as demographics, interests, and engagement rates. Creating your marketing strategy based on this data can significantly boost your CRM strategies, improve targeted marketing, and improve interaction with the audience.

Competitive analysis

Learn more about who your competitors follow, their current status with the users, engagement rates, and have a clearer perspective on their intentions. Knowing the creators your competitors follow can give you an idea of the potential partnerships they plan in the future.

Plus, you can learn the key points of their target audience like age, gender, location, and other relevant data points. You can use the enriched data to optimize your social media strategies and be ahead of the competition.

Finding email addresses for direct contact

Depending on how you export your Instagram following list, there’s a possibility to get access to the email addresses of all public profiles on the list. This is beneficial for influencers and marketers who need contact information to improve their email marketing strategy or start a collaboration with a target user.

Influencer identification and collaboration

By exporting your Instagram following list, you will learn key insights about the users you follow, such as audience size, engagement rates, and other relevant data points to make data-driven decisions and partnerships. Often the users you follow grow in size and may become the best collaborators.

Identifying influencers, celebrities, or other key people in the early stage means you can easily partner with them. Plus, based on the audience insights, you can improve your account and engage with accounts with similar interests and values.

Networking and community building

Another benefit is finding accounts that share similar interests and values as yours. You can connect with them to build your community and make your Instagram account more engaging to the audience. This is ideal for new creators because account management, networking, and community building are essential during the early stages.

8 steps to export a list of Instagram profiles you’re following

Instagram allows you to automatically export a list of accounts you’re following. Keep reading to learn how to do it.

1. Log into your Instagram account from a desktop
2. Click on the Menu Button
3. Click on Your Activity

4. Click on Download or Transfer Information and you will have a pop-up as in the picture below:

5. Select Instagram Only and click on Next
6. Select the relevant information and scroll down to find Followers and Following

7. Choose the device to which you want to download the data and click next as in the picture below

Once done, you should receive an In Progress note to know your data download started.

How to export Instagram following list of any profile

Although Instagram doesn’t allow users to automatically export a following list of other Instagram profiles, there’s still a way to export it.

To do so, first go to the profile you want to export the following list. Then click on the following and start selecting the accounts as in the picture below:

Then open a new Google Sheet and paste the data. You will have a list of the accounts your target follows with their bio description. You can later add other data such as the number of posts, audience size, etc.

While exporting your data manually may be useful for accounts of about 300-500 accounts, it’s not an effective solution for enriching more than 500 accounts. If you want details for more accounts at scale you need to use tools that offer advanced searching methods as explained below.

Besides, Nikola Sokolov, co-founder of influencers.club, says that even if you download the data, you must know more about data organization. To organize it, you need a follower export tool.

5 Best Tools to Export the Following List from Instagram

We’ve selected the top 5 tools and Chrome extensions you can use to export Instagram data for different purposes. Read on to find the tool suitable for your needs.

1. Influencers.club

Using influencers.club dashboard you can export the following list on Instagram and enrich the collected data. We have a team of experts who filter and analyze social media data and know how to use it for marketing strategies.

We have a dashboard of 80M+ Instagram profiles and we can additionally export the following list of any publicly available Instagram profile.

Our focus is an in-depth analysis of social media profiles, so, when exporting a list of profiles, along with the usernames we provide 40+ data points for each profile. Some of them are location, interests, audience size, type of profile (business, creator, personal), and most importantly – a verified email address for each profile.

Key Features

• More than 40 data points per user (location, interests, audience size, etc)
• Custom data points – We can dive deeper and analyze the data to provide specific data points per your request
• A valid email address for each profile
• In-depth data about profile monetization status, collaborations, etc.

Pros

• Quick, hands-off service – we manage everything and deliver your organized data file within a day
• We can export data from any publicly available Instagram profile
• Experts in managing and analyzing vast datasets

Cons

As we are working with large datasets, we may not be the best fit for small businesses with less complex data needs

2. PhantomBuster

PhantomBuster is an affordable data extortion tool predominantly for LinkedIn enrichment but works for Instagram, too. The tool provides you with 7 data points such as Instagram username, profile picture URL, full name of the person, Instagram unique ID, and whether the account is private and verified.

To get started with PhantomBuster:

1. Get the extension for Chrome or Firefox.
2. Open the Instagram account you want to enrich and copy the URL.
3. Paste it to your Google Sheets and make the spreadsheet public so that PhantomBuster can access it for data analysis.
4. Copy the spreadsheet and paste it into your Phantom setup.
5. Once done you need to specify the number of accounts you want the Phantom to enrich.
6. *Optional step: Don’t forget to automate the exportation process for frequent data enrichment.

Key Features

• Collects data like Instagram username, profile picture URL, Instagram unique ID, full name of the user, verified profile, etc.
• Automates the exportation process

Pros

• Great for recruiters or marketers who need to enrich their employee data
• Good verification tool
• Easy to install and use

Cons

• Users complain about getting banned on LinkedIn, but this applies to Instagram enrichment too.

3. LinkedRadar

LinkedRadat is a free export tool for Instagram followers base. It allows you to export the Instagram follower base and following lists to popular programs like CSV or Excel. LinkedRadar allows you to export up to 50K+ followers at once.

To get started with LinkedRadar you need to:

1. Enter an Instagram username or the full URL.
2. Set a timeout and select the export type
3. Click on the export button to retrieve the list in CSV or Excel

Key Features

• Allows you to export basic data about your Instagram following list like account URL, name, and last name.
• Protects data privacy because the exported list doesn’t reach LinkedRadar servers
• Saves the exported data in CSV or Excel

Pros

• It’s free and easy to use
• You export the data directly to your computer which guarantees data protection

Cons

• Lacks key data for targeted marketing, like engagement rates and past collaborations.

4. Bardeen

Bardeen is a Google Chrome extension for automating tasks that offer Instagram enrichment as part of the service. With the extension, you get to save the following or followers list in Google Sheets with the retrieved data and use it for your targeted marketing strategies.

To get started with Bardeen, you need to:

1. Download the extension and follow the instructions to integrate it into Google Sheets.
2. Go to the Instagram account you want to export from
3. Choose the following list.
4. Click on the extension and it will direct you to open a new or existing Google Sheet
5. Customize as you see fit and click Run Playbook.

Key Features

• Exports Instagram accounts’ name, number of followers/following, number of posts, and links used in bio.
• You can save lists in Google Sheets

Pros

• Easy to understand, install, and use
• Convenient for individuals or small businesses looking to expand their network
• Exports data within a few minutes

Cons

• Not useful for influencer outreach or marketers as it lacks crucial data like valid emails, advanced engagement rates, and past collaboration data.

5. IGFollow

IGFollow is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to collect comprehensive data from a follower or following list on Instagram. You can export a list with an email, location, number of posts, and phone numbers. Based on this data, you can perform your outreach.

To use IGFollow, you need to:

1. Download IGFollow first
2. Цopy the Instagram username you want to export the following list and paste it on the extension
3. Select whether you want to enrich the following or followers list and wait for the results

Note: It may take longer to collect extensive data.

Key Features

• Collects personal contact numbers and data like user location
• Saves files in CVS
• Intuitive UI

Pros

• Easy to use
• Delivers results within a couple of minutes
• Collects relevant data for targeted marketing

Cons

• The extension is not supported by Instagram and you may end up being banned permanently

To Sum Up

Knowing who your competitors follow sometimes can help you predict their strategies. For example, when a business profile follows an influencer it often means they are interested in a partnership with them.

You can also learn more about their target audience. For example, if a large portion of people they follow are millennials based in the United States, it’s most likely that’s their target audience.

Using the third-party tools and extensions we mentioned above will help you understand all that. However, not all tools have the capacity to extract user profiles legally, quickly, and effectively.

In the end, if you want to export Instagram following list of any Instagram profile and you have special requirements about the data points and how the data is organized, let’s talk. We have a team of experts that collects, filters and analyzes the data so you can get a list with 40+ data points per your requirements.