How to read a trading audience honestly

What an honest reading measures

An audience is worth what it does, not what it counts. Before an introducing broker takes on a partner — a creator who will promote the broker, or a sub-IB who will bring their own clients — the useful questions are narrower than "how many followers". How many of them respond. Where they sit. How the following moves. And which parts nobody has measured yet. Choosing sub-IBs is a measurement problem before it is a sales one, as our guide to the introducing-broker model sets out.

Every method below is how Gravity reads a public profile¹. None of it needs private analytics. Each figure comes from what any visitor can see, read by a named provider on a named date.

Engagement rate: one formula, stated

Several definitions are in use. Some divide by reach or by impressions, some add shares and saves, some work per post and some per day. Reach and impressions are usually visible only to the account's owner. Followers, likes and comments are usually public, which makes (likes + comments) ÷ followers the version you can compute for any account without asking. The formula matters less than the discipline around it: pick one, state it beside the figure, and never compare rates calculated two different ways.

Use the median post, not the average

A typical post is the median post: rank the recent posts by interactions and take the middle one. The average is the wrong measure because social engagement is lopsided. Most posts land in a narrow band; a few run far beyond it. Extreme values in the tails distort the mean but not the median, which is based on ranks². Gravity reads the median for this reason: one viral post should not define a typical one¹.

mean interactions per post — illustrative: nine posts at 300, one viral post at 30,000

3,270

median interactions per post, from the same illustrative ten posts

300

median engagement on an illustrative 20,000 followers; the mean would claim 16.4%

1.5%

The mean in this illustrative account describes a post that never happened: none of the ten came near 3,270. An IB who priced a partnership on it would expect more than ten times the response the account usually produces.

Across accounts, weight by audience

When one person runs several accounts, combine their engagement by weighting each account's rate by its followers. The plain average of rates treats a small account and a large one as equals, and it produces a figure that describes neither.

Gravity's own worked example, illustrative: a 12% rate on 800 followers and a 3% rate on 400,000. The unweighted average is 7.5%, and a ranking by rate puts the small account first. Weighted by audience, the combined rate is about 3.0%, because 400,000 of the 400,800 followers sit on the account engaging at 3%¹.

Where the reach sits

The measure is the Herfindahl–Hirschman index, the same arithmetic competition authorities apply to market shares³. Take each measured account's followers as a share of the total, square each share, and add them: HHI = s₁² + s₂² + … + sₙ². With shares written as fractions, the result runs from near 0, a following spread thinly across many accounts, to 1, a following that sits on one. Competition authorities write shares as percentages, which puts the same index on a scale up to 10,000³.

Total reach is the same in all three rows; the risk is not. A following that sits on one platform is one suspension, policy change or ranking change away from being unreachable, and an IB whose clients arrive through that account inherits the same fragility. A spread following survives the loss of any single account. The same logic is the case for an address the IB owns — see why an IB needs a website, not just a feed.

One caution on the total: summed followers measure reach, not people. The same trader may follow on three platforms, so the sum is an upper limit on the audience, never a count of it.

Growth and cadence need time

Growth is the difference between two readings. One reading has no growth. A follower count read once gives the size of an account on that day and nothing about its direction; "fast growth" built on it is an assumption about a starting point nobody recorded¹. Read the account again after an interval, keep both readings with their dates, and state growth only between them.

Posting cadence needs at least a fortnight of dated posts. A crawl returns what it can reach, and often that is only the most recent posts. Twenty posts crawled across two days — 42 hours from the first to the last — divide to "80 a week", which is a fact about the crawl, not the person. Gravity refuses to state a posting frequency from less than a fortnight of dated posts¹, and any reading an IB relies on should do the same.

Comments carry the relationships

Likes count reactions; comments show relationships. Who replies to whom under a post reveals networks that @mentions do not¹. A mention is what a creator chooses to display. A reply thread is what the audience and the creator's peers actually do: other trading educators answering each other's posts, regulars who appear under every video, community members who help each other before the creator does.

For an IB looking for sub-IBs, this is often the most useful evidence on the page. The accounts that keep appearing in a creator's comments, and under whose posts the creator comments in turn, are the people that creator already has a working relationship with. Read the threads before the follower count.

One person, one record

A person who posts on Instagram, YouTube and Telegram is one person with three accounts, and a reading should hold them as one record. The trap runs the other way too. Two accounts with the same first name are not the same person: a shared first name is not identification¹.

Confirm that accounts belong together with stronger evidence: accounts that link to each other in their bios or descriptions, the same website listed on each, or the same handle pattern together with matching content. Without it, a stranger's audience ends up in your prospect's reach — and every figure built on that sum inherits the error.

Red flags in a trading audience

Bought followers and traded interactions leave traces, though no single trace is proof. Read these as questions to ask, not verdicts.

• Engagement far below the account's size, sustained across posts. A large following that barely responds may be bought, inactive, or left over from a different topic.
• Engagement far above it on a small account, especially when the same handful of accounts comment on everything. Interactions can be traded as easily as followers.
• Comments that do not match the content: generic praise under a detailed chart breakdown, the same phrases repeated across posts, comments in a language the creator never writes in.
• Follower counts that jump between two readings with no post, collaboration or event to explain the jump.
• Claimed connections — to a broker, a fund or another creator — that no public link supports.

Bought influence is not only a credibility problem. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission's 2024 rule prohibits selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by bots or hijacked accounts, where the buyer knew or should have known they were fake and used them for a commercial purpose⁴. Rules differ by country; check the rules where you and your audience are.

For the same method as a step-by-step check on a candidate before you agree terms, see how to judge a sub-IB's audience before you sign them.

Every figure carries its source and date

A follower count is not a fact about a person. It is a reading, taken by a particular provider on a particular date, and Gravity stores every figure with both¹. Without the date, growth cannot be computed and a stale number passes for a current one. Without the provider, two readings that disagree cannot be reconciled. The same standard applies to every claim an IB makes in public — see evidence before claims.

The reading then feeds the commercial decision. A loyal, active audience tends to suit a plan that pays for activity, such as a rebate; a large, fast-moving one may suit a plan that pays for arrivals, such as a CPA. How IB commission plans compare covers that choice. Make it after measuring.