Some NZ Collab Stats
Background
NZ Collab began in September 2018 as an Instagram account to hype up local NZ businesses, completely by accident, and quickly grew to over 1,000 followers within the first few months.
By December 2019, NZ Collab had reached 3,000 followers, growing to 4,500 as New Zealand entered lockdown in March 2020.
Three months later, it hit 10,000 followers, and by December 2021 that number had grown to 20,000.
As engagement started to slow, I recognised that a good chunk of the audience had become inactive over time. I made the decision to do a full clean-up, removing over 4,000 deactivated or inactive accounts to prioritise a more engaged and relevant audience. Since then, I’ve worked hard to steadily build that number back up.
I’ve never bought followers or used third-party tools to grow the account. NZ Collab has grown entirely organically, which is something I’m really proud of, and I believe it shows in the way this community supports small businesses.
Audience
Over the last 7 years, NZ Collab’s audience has consistently been made up of New Zealand women aged between 25 and 55.
At one point, it was 97% women. It’s now sitting around 93% which is still very much a female-led audience.
By location, followers were previously 93% New Zealand-based and now sit around 84%, largely due to some “Support Local” content gaining traction overseas.
And this part matters more than most people realise. . .
If you’re promoting your business through any platform, you need to know exactly who their audience is made up of and whether it actually aligns with your ideal customer.
Because a big following doesn’t mean much if it’s not the right following.
There are accounts out there with inflated numbers, paid followers, or audiences made up mostly of overseas accounts. It might look impressive on the surface, but it doesn’t translate into real engagement or real sales for NZ businesses.
NZ Collab has always focused on building a genuinely relevant, NZ-based audience and that shows in how people engage.
In terms of timing, audience activity shifts slightly day to day, but it consistently peaks between Sunday and Thursday, 6–9pm. That’s why all features and giveaways are scheduled within that window unless a business requests otherwise.
I don’t have hard data to put a number on this, but after years of running NZ Collab, it’s clear a large portion of my audience are business owners themselves. Content tailored to that space has always performed well.
There’s also a strong mix of mums, pet owners, and people who genuinely want to support NZ businesses.
Views and Posts
Monthly views fluctuate wildly depending on how active I am, how many bookings I have, how busy my life is (so how much time I can pour into NZ Collab), and whether the algorithm is feeling generous.
My “Support Local” text style posts can take off in ways that sadly my small biz features don’t but some things that do help with views and engagement are good clear photos with good lighting, an attention grabbing caption hook and recognisable brand style. That’s why I stick to the same colours and font style, and avoid cluttering the main image with logos or too much text.
Outside of Instagram. . .
NZ Collab’s Facebook account has 2.4k followers and works well with giveaways combined with instagram providing a different audience and increasing views across both platforms.
The NZ Collab Directory on this website sits pretty consistently at a low of 1,000 views per month, increasing at peak times like Christmas and with shares on social media.
NZ Collab’s GIPHY channel has had a whopping 375 million views and has hundreds of small biz/NZ/support local based stickers which can be used on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok etc.
You can search @nzcollab or “NZ Biz” or any combination of relevant keywords like “NZ local” to find some or watch my “GIF Stickers” highlight on instagram for help.
