"Is my follower growth trend good?" is a natural question, and the instinct is to compare it against someone else's account or a number you saw quoted somewhere. That instinct, followed through, usually produces a worse read than not comparing at all.
Why an external number doesn't transfer
Account size changes the math — a small account can post a percentage growth rate a large account structurally can't match, simply because the base is smaller, not because the small account is doing something better. Niche changes the ceiling too: a broad-appeal topic reaches more potential new followers per post than a narrow, technical one, independent of how good either account's content actually is. A single benchmark number pretends both of those variables don't exist.
The comparison that's actually useful
Your own trend, over time, is the only comparison with the confounding variables held constant — same account, same niche, same starting audience. Is this month's slope steeper or flatter than last month's? Is a specific format correlating with an uptick relative to your own baseline? That's the version of "is this good" that actually tells you something you can act on — see what moves the trend line for the causal side once you're tracking against yourself correctly.
Where this instinct comes from, and why it's understandable
Wanting an external reference point is reasonable — a single number is easier to hold in your head than "compare your own slope over time." The problem isn't the instinct, it's that the number doesn't actually answer the question it's being asked to answer. "Good compared to what" needs a like-for-like comparison, and almost nothing else on the platform is truly like-for-like with your specific account.
A better habit than checking a benchmark
Fold your own trend comparison into a weekly analytics review — same day, same routine, looking at this week's slope against recent weeks rather than against an external number you saw once. Over a few months, that habit tells you far more about whether your account is actually improving than any one-time benchmark check ever could.
The real question worth asking instead
Not "is this good" in some absolute sense, but "is this better than it was" — and if not, what changed. That reframing turns an anxiety-inducing, unanswerable comparison into a concrete, answerable one, which is the entire point of tracking a trend in the first place.