UK Barn Finds Passes One Million Social Follows As Instagram Reaches 150,000

We’ve just passed 150,000 followers on Instagram.

That would have felt like a ridiculous number to us a few years ago.

But when we stopped and looked at the bigger picture, we realised the main UK Barn Finds brand had quietly grown into something much larger.

Across our main Facebook page, Facebook group, YouTube channel, Instagram and TikTok, UK Barn Finds now accounts for well over a million follows, subscriptions and memberships.

And that’s just UK Barn Finds itself.

There is obviously plenty of crossover between those audiences, so we’re certainly not claiming they represent more than a million different people.

Even so, it feels like a fairly significant milestone.

150,000 Followers On Instagram

Instagram is the latest of our platforms to reach a major number, with the UK Barn Finds account now followed by more than 150,000 people.

Our main Facebook page has around 570,000 followers, while more than 430,000 people are members of the UK Barn Finds Facebook group.

YouTube has grown to around 255,000 subscribers and TikTok is approaching 75,000 followers.

Those figures are all for the main UK Barn Finds brand.

Alongside it, we also run a number of specialist motoring communities.

Project Cars, Custom & Unusual Cars, Landy Store, Classic Minis For Sale and Barn Find Bikes currently have more than 470,000 Facebook followers between them, with associated groups adding another substantial audience of their own.

Once again, there will inevitably be people who follow several of them.

But it does give some idea of how far everything has grown.

It Still Starts With Old Cars

Despite those numbers, what we actually do hasn’t changed all that much.

We still spend a large part of our lives looking at old cars, buying projects, visiting auctions, following leads and travelling around the country to see vehicles that have been tucked away for years.

Some are genuine barn finds.

Some have been sitting in garages for decades.

Others are unfinished projects, long-term ownership cars, forgotten motorcycles or auction entries that simply catch our attention.

Sometimes we buy them ourselves.

Sometimes we’re there to film the story.

Sometimes we probably should have stayed at home.

The Stories Matter As Much As The Cars

One of the biggest things we’ve learned over the years is that the vehicle is often only half the story.

We’ve met families parting with cars owned for decades, people finally letting go of long-term restoration projects, collectors reducing their collections and owners who simply want an old vehicle to go to someone who will appreciate it.

Those stories are a huge part of UK Barn Finds.

It’s also why we’ve always preferred making our own content rather than simply reposting old photographs from elsewhere.

Whenever we can, we want to be there ourselves.

More Than One Platform

Each platform has developed slightly differently.

Facebook remains huge for us and is where some of the longest conversations happen.

The UK Barn Finds Facebook group has become a community in its own right, with more than 430,000 members sharing cars, memories, projects and discoveries.

YouTube gives us the chance to show more of the story, particularly when we’re collecting cars, exploring finds or filming vehicles going through auction.

Instagram has grown quickly and has become increasingly important for reels, photographs and shorter pieces of content.

TikTok reaches another audience again.

Then there are the specialist brands, which allow us to build communities around particular areas of the motoring world rather than trying to make everything fit beneath one banner.

Still A Very Small Team

The slightly strange part is that all of this remains a very small operation.

UK Barn Finds is still Elton and Claire Murphy, working from a redundant pig farm in Suffolk and surrounded by rather more old cars and motorcycles than is probably sensible.

There isn’t a large editorial department, production crew or social media agency behind the scenes.

We’re doing this while also keeping a business running and, more importantly, keeping our family ticking over.

Like plenty of family businesses, that means the working day doesn’t always have a particularly obvious beginning or end.

Most of what you see online is being created alongside buying vehicles, collecting them, travelling to auctions, answering messages, running the website and dealing with everything else that comes with running UK Barn Finds.

That makes numbers like these feel even more surreal.

What Comes Next

Reaching 150,000 followers on Instagram feels like a good moment to look not only at what UK Barn Finds has become, but where it goes next.

We want to keep finding interesting cars, filming genuine discoveries, covering auctions and telling the stories behind vehicles that might otherwise be forgotten.

But for UK Barn Finds to continue growing, it also has to work as a sustainable business.

That means we’re increasingly interested in working with carefully chosen automotive brands and businesses where there is a genuine fit with our audience and the content we produce.

We’ve always been protective of the communities we’ve built, so filling our feeds with irrelevant advertising isn’t something we’re interested in.

The right partnerships are different.

They could help us produce more original content, travel further, uncover more stories and spend more time doing the things that brought people to UK Barn Finds in the first place.

And hopefully allow us to do all of that while occasionally remembering that we have a life away from old cars too.

Thank You

Most importantly, thank you to everyone who follows, subscribes, joins one of our groups, comments, shares our posts, watches the videos, sends us leads or tells us about an old vehicle hidden away somewhere.

The numbers might now be very large.

The basic idea behind UK Barn Finds is still very simple.

Go looking for interesting old vehicles.

Tell their stories.

And see what turns up next.

If you think you can help us further along that journey, we’d genuinely love to hear from you.

That might mean an interesting car or motorcycle tucked away somewhere, a story we should know about, an auction or event we ought to visit, or a brand or business that feels like a natural fit for what we do.

However you’ve found us, if there’s something you think UK Barn Finds should be part of, get in touch.