The engagement rate gives us an idea of the quality of the content and the number of followers an account has. Simply, this metric measures the average number of interactions your social media content receives per follower. How do we calculate engagement rates on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and others?
Common engagement rates for different social media platforms
Briefly, the engagement rate is a metric that measures how much your audience actively engages with your content. you can select to include all or some of these metrics when calculating your social media engagement rate, Depending on the social channels you use:
- Instagram: Likes, comments, shares, saves, DMs, profile visits per time, Story sticker clicks, taps on the “Get directions” button, amount of branded hashtags
- Facebook: Reactions, clicks, comments, shares, private messages
- Twitter: Comments, retweets, mentions, and amount of using branded hashtags
- Pinterest: Likes, comments, pins
- LinkedIn: Reposts, shares via private messages, likes, comments, use of custom button clicks
- TikTok: Likes, comments, saves, shares
- YouTube: Likes, comments, shares, downloads, saves
Engagement rate formula
The engagement rate formula is:
- Engagement Rate = Total Engagement / Total Followers x 100%
Given this:
- Total Engagement = the amount of all reactions such as likes, comments, shares, etc
- Total Followers = the number of people who follow your account
Calculate engagement rate automatically
If you’re not a math person and want to calculate your engagement rate manually, you might want to consider using a social media management tool like Hootsuite. Through this tool, you can measure your social media engagement across social networks from a high level and get as detailed as you want with customized reports.
What is a good engagement rate?
Most social media marketing experts prove a good social media engagement rate is between 1% – 5%. To measure if your engagement rate is good or bad, it must be against something else.
You can measure:
- In a given period, how does your content perform (measure against your engagement rate over time)
- Compare your performances against your competitors’ content (measure with your key competitors)
- Create a metric for your industry social media engagement performance
- You can compare your performance with different social media platforms (you can measure against your social media profiles)
What is the importance of calculating the engagement rate?
Your engagement rate offers an honest judgment of the quality of your social media content. As an example, if your company has millions of followers, but only receives a small amount of reactions like comments, shares, or others for your posts, it is not high-quality content. You can access a high engagement rate with an account that only has a few followers but gets millions of reactions every time. Most importantly, engagement rate is the best benchmark that you can get a whole new outlook on your performance on social media.
After all, engagement is the one benchmark that will give you a whole new perspective on your performance on social media.
Final note
Not only for social media but also it is essential to measure your success in any work. Measuring the engagement rate is more important than you imagined. So don’t forget to benchmark engagement rates and also look into what your competitors are doing.
