Everything You Want to Know About Engagement Rate
The Clique Collective is a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, FL. We specialize in writing/editing services, SEO, social media management, and website design. This is our blog (aka, a space where we ramble on about our strong marketing opinions and hope that someone will read it). Enjoy!
Be honest — when you’re posting on your Instagram business account or checking up on how things are looking on TikTok, what are the first things you look at? If you’re like most people using social media to grow your business, you probably pay close attention to how many likes, comments, and saves your posts or stories are getting.
Many of us can relate to the struggle of posting an Instagram story and seeing that only a few dozen people viewed it, or getting stuck in the so-called 200 view jail with a TikTok video we thought would surely go viral. Even noticing that your LinkedIn post got over 1,000 impressions but only 10 likes can feel discouraging when you’re trying to increase awareness of a product, service, or brand. But, are likes and shares actually that important?
The answer is… kind of. Instead of focusing on just likes or just comments, though, you’ll want to look at these numbers more holistically: learn how to figure out your engagement rate.
What is engagement rate?
You’ve likely heard of the term, but what exactly does it mean? Simply put, engagement rate is the measure of how much your audience interacts with your content compared to the size of your audience. Having a high engagement rate means that a large portion of your followers or subscribers actively engage with the things you’re posting — they’re paying attention to what you’re sharing, and they want to participate in the conversation you’re creating.
How to calculate engagement rate
It doesn’t need to take complicated equations to figure out your engagement rate. That said, there are quite a few different formula options you can look depending on the type of engagement you want to measure, the period of time you’re analyzing, and which posts you want to include.
For clarity’s sake, let’s just focus on average per-post engagement rate over the past 30 days. Grab the analytics for the last 30 days from your chosen platform, and plug the numbers into this formula:
(Likes + comments + shares + saves) ÷ (followers × posts) × 100 = Engagement rate (%)
This particular formula measures how engaging each post is, on average, over a 30-day period. You can adjust each factor based on the platform you’re using (for example, post saves are more relevant on TikTok than on Instagram), but the simple formula above should give you a good idea of how actively involved your followers are when it comes to the things you’re sharing on social media.
Keep in mind: this method counts all interactions received in the past 30 days — even on older posts. If you only want to measure engagement on content published within the last month, add up likes, comments, shares, and saves only on those recent posts before running the calculation.
Don’t want to do the math? Try our free engagement rate calculator below!
30-Day Engagement Rate Calculator
What is a good engagement rate?
Although you may think that your engagement rate should be as high as possible to prove that people love your content, assessing it isn’t that black and white. While, yes, a higher engagement rate does generally indicate that your audience is interested in and involved with your content, it’s important to look at the bigger picture.
If you have 500 followers, a 2% engagement rate can mean something very different than a 2% engagement rate on an account that has 500,000 followers. Additionally, engagement can ebb and flow. Some posts do better than others, so if you have a video that goes viral or one that absolutely flops compared to your average content, you’ll want to calculate your rate using a formula that doesn’t take those outliers into account.
Similarly, if your follower or subscriber count is steadily increasing, your engagement rate right now may look different and paint a whole new picture in two months’ time.
How to improve your engagement rate
Unfortunately, we have bad news for you: there isn’t one foolproof way to boost your engagement rate. In fact, some of your social media accounts may never reach an impressive percentage at all. That doesn’t mean your business is doomed.
On the contrary, keeping a steady engagement rate over a long period of time can actually indicate that the content you’re using to represent your personal brand, service, or product is consistently keeping the attention and interest of your target audience. Plus, what matters most isn’t how many people are commenting or liking your photos and videos. Conversion is the ultimate measure of how well social media marketing is benefitting your business.
In other words, your followers can like or share your content a million times… but unless some of those followers eventually turn into paying customers, you may as well be posting just to post.
Want to make the most out of your social media efforts? We can help.
