In a world where social media has such an important role in our day-to-day lives, it’s pretty obvious that more and more people are turning to that side of virtual life. And we can’t blame them.
But now, just imagine social media as a new world, another universe, where you still have to pay for what you do. Well, sure you still pay money for ads and so on, but the engagement rate is the currency in a world like this one.
In this article, you will learn what engagement rate is, why it is so important and how to calculate it properly for each social platform.
The math behind engagement rate on social media
- The Facebook engagement rate formula
- The Instagram engagement rate formula
- The Twitter engagement rate formula
- The LinkedIn engagement rate formula
- The YouTube engagement rate formula
- The TikTok engagement rate formula
1. What is engagement rate?
Engagement rate is key to understanding social media. In other words, this is the way to measure how people interact with the content you publish.
Let’s think about the true meaning of it. To engage means to become involved in something, to be active in some circumstance. And that’s exactly how to translate it into the social media language.
Engagement rate, then, shows you how people interacted, actively, with your content - through likes (or other reactions), comments, shares and saved. The sum of all these interactions is then divided by the number of followers your profile has and multiplied by 100.
2. Why is it important to calculate the engagement rate on social media?
When they want to get accurate performance data, marketers take into account metrics such as followers growth, reach or impressions, but they will always look carefully at the engagement rate.
After all, engagement is the one metric that will give you a whole new perspective on your performance on social.
Wondering why?
It's because of the interaction.
Social media is meant to make people interact with the content and interact with each other. That’s when you know that what you do on the platform starts to bring true value.
Engagement rate is the one and only metric that will always tell you if your content resonates with your audience.
Here at Socialinsider, we are big fans of engagement.
Given its importance in social media reporting, we always give it a top spot in our dashboards and feature it in our top metrics, as you can see for yourself in the screenshot below.
Engagement, in all its variations, also has a place in competitors analysis.
Through the Benchmarks feature in Socialinsider, you can always find competitive data for engagement highlighted in the Profiles Overview section.
Is engagement a major KPI for your brand? Then you can track this metric across multiple channels to decide where to invest more time and resources once you see which platform is most engaging.
Here's an example.
Judging by this data, LinkedIn has both the highest engagement and engagement rate out of the two platforms added, so it makes sense for this brand to focus their efforts on that channel for even better results.
Keep in mind: Relevant as it may be, by itself, engagement only counts the reactions you receive when sharing social media content - likes, comments, shares etc. What it doesn't do is take into consideration is your audience size.
If you want to get a highly precise bird's eye view perspective of how invested your audience is in the content you share, always check the engagement rate.
Now, let’s see how to calculate the engagement rate for each platform.
3. Engagement rate for each platform:
The Facebook engagement rate formula
When it comes to Facebook engagement, social media managers usually report engagement by fans and followers since the engagement by reach is only available for the owned accounts.
And if you want to compare with your competitors, then you should definitely look into what this metric is telling you.
Facebook's definition for post engagement is the following:
The number of times that people engaged with your posts through reactions, comments, shares, and clicks.
Now, let’s turn to the algorithm that Socialinsider uses for Facebook:
The sum of reactions, comments, and shares received on the posts published in the selected time period.
And since the average value is the one that we're interested in, here's how Socialinsider calculates the average engagement rate on Facebook:
The average engagement rate per post by followers on Facebook is calculated as the total engagement (reactions, comments, and shares) divided by the number of posts the page published. The result is then divided by the number of followers, and all multiplied by 100.
But, if you want a more in-depth look into your performance, you can always take a look at your average engagement rate by reach.
The average engagement rate per post by reach on Facebook is calculated as the total engagement (reactions, comments, and shares) divided by the number of posts the page published. The result is then divided by the total reach, and all multiplied by 100.
Keep in mind:
- Engagement = The sum of reactions, comments, and shares received for the posts published in the selected time period.
- Average Engagement = The engagement of the posts (reactions, comments, and shares) divided by the number of posts published in the selected period.
The Instagram engagement rate formula
As mentioned before, on Instagram you’ll encounter the same situation with the engagement rate by followers and by reach.
This means that reach is an Instagram metric available only for owned accounts.
That’s why we should consider both average engagement rate by followers and average engagement rate by reach, depending on the data that we want to report.
Instagram's formula for engagement is the sum of likes, comments, and saves that you receive on the posts you publish.
However, Socialinsider doesn't use this formula because Instagram API doesn't offer access to the saves metric for competitors' profiles. In this way, without adding the number of saves, you're able to perform a quick social media competitors analysis and get insightful social media industry benchmarks.
Digging deeper, the average engagement rate will be defined as follows:
The average engagement rate per post by followers on Instagram is calculated as the total engagement (likes and comments) divided by the number of posts the profile published. The result is then divided by the number of followers, and all multiplied by 100.
The average engagement rate by reach will be indeed similar to what we've seen on Facebook.
The average engagement rate per post by reach on Instagram is calculated as the total engagement (likes and comments) divided by the number of posts the profile published. The result is then divided by the total reach, and all multiplied by 100.
Keep in mind:
- Engagement = The number of likes and comments received for the posts published in the selected time period.
- Average Engagement per Post = The engagement of the posts (likes and comments) divided by the number of posts published in the selected period.
The Twitter engagament rate formula
A social media analytics tool will always give you more insights into your performance on a specific platform, and Twitter is no exception.
Twitter defines its engagement as the total number of times a user interacted with a Tweet, including retweets, replies, follows, likes, links, cards, hashtags, embedded media, username, profile photo, or Tweet expansion.
We should note that Twitter calculates the engagement rate by impressions, as follows: Number of engagements divided by impressions.
Socialinsider defines the Twitter engagement as the sum of likes and retweets received for the tweets published in the selected time period.
For more insights, you should look into the average engagement rate.
The average engagement rate per tweet by followers on Twitter is calculated as the total engagement (likes and retweets) divided by the number of tweets the profile published. The result is then divided by the number of followers, and all multiplied by 100.
Keep in mind:
- Engagement = The number of likes and retweets received for the tweets published in the selected period.
- Average Engagement = The engagement of the tweets (likes and retweets) divided by the number of tweets published in the selected time period.
However, if you're interested in calculating your Twitter average engagement rate by impressions, you can use the following formula.
The LinkedIn engagement rate formula
LinkedIn lives up to the hype when it comes to engagement, both literally and analytically. People engage a lot here and data never lies.
LinkedIn defines its engagement as the sum of clicks, likes, comments, shares, and follows - while the engagement rate on LinkedIn is calculated by the number of impressions.
On Socialinsider, you'll find the LinkedIn engagement as the sum of likes, comments, clicks, and shares received on the posts published in the selected time period.
Going back to the metrics, here’s how to measure the engagement rate on LinkedIn.
The average engagement rate per post by impressions on LinkedIn is calculated as the total engagement (likes, comments, clicks, and shares) divided by the number of posts the profile published.
The result is then divided by the number of impressions, and all multiplied by 100.
Keep in mind:
- Engagement = The number of likes, comments, clicks, and shares received for the posts published in the selected time period.
- Average Engagement = The engagement of the posts (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) divided by the number of posts published in the selected time period.
The YouTube engagement rate formula
Slowly but surely, YouTube has become the most popular video-sharing platform in the world. It is also the second-largest search engine globally, making it a very attractive place to share some content right now.
And this means that we have to turn to data so we can do the magic.
According to its insights data, YouTube engagement metrics (views, likes, dislikes, and subscriptions) reflect how many times a video or channel has been interacted with.
With Socialinsider, your YouTube engagement will be the sum of likes, comments, and dislikes received on the videos published in a selected time period.
For extra precision, you should always check the average engagement rate, which will give more insights into your performance.
The average engagement rate per video by subscribers on YouTube is calculated as the total engagement (likes, comments, and dislikes) divided by the number of videos the profile published. The result is then divided by the number of subscribers, and all multiplied by 100.
Keep in mind:
- Engagement = The number of likes, comments, and dislikes received for the videos published in the selected time period.
- Average Engagement = The engagement of the videos (likes, comments, and dislikes) divided by the number of videos published in the selected time period.
The TikTok engagement rate formula
This one is the latest addition to the social media scene so we need a minute to look into the real insights to see how to measure the success on this huge social network.
TikTok analytics presents the engagement formula as the sum of video views, profile views, likes, comments, saves and shares.
Unlike the other social networks that are oriented towards the idea of community - where an account's follower count is probably the number one indicator of its popularity, TikTok's case is rather particular.
Because TikTok is a platform where going viral is the endgame, here, the most relevant metric is not the follower base but the number of views, which is exactly why the platform's engagement formula is connected to this metric.
One thing that every social media manager must know is that TikTok's API is highly restricted. Therefore, a social media analytics tool can't have access to all the data.
That's why Socialinsider defines engagement on TikTok as the sum of likes, comments, and shares received on the videos published in the selected time period.
To calculate the average engagement rate per video for TikTok, you should take the total engagement (likes, comments, saves and shares) and divide it by the number of posts the profile published. The result is then divided by the number of views, and all multiplied by 100.
Keep in mind:
- Engagement = The number of likes, comments, saves and shares received for the posts published in the selected time period.
- Average Engagement = The engagement of the posts - likes, comments, saves and shares - divided by the number of posts published in the selected time period.
Final thoughts
Now that we've had fun with data, it’s time to create the marketing strategy that best suits your needs, but also according to the platform you’re using.
All these insights are essential for social media, and engagement rate might be more important than you imagined.
A social media analytics tool will help you loads, especially if you want to get in-depth insights.
So don’t forget to keep track of that for your profiles and also look into what your competitors are doing.
Frequently Asked Questions about Engagement Rate
1. What is a good engagement rate?
Anything above 5% is considered an excellent engagement rate.
2. Where can I check my engagement rate?
You can check your engagement rate for all platforms using social media analytics tools such as Socialinsider.
3. Is engagement rate a good metric?
Engagement rate is one of the key metrics that measure content performance. Social media strategists track engagement rate to understand how much their audience resonates with the content they share.
