Marketers who work with social media may have wondered if there is more than one way to determine an audience’s level of engagement. In fact, you may be wondering what the meaning of engagement rate is and why it matters for your marketing strategy as a whole.
Engagement is that word your marketing team keeps using, even though you’re sick of hearing it. Now that everyone uses and expects it, the phrase has become trite.
Social media engagement rates may sound like a cliche, but they actually contain a profound nugget of truth. To get the most out of it, all you need is some savvy usage.
Simply put, what is the rate of engagement?
A seemingly ephemeral and incomprehensible concept, engagement rate can be calculated with the following formula:
Percentage of an influencer’s audience that engages with their social media posts.
You can automatically monitor your Instagram engagement by using our free engagement rate calculator.
You can keep reading if you’re interested in learning more. As we go through this post, you’ll see that there are many different ways to refer to the ideas of interaction and total audience.
For the time being though, you can see why participation is so important. The difference between a passive audience who doesn’t care and an engaged one is night and day.
Why Is Participation Rate Important?
Fewer people hearing your product’s praises was the main goal of advertising a few decades ago. Customers, however, have learned to tune out messages they don’t want to hear (spam) in particular.
At that point, ads started focusing on actually helping consumers.
Demonstrate to your target market that your offerings are merely means to an end (the satisfaction of their wants and needs). As a result, more people will identify with your brand’s mission and interact with it on a deep level.
Calculation Techniques
An example of a method for calculating the engagement rate has been provided above, but there are other options to investigate and contrast. It is important to select the metric(s) that are most relevant to your campaign objectives, as each of these approaches provides a unique lens through which to view the content in question.
How to achieve that is as follows:
Number of Interactions, Disposed Audience, and Potential Audience (ERR)
ERR = Engagement Rate / Audience Size x 100
When considering a larger number of posts, the average reach is calculated as [ERR (Post1) + ERR (Post2) +… + ERR (PostN)]. / N x 100
If you’re not great with numbers, the ERR formula can tell you what percentage of people who see your brand’s content will take action.
Percentage of Users Who Interact With Each Post (ER Post)
If you want to know how often your readers are engaging with your posts, the ER post metric is a useful tool. Here is its formula:
Total number of interactions divided by the number of followers multiplied by 100
Calculating the median ER across all posts is as simple as: (ER Post 1 + ER Post 2 + ER Post…. + ER Post N) / N
PROS:
Since the number of followers is less likely to change than the reach metric, this formula is superior for sites whose reaches tend to fluctuate.
You can find out how involved they really are.
A brand’s or influencer’s performance can be easily measured against the norm using this metric.
CONS:
Infectiousness spread by the formula is ignored.
As your audience size grows, the rate of engagement may begin to decline.
By itself, this metric won’t tell you much about your target audience or the problems it’s having that you can help them with.
Combining this formula with other growth indicators is highly recommended. Depending on your ad objectives, the value of public interactions like Instagram comments may be lower than the value of private interactions like saves and shares.
Rate of Engagement per One Hundred Impressions (ER Impressions)
Total Engagement Rate (ER) Impressions = Post’s Overall Reach (Right) Divided By Its Overall Reach (Right) Times 100
The typical number of visits to the emergency room is calculated as follows:
How do these impressions stack up against reach, and what are they?
The term “reach” is used to describe how many people have seen your post. For example, if 100 people viewed it, your reach is 100. In contrast, if each of those people saw your ad twice, your impression count would rise to 200.
Expert Advice:
Reach and impressions are not indicative of any actual interest in the content being measured.
Different social media channels have their own unique relationships with these indicators.
Facebook makes a distinction between impressions served and those actually viewed. Unlike viewed impressions, served ads don’t even need to load on people’s screens or be watched in their entirety to be counted.
PROS:
Use this metric to determine how successful your premium content has been.
Negatives: ER first impressions are likely to be less enthusiastic than those of ER or ERR.
Rate of Participation Each Day (Daily ER)
The Daily ER formula is as follows: ER = (Total Daily Engagements) / (Number of Followers) x (100)
This formula can be used to calculate the average daily ER: ER 1 + ER 2 +… + ER N / N
The number of times per day that people engage with your posts is measured by the daily engagement rate. Here’s how it differs from metrics like reach or followers:
PROS:
This metric is more about overall brand engagement than it is about individual post engagement.
The metric can be tailored to your needs, including the number of comments made daily.
To sum up
Brands/influencers with a larger number of followers will have a tougher time reaching the consensus 1-5% engagement rate.
Remember that different engagement rate formulas will give you the most accurate picture of the performance of your company or a potential brand ambassador.