It’s often believed that an influencer stands out by their number of subscribers (also called followers) or by the number of reactions to their posts. However, these data have no real significance, and it’s even easy to falsify them.
Thus, there’s no shortage of tools to estimate the performance of a page or post. Among them, the engagement rate is one of the most frequently used in influencer marketing. It’s a very good indicator for measuring the effectiveness of a post, or the engagement of a community with the influencer … Provided you know how to correctly calculate and interpret the results!
What is the Engagement Rate?
Engagement represents the reactions obtained, both positive and negative, on a social media post. Depending on the social network, this can be “likes”, favorites, comments, shares, clicks, etc. The engagement rate, measures the performance of posts or pages on a social network. It can vary according to:
- The topics covered: certain themes attract more engagement than others, such as family, animals, lifestyle, or travel.
- The platform used: videos on TikTok or YouTube, and Instagram posts often generate more reactions than those on Facebook, for example.
- Content sponsorship: sponsored content often generates more engagement.
- The presence of relevant hashtags: posts containing at least 1 hashtag generate on average 12.6% more engagement.
- The audience itself: it’s observed that younger people interact more with what is published.
- The size of the community: it’s noted that fans engage more when they are fewer in number (thus distinguishing nano-influence, micro-influence, macro-influence, and mega-influence based on the number of followers).
The engagement rate is a widely used tool to evaluate the relevance of content and the success (or not) of a post on a social network, whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook. This is especially true in influencer marketing, when brands are looking for an influencer for their future campaigns, or precisely to evaluate the success and reach of these campaigns.
Based on the results obtained on what they have published, the influencer can better target their audience’s expectations and better position themselves against the competition.
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Trustt is a digital marketing solution that allows you to create a virtuous circle between your brand and your consumers.How to Calculate and Interpret Your Engagement Rate?
There are many methods to calculate your engagement rate. This is notably due to the abundance of factors to take into account in this calculation, including the social networks that can be used and what one is looking for based on the objectives defined for their marketing strategy.
Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. Generally, note that the more precise a result is sought, the more time this calculation will take.
It’s possible to get an overview of your engagement rate on a post with a simple formula:
Total number of interactions on the post ÷ Total number of followers x 100
Interactions on a post can include likes and reactions, comments, and shares.
For a page, you can take a more global view of all posts, or a given number of posts (the last 10, or those from the last month for example).
Average number of interactions per post ÷ Total number of followers x 100
These methods have the advantage of being quick and can be done whether you’re an administrator or a simple visitor. However, they lack precision since the number of followers is no longer a very reliable value today: not all followers may have seen the posted content, and it’s very easy to falsify these numbers.
It is important to note that a high engagement rate is not always positive. Indeed, the majority of impressions can be entirely negative as in the case of bad publicity. If you wish to prioritize calculating positive feedback, you can choose to only consider this type of reaction in your figures. The calculation will take more time, but the result will be more precise and closer to what you expect.
This metric is also available on the Trustt tool: in the performance dashboard, you have access to the average engagement rate of posts distributed following an ambassador campaign, as well as the average engagement rate of accounts and permanent posts of the top influencers in your campaign.
On Instagram and TikTok
With its 22 million users in France, Instagram has been chosen by the vast majority of influencers as the social network generating the most engagement. It is still today the most popular for influencer marketing. The platform has chosen to offer more visibility on various information and statistics for professional accounts, thus making certain calculations easier and more precise, to optimize influencers’ strategies.
Since 2022, the reel format offered by Instagram has taken precedence over classic photo posts. The platform’s promotion of the video format is a direct response to the meteoric success of TikTok, whose average engagement rate is much higher.
To calculate the engagement rate on Instagram or TikTok:
Number of interactions with the post ÷ Reach x 100
The number of interactions can include the number of “likes” and comments, but it’s possible to add the number of saves and the number of times the post has been shared privately.
It is also possible to calculate the engagement rate of an Instagram account or a TikTok account for free with the HypeAuditor tool.
On other social networks
While Instagram was previously, in figures, the social network generating the most engagement, TikTok now takes the crown as the most engaging platform with an average of 8.5% in 2022. Instagram now records an average engagement rate of 1.9%, and YouTube 1.7% (Source Wearesocial / Hootsuite, 2022).
If TikTok is now positioned as the most engaging social platform, it’s for two reasons: TikTok’s audience is relatively young, with an average age under 25, who react more spontaneously to the content offered. Additionally, the power of TikTok’s algorithm promotes content to users based on their expectations.
On its side, Facebook is the social network with the most users in the world (each month, nearly 3 billion users connect to this platform).
Facebook therefore had every interest in offering a “Statistics” tab, where it’s possible to access information for free, including reach and engagement rate, on your page’s posts. The average engagement rate on this network is however very low, with an average of 0.07%.
The engagement rate formula on these social networks is similar: Number of engagements ÷ Reach x 100
The number of engagements corresponds to the number of “impressions on what was posted, and the reach corresponds to the number of people” who saw it.
The Snapchat platform has implemented Snapchat Insights, which allows you to see all the data generated by your account and its publications from the application. This very comprehensive information allows you, among other things, to obtain demographic information about your audience (gender, age), post performance, the day of best recorded performance, etc.
However, Snapchat Insights is only available for certified accounts and popular accounts.
How to improve your engagement rate?
If as an influencer, you find your results inconclusive, it may be necessary to review your strategy. There are many ways to improve the engagement of your content and grow your community:
- Create content that attracts: note what has elicited the most reactions, and focus on it, without falling into repetition.
- Post regularly: Maintain an editorial schedule to better organize yourself when publishing new content.
- Choose the right timing: Depending on your content, the platform you use, and your audience, certain days and times are more conducive to generating engagement. What works for Instagram may not necessarily work for TikTok!
- Encourage interaction with your followers: Organize Q&A sessions, live streams (which are very popular right now), and of course, try to respond to new comments and private messages as much as possible.
- Energize your page with images, photos, and videos, which encourage followers to react or respond. This is indeed the great advantage of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and perhaps the reason for their success among influencers!
- Stay true to yourself: Remember why you created your page in the first place and how you started gaining followers. Your community is looking for authenticity above all!
Thanks to the rise of influencer marketing, social networks offer more tools to easily calculate your performance. But this also leaves more doors open for new influencers, and therefore more competition to attract audiences!
To help you stand out, Trustt is a SaaS solution that allows brands to differentiate themselves on the internet. With the help of this software, you can easily identify potential influencers to represent your brand. The ambassador program helps collect valuable proprietary data for your brand, develop your visibility, and boost your performance.
