How to Calculate Engagement Rate on Instagram
Not sure how to calculate the engagement rate on Instagram? Read this installment of our Instagram toolkit to find out the formula!
Posted 3 years ago
Written by
Julia CohenPosted 3 years ago
Welcome to another installment of the Instagram toolkit – this time, we’ll be focusing on how you can calculate your engagement rate on Instagram, in order to audit your profile or share your stats with other stakeholders. Let’s get into it!
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What is engagement rate on Instagram? 🤔
Your engagement rate usually refers to the number of interactions your posts receive, in proportion to the number of followers you have. This compares your number of likes, comments, shares, saves etc. with the number of people who are following you, to determine the rate at which your followers are engaging with your content.
Why is engagement rate important? 🏆
Engagement rate is important whether you are a creator, a brand or using your Instagram account as a business in any way. Because there isn’t a concrete way to track sales that are made on the platform, often we have to rely on vanity metrics to prove the success and popularity of an account. Because followers can be bought, it isn’t enough to just have a large number in order to secure a brand partnership. People want to see a dedicated fanbase who are actively engaging with their favorite creators’ posts and brands because this communicates a genuine connection. As a brand, it can also help push your content to larger audiences, because the more engagement you get, the more likely your posts will be shown to even more people. The ratio will be a way of communicating the reputation of your account.
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What is included in ‘engagement’? 👀
So what metrics are actually considered engagement? Let’s take a look:
- Likes
- Comments
- Saves
- Shares
- DMs
- Link clicks
- Profile visits
- Sticker taps
- Email clicks
- Retweets
- Reactions
…and we’re sure there will be more to come.
What is a good engagement rate on Instagram? ✅
A good engagement rate completely depends on the number of followers you have, as well as the current state of any social media platform. You might expect a lot more engagements somewhere like TikTok than you would on a platform like Instagram. Previously, the sweet spot for Instagram would be an engagement rate of 3%, however now this ranges from 1-5% depending on your follower base. You can see the current live engagement rates for your account size and niche, for free on our benchmarking site!
How do you calculate total engagement rate manually? 👀
The most common way to calculate your engagement rate is as follows:
(The number of engagements on your post / The number of followers you have) x 100
For this to be as accurate as possible, you’ll need to manually add up your likes, comments saves etc. on Instagram before calculating the engagement rate of that post. You can use any combination of engagements depending on what you would like to show, but when communicating your engagement rate, be clear about which engagements you have included.
How to calculate average engagement rate manually✒️
If you need to provide an average engagement rate, you’ll have to add up the engagement rates on your last 10 or so posts, and divide this by the number of posts you have tracked:
Engagement rate of X number of posts added together / the number of X posts.
Best Practice for Calculating Engagement Rate
While engagement rate provides critical insight for measuring your success on Instagram, you should always consider it in the context of your other metrics. For example, 500 likes and comments make for high engagement on a post with just 1000 impressions, but it’s not so impressive on a post seen by 50,000 people.
Below is the most important Instagram Analytics you should monitor alongside engagement rate for growth:
- Average engagements per post: the average amount of engagement you get across all posts in a given time period
- Average reach per post: the average amount of reach you get across posts in a given time period.
- Number of posts: the total amount of feed posts you made in a given time period.
- Reach rate: the average reach of your feed posts, compared to the number of followers you have in a given time period.
What engagement rate tools can you use? 🛠
You can also calculate your engagement rate by using any social media tool that includes an Analytics suite. Let’s take a look at ours 😏
In Flick, you can directly pull the engagement rate of your recent individual posts, or you can view the average engagement rate of your overall account – we even show the engagements of your Reels!
How to benchmark your engagement rate with similar accounts 👩👩👧👦
Luckily, we’ve got a free tool for that! If you want to see whether your account lines up with the current engagement rate within your space and follower count, you can use our open benchmarks website!
You can also log in to your Flick account to check out how your content ranks against other similar accounts.
To do this, head to your analytics in your Flick account, and at the top where it says “compared to,” click the drop-down and select “similar accounts.” From here, you’ll see how your account stacks up against other accounts that have a similar follower number as you.
Internal benchmarks are great for getting a sense of whether your account is headed in the right direction or not. If it is, that’s your sign to keep doing what you’re doing. If it isn’t, it may be time to dive into the data to locate the problem.
While Flick’s Open Benchmark database doesn’t contain any internal Instagram benchmarks, Flick customers have access to historical data that stretches back until the account was opened.
The best part? If you start your free trial with Flick, you won’t have to figure out your engagement rate ever again. We’ll do the heavy lifting for you. Get started today and see all the analytics we can help you out with:
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