What Are Social Media Engagement Rates And Why Should I Care?

Guess what? The days of focusing only on your number of social media followers are over. Now you have engagement rates to worry about, too. Whether you're a business or influencer, engagement rates are important. But you know what? That's actually a good thing. Here's why:

What are social media engagement rates?

Social media engagement rates are the calculation of how many of your followers like and comment on each of your posts. There's an actual equation, which takes a social media's account total engagement (all the likes and comments on every post ever posted) divided by the account's total number of followers. Calculate your engagement rate using this free tool.

The good news?

Generally speaking, accounts with a huge number of followers have lower engagement rates, while those with up to tens of thousands of followers do better. Those with lower numbers and higher engagement are called Micro Influencers.

Why? For instance, people like Kim Kardashian, who has more than one hundred million followers on Instagram, has an engagement rate of 1.37 per cent. Now, millions of people will see her photos, but even with almost 1.4 million likes on each post, that's only a tiny fraction of her audience.

Compare that with #mommyfluencer @London.Kade (who's on my VIP list). She has almost 2,900 followers, but her engagement rate is close to 25 per cent. Considering that 6 per cent is a good rate, 25 per cent is basically through the roof!

As a business, when you're looking at influencers to collaborate with, engagement rates are an important metric to consider. 

Does that mean you should always choose people with higher engagement rates over those with lots of followers? Well, that depends on the goals of your campaign. Let's talk.

So how do you improve your engagement rates?

Luckily, all that work scrolling through your feeds, liking, commenting and following in the hopes that others will follow you will actually help your engagement rates. It's pretty simple: post beautiful, fun or entertaining content to your social accounts and engage with your audience. Check out the accounts of people who follow you, follow them back and like their posts. Leave meaningful comments—avoid general comments like "Great!" or "Love your account!" that could be mistaken for the work of a bot. 

Need help creating meaningful content that will resonate with your audience? I can help!