Let’s have a quick chat about social media ENGAGEMENT. No diamond rings included unfortunately.
So what does it even mean?
Calm your farm mum. No, not that kind of engaged.
The buzz on the gram these days is comments, likes, shares and saves. Are people actually stopping on your post and doing something? Any kind of interaction on your post tells the algorithm that what you are creating is interesting and worth pushing to other people’ newsfeeds. If you get HEAPS of engagement, you might also find your post in the explore feed (the holy grail!)
Photographers often ask me if one type of engagement is more valuable than the other? Well no-one really knows except for Mr Zuckerberg himself. Plenty of experts like to pretend that they do though (trust me … they don’t!) Either way, if people are throwing something your way, you should be thankful because engagement these days is hard to get!
But what even IS an engagement rate? And where can you find it?
It’s fairly simple maths. You add up the total number of shares, saves, likes and comments that occur on a single post and divide it by your total followers. So think of it like the sum of all interactions / audience number. That’s your engagement rate for that particular post. Of course, your average is calculated across a larger number of posts over time.
Need an example? A post gets 2 likes, 3 comments, 1 share, no saves. You have 1000 followers. Your engagement rate is 6 / 1000 or 0.6% (which is a bit below average).
Not feeling very mathsy? I don’t blame you. Here’s a quick option for the people not interested in the numbers …
PHLANX ENGAGEMENT CALCULATOR
https://phlanx.com/engagement-calculator
Simply type in your account handle and click go. Thank you internet. Just note, you only get a few free searches per day before you have to pay!
So what is a good engagement rate?
Well of course it depends on your industry and audience size etc. It But these numbers below are the current Instagram averages (for business accounts) so yeah, it’s definitely not huge!
< 10,000 followers : 1.18%
10,000 – 100,000 followers : 0.94%
>100,000 followers : 0.74%
The bigger your audience gets, the harder it is to maintain a strong engagement percentage. It’s a numbers game!
It’s good to understand this stuff right!
It’s easy to feel disheartened when you post something you’re proud of on social media and don’t get much of a response. But work out your numbers and adjust your expectations.
If you have 3000 followers you can expect on average an engagement rate of around 35 total interactions. So if you’re posting and getting 25 likes, 7 comments, 2 saves and 1 share, you’re actually doing REALLY GREAT!
My account varies every few months between 1.4% and .95% so it’s certainly seasonal or changes depending on my promotions schedule or even effort!. Not sure I’ll be catching @kyliejenner any time soon at a whopping 4.57%! Billionaires must have the whole social media marketing thing happening a little easier than others, right?
The more you get your customers talking and participating this year, the more popular Instagram thinks you are and the more you’re going to pop up in people’s feeds. It’s as simple as that. Haha. Simple. What a joke. Well, doing it isn’t simple but the concept is. After selling my last Instagram account and starting a new one, I’ve got some work to do too!
Don’t get bogged down by these numbers though guys.
Every industry is different too! If you’re selling $5 lipgloss VS booking $2000 photo shoots, you’re going to have very different engagement needs and strategies. Just do a little happy dance every time that someone interacts with your page. Because when they do, you are back in their newsfeeds for longer. The social platforms see it and love it. One step at a time!
So how can you improve your engagement?
Well, that’s a conversation for another day. But start by working out what your ideal clients and followers truly value and create some content that will inspire them to engage. Level up your copy and caption writing skills, don’t post and ghost and create interesting and inspiring shareable content that your clients will love.
How exactly? If you’d like to be supported along the way, I’m here to help! There’s a course and community waiting to walk you through it. Kate x
