Your guide to social media engagement rates
Overview
Engagement rates tell you how engaged your followers are with your social content. A good engagement rate shows that you’re winning your followers’ attention and that they’re interacting with your content. However, a strong social media engagement rate differs for every social media platform.
A strong engagement rate on X could be radically different from what makes a strong engagement rate on Facebook and LinkedIn. That's why you should only compare apples with apples. So...what should your engagement rate be? And how do you keep track of an engagement rate?
What does social media engagement rate mean?
The definition of a “good” engagement rate depends on the social channel. An engagement could mean a like, a comment, a share, a retweet, a click, the expansion of an image, and many other actions—depending on the social platform.
How to calculate engagement rate?
All these engagements are added per post, then divided by the total number of impressions on that post. The number you get is a percentage.
In other words, the engagement rate means the total engagements a post received divided by the total number of impressions on that post. This is usually expressed as a percentage.
For example: a Facebook post that gets 1000 views and 100 engagements has a 10% engagement rate. That’s because (10 engagements /100 views) x100 = 10%.
Why you should measure social media engagement rates
Social media engagement rates tell you how favorably social algorithms are treating your content. If you’re consistently getting a low social media engagement rate, the social platform doesn’t consider your post to be worthy of surfacing to your audience.
Why does this happen? You might have a history of promoting content that doesn’t get much engagement, or the specific post hasn’t been engaged with much since it was posted. Either way, you can quickly tell if your social channels are suppressing your content or whether your content is getting in front of lots of eyeballs.
How to download engagement data from your business’s Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
In order to calculate your business’s social media engagement rates, you first need to download engagement data from the various social channels where you post content. This section will guide you on the steps to download engagement data from Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
How to download your business’s Facebook engagement data
- Access your business’s Facebook account by selecting your profile picture from the top right of your screen > “see all profiles” > and then select your business page.
- Select to visit the “Meta Business Suite” from left-hand menu.
- Head to “Insights” and then “Results” and you’ll be able to export various information form this area.
How to download your business’s X Data
- Log in to your company’s X account. Then, choose "More” from the left-hand menu > “Creator Studio” > and then “Analytics”
- From within this area you can toggle the date rate and export your data.
How to download your business’s LinkedIn Data
- Go to your company’s LinkedIn account.
- Click “Analytics” in the page menu.
- Choose the time period you’re interested in and hit ‘Export’.
What is a good social media engagement rate?
When you’re looking at your social media engagement rate, your first question will be: is my percentage any good? What makes a good social media engagement rate changes quickly as each social channel changes how their algorithm works. For example, over the past few years Facebook has continually reduced the reach of posts which means that posts get fewer views. This raises engagement rates since the denominator in our equation grows.
This can all get very confusing, so here’s a full rundown of what makes a good social media engagement rate for each social platform.
- LinkedIn: 6%
- Facebook: 2%
- Instagram: 3%
- X: 1%
What is a good LinkedIn engagement rate?
LinkedIn is probably the best platform for driving engagement and poses the biggest opportunity for individuals and businesses that want to increase awareness of their B2B brand or recruit for their B2C company. A good engagement rate for Linkedin is about 2%, however, this can climb all the way up to 5 or 6%, depending on the type of content you are sharing from your content marketing calendar.
What is a good X engagement rate?
Engagement rates tend to be lower for X than for Facebook. Most would consider 0.5% to be a good engagement rate for X, with anything above 1% great. Smaller businesses with an engaged following should aim for an engagement rate that’s consistently more higher than 1%, however. Like Facebook’s engagement rate, X’s engagement rate is calculated as the total number of engagements a post receives divided by the total number of impressions on that post.
What is a good Facebook engagement rate?
A good social media engagement rate on Facebook can be as little as 1% to 2% according to industry experts. This statistic generally refers to big brands such as Coca-Cola who benefit more from simple awareness and brand recognition. For example, seeing an ice cold Coke on your feed plants a seed that you might remember later when you’re standing in the soda aisle of the grocery story.
On the other hand, small businesses should aim for a Facebook engagement rate of 5% to make the most of the social media platform and build an online community.
What is a good Instagram engagement rate?
With 500 million active users, Instagram provides a big opportunity for companies who have a visual appeal, and especially those with a physical product. Engagement rates are typically higher on Instagram than on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook, partly due to the nature of the format. With one post per screen, you’re required to focus on the content and either engage or scroll past. Around 2% is seen as a good social media engagement rate on Instagram. Anything 3% or more is great. In the survey conducted by Rival IQ, the Higher Education sector had a higher than average rate of 3.5% while Retail was lowest with 0.67% engagement per post.