How to measure engagement rate on social media?

We all know how huge of a role social media plays in lead generation and creating an identity for your brand. But how do you know if your business is performing well and reaping all the benefits social media offers? That is what we will discuss in this article, by telling you how to measure engagement rate on social media.

So let’s get started!

What is Social Media Engagement and Why Should You Care?

So, you are posting on your socials and get the occasional DM from your followers asking about your prices. The occasional enquirer ends up purchasing the product and becomes your customer. But that is all you get from your business accounts.

Is that all there is to social media? 

No, with the right strategy, you can make your account a lead-generation machine that brings in a steady stream of income. But to reach there you need to know which content is liked by your audience and which one provokes them to take an interest in your business.

And measuring social media engagement rate is exactly how you can do it.

So what benefits do you get by doing this math? Numerous rewards actually, which include:

• You can plan and create high-quality, engaging posts and check whether they resonate with your target audience.
• When you get many new followers who are not going to purchase from you, then your engagement rates will be an earlier indicator of this situation.
• Comparing your performance with the industry benchmarks can help you identify if your brand is doing good compared to your competitors.

With a staggering 60% of the world population actively using social media, it would be a waste to not optimize your channels and make the best of your social media strategy.

So, now that you know why you need to keep track of it, let us tell you how to calculate your engagement rate with a simple enough calculation.

How to measure the social media engagement rate?

You know the why, so here is the answer to the how question. It depends on what you want to identify, let us elaborate!

• The most common way or when you have to calculate engagement of a series of posts:

This formula is the most common method of calculating engagement of a series of posts (maybe when you ran a campaign) or so on.,

Here is the formula:

Engagement rate = Total engagement of a post/reach of that post * 100

And here is the formula for calculating for a series of posts,

Average engagement rate = Total engagement rate by reach (calculated using the above formula) / number of posts.

• For a stable comparison to calculate the engagement rate:

Even when you create amazing content, sometimes the post will not perform well because of the algorithm. When calculating the engagement rate this might give a false result thus making you lose track.

For a more stable and reliable calculation, you can swap out reach with your follower count to find your real engagement rate.

Here is the formula for calculating:

Engagement rate = Total engagement on a post / Followers * 100

For calculating the average,

Average Engagement rate by post = Total Engagement rate by post / Number of posts.

• For calculating the engagement rate for paid content:

If you are sending out paid content and usually take the Cost per Thousand Impression structure as a conversion metric, then this calculation can be apt for you.

Before delving further, let us clarify how reach and impressions are different. 

Reach takes into account how many unique users see your content. On the other hand, impressions take into account how many times your content is displayed to them. For example, if a person sees your content 3 times then the reach will be 1 but impressions will be 3.

For calculating the engagement rate with impressions, use the following formula:

Engagement rate = Total engagement on a post / Total impressions * 100

Keep in mind that this metric too is at the mercy of the particular social media algorithm. And this output will generally be lower than that of the engagement rate calculated from other formulas. This is because a person might see your content 3 times but they are likely going to interact with the content only once.

Five Social Media Engagement Metrics for you to keep an eye on:

Measuring the social media engagement rate is not the final step of your task. To get a holistic idea of your customer experience, you have to keep an eye on various other metrics that will help you unlock hidden insights. So, here is a run-down of the different metrics that you need to keep in mind:

1. Impressions:

As elaborated above, Impressions are the number of times a particular piece of content is placed in a user’s feed. This metric is often more than the reach metric.

When impressions are high, this means you are in tune with the social media algorithm and thus make your content more visible. And as a result, you are improving your brand awareness.

2. Reach

Reach is the number of unique visitors before your content is getting displayed and this value is usually less than that of impressions.

And when reach is high, this means that more people are watching your content, this is also a great indication of an improvement in brand awareness.

3. Audience Growth Rate

Now this metric is in close relation with that of the reach metric. You see, when you monitor reach you know how many new, unique visitors are seeing your content. Audience growth on the other hand shows how many new followers you have received in a duration of time.

Therefore, if your reach rate is high but your audience growth rate is low then you know that your content is reaching new people but failing to entertain them. Thus making them move on without following you.

The formula to calculate this particular metric is as follows,

Audience Growth rate = Total followers / new audience * 100

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate is a measure that helps you understand how many users have clicked on a link in your post. This indicates that your post is strongly resonating with your target audience and gives them an urge to go and interact with your post.

To calculate this, use the following formula:

CTR = Number of clicks / Number of impressions

5. Social Conversions

When a social media follower purchases from your website through a link from your socials, then this particular metric is called a Social Conversion. This is also a great indicator that your content is performing extremely well and is making people purchase from you.

The metric can be calculated by using this formula,

Conversion rate = Number of clicks / Number of impressions * 100

Best Practices For Measuring Social Media Engagement Rate

The why and how is out of the way. One another thing to keep in mind when calculating social media engagement rate is to do it the right way. So, here are some best practices that you need to remember when starting to do the math.

1. Set clear-cut goals

Any endeavor you take needs to start with a clear-cut and precise goal. Without a goal, you may go somewhere but not to a place where you want to go.

Therefore, before starting to measure your social media engagement rate, you have to ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you hope to understand when calculating your engagement rate?
• What is your end goal – do you want to see if your business got more awareness, generates leads, or enhances customer engagement?
• What metrics do you have to monitor to check whether you are progressing towards your goal?
• What is a goal number that you want to reach? (for example: You might want to improve your impressions by 300%, then that is your goal number.)

2. Finalize the metrics that you are going to measure

Since your goal is finalized, it is easy to figure out which metrics need to be monitored. If you are going after brand awareness, then reach, likes, comments and new followers can be great indicators to go after.

Make sure to take note of these indicators from time to time so that you can compare and find out when your content is taking off. 

3. Get social media analytics tools to make your life easier

Analyzing and comparing these indicators is too much of a time-consuming process when you do it manually. This is where social media tools can come in handy. You can use Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and other such free tools to easily keep track of your metrics. Or if you are looking for a single platform to track all your socials, then you can look at many free and paid analytics tools that can help you with this.

4. Monitor results, Rinse and Repeat

Since you have a goal and engagement rates in your hand, it is now time to monitor if the results are positive or not. If it is positive, review what you did and make a plan to incorporate more of it. If the result is negative, then it is high time you took a step back and figured out what to do next.

5. Test various versions

When you measure social media engagement rate, it is essential to keep in mind that experimenting with various posting schedules and messaging types is vital. Every business is unique, which means finding out what works for your audience can help your brand strategy.

6. Calculate the Engagement rate

This is the step where knowing how to measure social media engagement rate comes in handy. Now that you have followed through with your strategy, you can check if the engagement rate reflects your hard work or not.

Conclusion

In this digital world where businesses are employing competitive strategies to get ahead of their industry, it is important to know how your social media is doing. Making the most out of your socials is non-negotiable in this day and age. Here is where measuring your social media engagement rate comes in.

With a solid strategy, high-quality social media content in hand, and an engagement rate that meets the industry benchmarks, your business will be unstoppable!

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