Understanding engagement rate is one of the best ways to know if your business is set-up for long-term success. By definition, the engagement rate tracks how actively your audience is involved with your content (thanks, SproutSocial!) More specifically, we like to look at it as how to measure customer interest in an ad, social media post, website, and more. While the metric seems simple on the surface, it gives valuable insights into areas of future growth and improvement. We'll take you through how to calculate this metric, how to understand it in the context of your industry, and how to apply it to the platforms you're using now.
You can calculate the engagement rate by dividing the total number of engagement by the total number of ad viewers, social media followers, or web visitors. Engagement rate can be assessed for various time-periods (i.e. day, week, month, year) and, if your number of engagement is tied to certain products or campaigns, you can assign an engagement rate for each.
More specifically, the total number of engagements is the number of people who have, well, engaged with your content. For instance, this includes the number of users who have liked, commented, or shared your posts.
When choosing what to include in your calculations, remember: consistency is key! That means, if you decide to include XYZ in your engagement rate for the month, you should include it in the next month’s engagement rate as well. Having consistent metrics will allow you to better identify the causes of good or bad performance.
Again, as you begin (consistently) monitoring the engagement rate, you’ll be able to find insights specific to your strategy. Of course, it’s also important to understand your engagement rate] in relation to your broader industry. To help you know what to expect, we’ve included a list of average engagement (Facebook) per industry:
Further, while you can find the number of engagements from many channels, we’ve identified popular platforms that are particularly relevant to the engagement rate. These may be good places to begin if you’re getting started with this metric:
While the engagement rate is easy to calculate, it’s important to keep in mind that the engagement rate is one of many valuable metrics to track your performance. If you don’t want to spend hours at the end of the month juggling numbers from your Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, consider trying Lido. Lido can help you build a dashboard to monitor your data and give a look into how your key metrics (such as engagement rate) change over time.
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