Instagram is a highly effective platform for marketing as well as for personal use. Every brand that wants to be successful needs to have a presence there. Whether you’re promoting yourself or a company, showing up isn’t enough. To be impressive, you have to be busy. So what is a good engagement rate on Instagram and how can you increase yours?
On Instagram, engagement is considered a like, comment, reaction or sharing of an Instagram post or Story. It measures the percentage of your audience that actively responds to your content. As an influencer, this will show you which type of content works best and which types don’t. You can then refine, refine or diversify your Instagram posts to suit your goals.
If you want to connect with or become a social media marketer, engagement rates will be used as a metric to assess eligibility. If you have the right level of engagement on certain types of content that matches a customer, you have a better chance of getting the job. If you don’t, you won’t.
What is a good engagement rate on Instagram?
Social media marketing is all about numbers. Delivering content to your platform is the easy part. Analyzing, refining and adapting is the hard part. So what is considered a good engagement rate?
- An engagement rate of 5% or more is considered very good.
- An engagement rate of 3-5% is considered good.
- A participation rate of 1-3% is considered average.
- A participation rate of less than 1.5% is considered weak.
These percentages are changing and some marketers use 6% engagement as a very good market, but I think 5% is more approachable and more realistic now audiences are becoming more specific about the content they’re interacting with.
Anything between 1% and 3% is fine if you’re marketing on Instagram or working on being an influencer. You’ll want to increase this as you get better at producing content and delivering what your audience is looking for, but this is a good place to start.
If you compare this to the average engagement rate of up to 1% for Twitter and Facebook, you can see that Instagram users seem much more willing to engage actively. That’s why many brands want to be on social networks.
Calculating Instagram engagement rates
Now that you know what a good engagement rate looks like on Instagram, how do you know yours? There’s some math involved, but it’s actually pretty simple. Everyone uses the same calculation so that the results are universal.
- Count the number of comments, likes, and shares for a post.
- Divide this number by the number of followers you have.
- Multiply this number by 100 to get the percentage.
For example, you have 25,000 followers who have received 350 comments or likes. Math would be 350 / 25,000 x 100 = 1.4%. This is a relatively low engagement rate in the grand scheme of things, but it shows the math involved in calculating it.
You have to do this per post, or you can use the math to calculate monthly engagement instead of per post. All you have to do is calculate the number of posts per month, add all interactions on all posts, divide that number of interactions by the number of posts, and continue with the calculation above.
For example, 30 posts per month with a total of 10,050 comments spread across 25,000 followers. 10,050/30/25,000 x 100 = 1.4%. Again, a low score however indicates the calculation.
Access versus interaction
Engagement is much more important than reach in social media marketing. This means that engagement rate is much more important than the number of followers an Instagram account has. After all, there’s no point in having 200,000 followers if you engage less than 1%.
It would be much better to prune this number and set your content to engage and build from 2,000 followers 5% better. Not only will this give you great bang for your buck, but anyone who wants to hire you to do social media marketing looks at engagement, not followers.
Ideally, you’ll want both if you’re going to be impressive. However, it is much better to start small with high participation than with high participation with low participation. Bottom line, it’s better to interact with a few friends too much than with few friends at all. Not only will this make you a better marketer, it will also make doing the actual work much more satisfying!
Instagram is a highly effective platform for marketing as well as for personal use. Every brand that wants to be successful needs to have a presence there. Whether you’re promoting yourself or a company, showing up isn’t enough. To be impressive, you have to be busy. So what is a good engagement rate on Instagram and how can you increase yours?
On Instagram, engagement is considered a like, comment, reaction or sharing of an Instagram post or Story. It measures the percentage of your audience that actively responds to your content. As an influencer, this will show you which type of content works best and which types don’t. You can then refine, refine or diversify your Instagram posts to suit your goals.
If you want to connect with or become a social media marketer, engagement rates will be used as a metric to assess eligibility. If you have the right level of engagement on certain types of content that matches a customer, you have a better chance of getting the job. If you don’t, you won’t.
What is a good engagement rate on Instagram?
Social media marketing is all about numbers. Delivering content to your platform is the easy part. Analyzing, refining and adapting is the hard part. So what is considered a good engagement rate?
- An engagement rate of 5% or more is considered very good.
- An engagement rate of 3-5% is considered good.
- A participation rate of 1-3% is considered average.
- A participation rate of less than 1.5% is considered weak.
These percentages are changing and some marketers use 6% engagement as a very good market, but I think 5% is more approachable and more realistic now audiences are becoming more specific about the content they’re interacting with.
Anything between 1% and 3% is fine if you’re marketing on Instagram or working on being an influencer. You’ll want to increase this as you get better at producing content and delivering what your audience is looking for, but this is a good place to start.
If you compare this to the average engagement rate of up to 1% for Twitter and Facebook, you can see that Instagram users seem much more willing to engage actively. That’s why many brands want to be on social networks.
Calculating Instagram engagement rates
Now that you know what a good engagement rate looks like on Instagram, how do you know yours? There’s some math involved, but it’s actually pretty simple. Everyone uses the same calculation so that the results are universal.
- Count the number of comments, likes, and shares for a post.
- Divide this number by the number of followers you have.
- Multiply this number by 100 to get the percentage.
For example, you have 25,000 followers who have received 350 comments or likes. Math would be 350 / 25,000 x 100 = 1.4%. This is a relatively low engagement rate in the grand scheme of things, but it shows the math involved in calculating it.
You have to do this per post, or you can use the math to calculate monthly engagement instead of per post. All you have to do is calculate the number of posts per month, add all interactions on all posts, divide that number of interactions by the number of posts, and continue with the calculation above.
For example, 30 posts per month with a total of 10,050 comments spread across 25,000 followers. 10,050/30/25,000 x 100 = 1.4%. Again, a low score however indicates the calculation.
Access versus interaction
Engagement is much more important than reach in social media marketing. This means that engagement rate is much more important than the number of followers an Instagram account has. After all, there’s no point in having 200,000 followers if you engage less than 1%.
It would be much better to prune this number and set your content to engage and build from 2,000 followers 5% better. Not only will this give you great bang for your buck, but anyone who wants to hire you to do social media marketing looks at engagement, not followers.
Ideally, you’ll want both if you’re going to be impressive. However, it is much better to start small with high participation than with high participation with low participation. Bottom line, it’s better to interact with a few friends too much than with few friends at all. Not only will this make you a better marketer, it will also make doing the actual work much more satisfying!
