How do we know the success of our social media uploads? The answer is by using engagement rates. With this metric, you can calculate the number of followers who are active on social media. Calculating engagement rate is very important for those of you who want to increase your company’s brand awareness on social media.
It would be nice if you first understand what engagement rate is and its benefits before you understand how it is calculated. We will discuss engagement rates in detail in this article as a guide to using social media effectively for you. Listen to the explanation until it’s done!
Definition of Engagement Rate
Engagement rate or engagement level is a metric used to measure the performance of a content or social media account. In this metric, you evaluate audience or follower engagement with published posts. In general, this metric is often used for social media marketing, more specifically for Instagram and Facebook.
This engagement metric can be an indicator of the level of brand awareness among the public. Brand awareness or public awareness of a brand immediately increases when a piece of content can get a lot of attention from its followers.
Engagement rate is also useful for understanding audience desires based on the number of interactions they have with certain content, measured against the content that has the most or least engagement.
Why Is an Engagement Rate Necessary?
You may think that calculating engagement rates is so complicated that it’s unnecessary in business. However, there are several reasons why you should know about engagement rate measurement. What are the reasons?
1. See a Clearer Exposure
The engagement rate is a useful indicator to filter the activities of social media followers. You can understand their needs or some trending content at any time. The reason is that many people like content because it is liked by other people around them, regardless of the value of that content.
2. See Competitive Performance
You can measure your competitors’ social media performance simply by knowing how to calculate engagement rates. The number of audience interactions will increase if competitors frequently run promotions or marketing campaigns.
You can learn social media marketing strategies from competitors to get their messages across. This reason is very important for those of you who want to market your product or business through social media.
Advantages of Calculating The Engagement Rate
Calculating the engagement rate also brings benefits to your social media accounts. See the explanation below.
1. User Experience Rating
A high engagement rate indicates that your audience is good at interacting with uploaded content. This indicates that your followers have a good experience interacting with content on social media.
Conversely, a low interaction rate is a sign that your audience is not interacting well with your content. This means you need to improve your CTA or content to make it more engaging for your audience.
2. Monitor The Effectiveness of Executed Programs
You use social media to execute certain campaigns or programs. To assess the level of success, you need to understand how the engagement rate is calculated. You can determine the number of audiences engaged in the ongoing program or campaign so that they set a call-to-action (CTA) in the content.
How to Calculating The Engagement Rate
Given the above benefits, you must be interested in knowing the engagement rate of the social media account you are running. There are several ways you can determine the engagement rate, starting from knowing the performance of each content (post), reach (coverage) to impressions (views). Let’s see how to calculate them one by one.
1. Engagement Rate Based On Reach (ERR)
This method is more accurate in calculating engagement rates. The reason is that not all followers see content uploaded on social media. This content can also be seen by accounts that do not follow your social media. The calculation method is ER = total engagements per post/reach per post x 100.
2. Engagement Rate Based On The Post (ERP)
This method is best suited for social media accounts with fluctuating post reach. Engagement rate results are more stable because you divide the engagement rate of a post by the number of followers. The formula is as follows: ER = total engagements for a post / total number of followers x 100.
3. Interaction Rate Based On Impression (ER Impression)
This method produces a fluctuating impression value. This calculation is based on impression level, which is how many times the content appears on the audience’s homepage. The formula is ER = the total number of interactions with a post / total number of impressions x 100.
4. Daily Interaction Rate (DER)
As the term suggests, this method is useful to know the cumulative engagement rate daily. The downside is that this method is less accurate because you can’t distinguish between one follower who engages repeatedly and multiple followers who engage only once a day. Here’s how to calculate it: ER = total engagements in a day / total number of followers x 100.
5. Engagement Rate Based On Views (ERV)
This method is ideal for rating video uploads. However, these views are generic and different from unique views. That is, the 1,000 views you get may come from 300 users who repeatedly view your uploads. The formula is ER = total engagements in a day / total number of followers x 100.
6. Factorized Engagement Rate
In this method, you calculate audience engagement based on one of the engagement rate factors, such as the number of comments or likes. For example, if you want to prioritize engagement based on the number of likes, the formula is ER Likes = [(number of likes x 2) – other types of engagement] x 100.
Factors That Influence The Engagement Rate
There is no clear definition of the type of audience engaged in social media. This is because interactions can change depending on the context and media used by the audience. Therefore, it is very difficult to study the engagement rate factor. However, several factors can influence the engagement rate, namely:
- Website: Visitor duration on a page, scroll depth, bounce rate, number of shares, and different types of conversions.
- Facebook: Comments, reactions, clicks, and shares.
- Instagram: Likes and comments.
- LinkedIn: posts, clicks, interactions, and the number of followers you receive.
- Twitter: retweets, comments, and likes.
- Email marketing: open rates and click-through rates.
It’s not enough to rely solely on followers as an indicator of a social media account’s success. The solution is that you can expand your reach by investing in creating social media ads that can reach all users according to the business’s target audience.