What Is Engagement Rate and Why Is It Important?

‘Engagement rate’ describes how actively involved your content is with your online audience.

It’s often used as a metric to measure how successful content has been received, showing how much interaction (likes, shares, comments) has occurred on your posts. A high engagement rate means your content has been interacted with by a percentage of your online audience.

Engagement can factor a variety of things depending on the platform. For example, the click-through rate on an email, or how many likes your post receives. The main principle is calculated through how your audience has actively interacted or engaged with your content.

Today we’re focusing on social media engagement rates. Social platforms are quickly becoming one of the most important communication channels. If you want to reach customers, social media marketing should not be overlooked.

Why Is Engagement Rate Important?

Some argue that engagement is the most important metric for social media analytics. It can be used to analyse the efficacy of your content, and usually people who interact with your content the most are more likely to convert.

Measuring your engagement helps you discover if your content strategies are successful and resonate with your target audience.

Great social media engagement can lead to increased visibility, online referrals, better relationships with customers, brand awareness, credibility and more.

Your social media platform acts as a trust point in your target audience’s buying journey. Engaging social media campaigns can create brand advocates that spread positive messages about your business; helping you attract and convert more customers.

Your engagement rate also guides your marketing teams’ content strategies, as they learn from past performance to ensure they’re reaching the right audience.

The power of your engagement rate should not be ignored. Its importance will only grow as social media platforms grow.

What if My Engagement Rate Is Low?

Low engagement may indicate that your content needs updating to provide value to your target audience. Changing your tone of voice, platform, graphic style or content types can improve your engagement.

A social media account with a low engagement rate but large following (e.g. 100k followers but only 50 likes per post), can indicate a lack of connection between the account and their audience. It’s essential to review this when looking at influencers to represent your brand. Accounts with high engagement rates are more likely to provide success for your campaign.

Your engagement rate also plays a big part in social media algorithms as engagement influences the visibility of your content. Although each social media platform is different, algorithms often view content with high engagement as important, and show these posts first on the audience’s feed. Meaning higher social media engagement leads to better visibility for your brand.

How Do I Know if My Engagement Rate Is ‘Good’?

Engagement rates vary depending on your industry.

Union Metrics conducted a study of several thousand branded posts on social media pages and discovered an average engagement rate of 4.3%, with a median of 3.5%.

Any rate slightly above and below this average of 4% is good. Anything wildly above this would be unrealistic.

However, it is all relative. A ‘good’ engagement rate in the financial industry could differ from the tech industry, as people interact differently depending on context.

So, ignore vanity metrics and focus on the social media metric that contributes to your marketing goals. Use your engagement rate to give context to your future decisions.

What Next?

Review your social media posts and check for a pattern in the content or conversations that generate the most engagement. Use this data to learn from the metric and create optimised content that engages your target audience.

Want to boost your social media engagement? Contact our marketing experts today by calling on 01329565001 or emailing us at hello@damteq.co.uk.