Calculate engagement rate: The right formula for every platform

The engagement rate shows you how actively a community interacts with an influencer's content. In concrete terms, you can compare interactions such as likes, comments, shares or clicks to the number of followers or reach. The engagement rate is often much more meaningful as a key figure than the pure number of followers. Instead of just showing the number of accounts that follow the influencer, it instead gives you insights into the actual interactions with the content.

For your influencer marketing campaigns, the interaction rate tells you whether a community is loyal, whether the content is well received and whether recommendations really bring in conversions. High engagement rates are a good sign of an active and ready-to-buy target group, which is exactly what your brand needs for a successful cooperation.

If you want to calculate the engagement rate, you will be faced with small math problems - but very uncomplicated ones that quickly give you conclusive answers. It's usually worth taking a look at engagement per post and average engagement. Depending on what exactly you want to measure, you can look at engagement by followers or by reach. For this you need 3 different formulas.

Engagement Rate by Followers:

(Interactions per post / number of followers) × 100

Example: If an account has 10,000 followers and 1,000 interactions with a post, the engagement rate is 10%.

With this formula you can see how active the follower base is overall. You can use them to compare different influencers with each other.

Engagement Rate by Reach:

(Interactions per post / post reach) × 100

Example: An account reached 20,000 people with a post and received 1,000 interactions. This results in an engagement rate of 5%.

This formula is more accurate because it only takes into account users who actually saw the post. It gives you important insights, especially for larger accounts where not all followers see every post.

Average Engagement Rate:

To get a good overall picture, you can calculate the engagement rate across multiple posts and average it. A viral post can quickly distort values. You should also remove competitions from the average entirely, as engagement rates do not reflect usual reality.

What counts as interaction?

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Saves (especially relevant on Instagram)
• Link clicks (on stories)

To calculate the total interactions, simply add up the respective number.

On Instagram, the classic engagement rate usually plays the most important role. Depending on the format, you should take various points into account in order to be able to interpret the numbers correctly.

• Feed posts: For classic posts in the feed, use the formula (Likes + Comments + Saves + Shares) / Followers × 100. Alternatively, you can use the reach instead of the followers if you have access to the insights. This way you get the most accurate picture.
• Reels: The reach of Reels is often higher than feed posts, as they are more often shown to non-followers. Therefore, calculating according to range makes more sense here. Also keep in mind that Reels often have lower engagement rates because many users just scroll through without interacting.
• Stories: With Stories the world looks a little different. Here the link click rate is the crucial KPI, especially if you are planning a performance-driven campaign. This shows you how willing the community is to buy. The formula is: (Link Clicks / Story Views) × 100. For your campaigns, make sure that the link click rate is not less than 5 percent.

What counts most on YouTube are likes, comments and views. The formula is: (Likes + Comments) / Views × 100. In contrast to Instagram, shares are less relevant here because YouTube does not display them prominently.

Be sure to distinguish between short-term peaks and long-term performance. A viral video can have high engagement rates, but older videos can have significantly lower values. That's why you should always analyze several videos and look at the average. For influencer campaigns, the performance of the last 5 to 10 videos tells you significantly more than a single viral outlier.

Twitch works fundamentally differently than Instagram or YouTube. Followers are less important here, as many users watch streams without following a channel. The live interaction is much more interesting for you.

• Average Concurrent Viewership (ACV): This metric shows you how many viewers are on average in the stream at the same time. It is much more meaningful than the number of followers and provides insights into the actual reach.
• Chat activity: You can recognize engagement on Twitch by chat messages, reactions and interactions during the stream. A high level of chat activity relative to viewers shows you that the community is engaged. You can use the following formula: (Chat Messages per Stream / Average Concurrent Viewership) x 100.

Of course, you would like to see clear numbers that you can use to consistently evaluate the engagement rate. Instead, we unfortunately have to tell you: it depends. The size of the influencer makes an important difference and there are often significant differences between different industries and platforms. But you can roughly orientate yourself on these values:

• Nano Influencer (1,000 – 10,000 followers): 5 to 10 percent and more. Smaller accounts often have the highest engagement rates because the community is very close and personal.
• Micro Influencer (10,000 – 100,000 followers): 3 to 6 percent. Still very good values ​​with an active community.
• Macro influencer (100,000 – 1 million followers): 1 to 3 percent. The engagement rate often decreases as the number of followers increases.

Even with these values, it still depends on the industry. Fashion and beauty often have a higher engagement rate than tech content or even B2B content. If you want to compare influencers, it's best to always stay within the same niche and platform.

There are so many factors relevant to calculating the engagement rate that even experienced marketers still make mistakes. In our experience with over 10,000 influencer campaigns, you can avoid typical faux pas.

• Wrong time period: Too often brands calculate the engagement rate based only on a single post. The result can be distorted numbers, especially with viral posts or competitions. Instead, average over 10 to 15 posts.
• Average instead of individual post analysis: You can also make the mistake the other way around and only calculate the average without checking outliers. If the engagement rate fluctuates significantly, this can be a sign of inconsistent content or purchased interactions.
• No cleanup of competitions: Competition posts often have significantly higher engagement rates. Users only interact because of the chance to win. To get reliable numbers, you should always exclude competitions.
• Compare platforms without context: An engagement rate that seems good on Instagram may mean something completely different on YouTube. The same applies to different industries. Therefore, always compare values ​​within the same platform and niche.

If you want to hire influencers, the engagement rate is definitely an important metric. However, it alone does not make a successful campaign. With brands like emma and HelloFresh, we have always worked with a complete KPI set that maps the entire marketing funnel:

• Conversion Rate: How many users who interacted with the content actually buy? High engagement rates are of no use to you if no sales follow in the end.
• Click rate: How many users click on the link in the bio or story? This will help you see if the community is ready to buy.
• Sales Tracking: Also track actual sales, for example via discount codes or affiliate links. This way you can be sure how profitable a cooperation was.
• Funnel view: Look at the entire sales funnel from awareness to consideration to conversion. Engagement is the first step, followed by actual conversions.

The engagement rate will accompany you in every influencer marketing campaign. It shows you information about the quality of an influencer and the community. Your most important task, however, is to interpret the numbers correctly and take the characteristics of the platforms and niche into account. Ultimately, you only get a complete picture through entire KPI sets that also take clicks, conversions and sales into account and make influencer marketing a plannable performance channel for your brand.

Would you like to build data-driven influencer marketing for your brand? Arrange a free conversation with Ad Specialist now!