Why Should You Be Measuring Your Engagement Rate?

The term ‘engagement rates’ refers to metrics  which track how keenly involved with your content your target market is. Consumers who are engaged interact with brands via “likes”, comments as well as social sharing.

‘Engagement rate’ is a metric that is often used in analysing the effectiveness of brand campaigns. People who devote time to interacting with videos, updates as well as blogs are more likely to convert into customers who make purchases. Engagement rates also have subset measurements like “sharing metrics” which highlight the impact of your word-of-mouth digital marketing.

There’s some controversy around which metrics are most important to digital marketing, however there’s no argument that “engagement” features at the top of the list.

Engagement rates is the exchange rate in the social media marketing industry

Vanity metrics – such as followers, likes as well as impressions – count for something. However, engagement formulas put these metrics into a more consistent perspective. That’s why engagement metrics are frequently utilised as selling points in social influencer media kits or, alternatively, to gauge a social campaign’s return on investment (ROI).

However, oddly enough there’s no standard formula for determining engagement rates. Engagement rate is a method of measuring the amount of interaction social content earns in relation to reach or other audience figures. Think about engagement rate in terms of reactions, comments as well as shares.

Ways of calculating engagement rates

There are many ways of measuring this engagement. Different calculations may be better suited your social media objectives. Here are some methods of calculating engagement.

1. Engagement rate by reach (ERR)

This is the most common place way of calculating engagement by using content. ERR gauges the percentage of people who elected to interact with your content after they saw it. Use this formula for a single post: ERR = total engagements per post/reach per post * 100

2. Engagement rate by posts (ER post)

This formula evaluates engagements by followers on a particular post. In other words, it’s like ERR, however instead of reaching it shows you the frequency at which followers engage with your content that you put out. Most social media influencers determine their average engagement rate in this manner: ER post = Total engagements on a post/total followers *100.

To calculate the average total post ER, add up the total number of ER posts that you want to average, and divide this by the number of posts: Average ER by post = Total ER by post/total posts.

3. Engagement rate by impressions (ER impressions)

 Another fundamental audience metric that you can choose in order to measure engagements by is ‘impressions’. Reach evaluates the number of people who see your content. ‘Impressions’ tracks how often that content appears on a screen. The formula for this is the following: ER impressions = total engagements on a post/total impressions *100.

Why Engagement Rate is Important

In the social media as well as digital marketing fields, there’s often a lot of things which are said about ROI. With the right social tool, companies can measure engagement in order to demonstrate success in social media success. In the online world, engagement leads to:

• Greater visibility
• Brand affinity
• Referrals and word of mouth marketing
• Credibility
• Better relationships with customers

Engagement tells your digital marketing team if they’re reaching brand advocates, influencers as well as your target audience. Through engaging campaigns, you create advocates that are more likely to spread positive messages about your brand and convert into paying customers.

Why engagement is the golden standard in digital marketing

Retention is the true marker of success in digital marketing. User engagement is the device that drives customer loyalty over time. When calculated correctly, engagement rate can provide you with  great insights into the behaviour of your customers. In addition, engagement rate can indicate aspects such as which customers are the best fit for your business as well as what you need to construct in order to solve their pains even better.

You’ll never build a successful company without getting users to stick around in the long term. This means that you first need to understand what engages them and why they are engaged by this aspect. Then they start improving in that direction.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

To discover more about social media and how you can use it for marketing your business, check out our Social Media Marketing Course. Follow this link for more information.