Imagine traveling back to January 2019 and telling Kylie Jenner’s social media team that her record for the most-liked post was about to be topped… by an egg. Social media can be shockingly unpredictable at times. Building successful strategies and campaigns requires so much trial and error that it sometimes feels like throwing noodles at the wall and waiting for one to stick. Over time, however, you can take a lot of the guesswork out of this process by analyzing the ideas that stick. One way to do this is by analyzing engagement rates.
The engagement rate is a crucial metric for quantifying the success of a piece of content. High engagement rates are a sign of strong audience interaction. Agencies, bBrands, marketers, and influencers alike use this key performance indicator (KPI) to understand what type of content resonates with their audience and why.
In this post, I’m breaking down how engagement rates are calculated, what constitutes a “good” engagement rate for common platforms and industries, and what actions you can take to optimize your social media content strategies for maximum audience engagement.
Engagement rates quantify audience interaction with content as a percentage. The formula typically used is:
Engagement rate = Total Engagements / Total Followers (or Total Impressions) X 100
Engagement rates can be followers-based or impressions-based. Followers-based measures the engagement rate of your existing audience, while impressions-based accounts for everyone who saw your post.
The engagement rate calculation also varies from platform to platform, depending mainly on what types of engagement are available. Here are the types of engagement by platform:
Understanding how each platform performs can help set realistic engagement expectations. Here are the latest engagement rates across different social media platforms:
Instagram remains a powerhouse for influencer marketing, with an average engagement rate of 2% overall.
Engagement rates by content format are:
Carousels tend to perform best because Instagram’s algorithm interprets swiping through multiple images as additional engagement.
The carousel posted by @Shoplavendaire outperformed both the Instagram Reel and the static photo post.
Engagement rates for Instagram Stories typically fall between 1% and 3.5%. Between 3.5% and 6% is considered a high engagement rate for Stories, and anything over 6% is considered very high.
Factors influencing engagement rates on Instagram include:
The average engagement rate for a TikTok video is 2%. This engagement is driven by:
Anything fast-paced and visually engaging is bound to keep viewers hooked, but short-form videos tend to have the highest engagement rates across the board. This is because the short video format caters to our collectively shrinking attention spans, delivers instant value, and encourages the rapid consumption and sharing of content in high quantities. To maximize the impact of short-form video on TikTok, focus on placing a strong hook within the first few seconds and keep the rest of your video fast-paced and fluff-free.
In this video, @kulfi.beauty drives TikTok engagement by filming interactions with potential customers out and about, IRL.
On average, YouTube’s engagement rate is 3.87%.
This rate varies by audience size and content type. Accounts with over 50,000 subscribers get an average engagement rate of 6.2% for YouTube Shorts and 1.72% for long-form videos. Accounts with 2,000-10,000 subscribers, on the other hand, get an average engagement rate of 3% for YouTube Shorts and 0.15% for long-form videos.
This goes to show that for many YouTube creators, short-form videos receive consistently higher engagement than long-form videos.
Jessica Braun has 659K subs and gets around 50k views per video. This particular upload had 245 comments, 4,100 likes, and 57,000 views.
If we take the likes and comments and divide that by the number of views (impressions), we get an engagement rate of 7.6%. If we replace the number of views/impressions with the number of subscribers, we get a far lower engagement rate of 0.7%.
The Do We Know Them (DWKT) podcast channel has 131,000 subscribers– far fewer than Jessica Braun– but consistently gets 140-150k views per video. This video got 170,000 views, 6,400 likes, and 1,217 comments.
Using the same impressions-based formula, the DWKT podcast gets an engagement rate of 4.5%. Replace the number of views/impressions with the number of subscribers, and you get a higher engagement rate of 5.8%.
As you can probably tell, a higher subscriber count doesn’t predict higher engagement rates. While subscriber count can be a solid indicator of your YouTube influencer’s reach, the algorithm prioritizes watch time, comments, and likes when making content recommendations. An influencer can have a massive number of subscribers, but fewer views and interactions than an influencer with less than half the subscribers. Those interactions lead to link clicks and conversions, making the smaller creator with the highly engaged community more valuable for brand partnerships.
Twitter (X) content is conversational by nature. The platform’s average engagement rate is 2.5%.
Engagement rates by content format are:
Visual content and active engagement (via replies and quote tweets) yield the highest interaction rates.
Author @veschwab used a photo post to spark conversation about her new book cover.
LinkedIn has an overall engagement rate of 3.03%, with video content leading the pack. This platform is home to niche influencers who create thought leadership and discussion-based content. Because these influencers often have specialized expertise, their content leads to deep, meaningful discussions, insightful commentary, and higher-quality engagement. They foster trust and credibility, making their influence more impactful than that of broader creators.
Engagement rates by content format are:
This thought-provoking video post by Duolingo used a relatable topic (the generational divide) to start a conversation about how playful curiosity is a crucial building block of innovation.
Engagement rates don’t just vary by platform. Some industries trend higher than others. Below are average engagement rates for some of the most-discussed industries on social media this year:
Fashion and beauty are two industries that have always thrived on visual social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Because viewers often rely on fashion and beauty influencers for inspiration, posts in this genre are often saved, shared, and revisited.
Here are the average engagement rates for the beauty industry, by platform:
And here are the average engagement rates for the fashion industry, by platform:
Educational, insightful content in industries like finance and technology drives engagement by fostering trust. Social media users look to FinTech influencers for product reviews, industry trends, and expert opinions. Influencers in these niches produce highly discussion-driven content like in-depth explainer videos, software how-tos, and thought leadership posts. The resulting content sparks conversations and repeat engagement.
Here are the average engagement rates for the finance industry, by platform:
And here are the average engagement rates for the technology industry, by platform:
The gaming niche is all about interactive, real-time content. Audiences in this niche love to watch their favorite influencers play or react to video games through a livestream. This allows the viewers to discuss and interact with the content as the influencer plays, all in real time.
Here are the average engagement rates for the gaming and esports industry, by platform:
In a saturated niche with a lot of noise, storytelling is the key to driving strong engagement. Social media users resonate deeply with real people sharing their own real experiences with fitness, mental health, and wellness. The genuine connections formed through emotional storytelling manifest as likes, comments, and shares.
As a viewer, I scroll past most of the health and wellness content I encounter on social media. When I feel emotionally invested in the content creator’s story, however, I find myself listening to what they say. They may not be an industry expert with all the answers, but I wasn’t scrolling through social media for research– I was scrolling to form connections and feel less alone.
The interactive nature of personal journey content is yet another reason why health and wellness is such a highly engaging niche. As influencers post challenges, progress updates, questions, and expert advice, they inspire their audience to participate and connect with other members of the community.
Here are the average engagement rates for the health and wellness industry, by platform:
A piece of content may take off on one platform but flop on another. Every social media platform has a unique recommendation algorithm that prioritizes signals accordingly. Optimizing your content according to the primary ranking signal of each platform is a surefire way to maximize your engagement.
Primary ranking signals by social media platform:
Instagram’s algorithm, for example, prioritizes signals of deeper engagement like shares and saves over likes, which are passive engagement. When your followers share or save your content, they deem it valuable enough to be revisited or distributed to friends. This shows Instagram that your post should appear higher in your followers’ feeds and also that it’s worth boosting visibility via the Explore page. Because of this, creating content that is informative, inspirational, and/or highly shareable is a great way to maximize your reach and engagement on Instagram.
Interactive content encourages your audience to join in on the conversation. Features like polls, Q&As, and quizzes encourage viewers to engage with your content directly in an easy, accessible way. And because these interactions are real-time, they facilitate instant feedback and deeper relationships with your audience.
Another way to increase participation is by encouraging your audience to participate in a challenge with you. Challenges have a way of supercharging community bonding and conversation. Starting one can trigger a domino effect of engagement that uplifts all your content. It may even inspire your followers to post user-generated content.
Last but not least, repurposing your most engaging content across multiple social media platforms is a smart way to save time filling your content calendar and get the most out of every post. Take a look at your most engaging posts on each platform. These content ideas have already been vetted. You know the general concept will resonate with your target audience. You also know that the delivery method used was ideal for the platform it did well on. That content idea could perform well on another platform if repackaged in the right content format.
Say you had a carousel post that did well on Instagram. You can repurpose this on TikTok by adding trending music, a voiceover, and/or arranging the photos in an order that tells a story. Remember to keep the new platform’s algorithm in mind. For TikTok, that means encouraging video completion, likes, shares, and comments.
There isn’t one definitive “good” engagement rate. You want your engagement rate to be as high as possible, but the standards for high engagement vary based on the social media platform you use, your niche/industry, and even your account size. The best way to accurately measure how your engagement stacks up against your competition is to check platform-specific metrics for creators with strong audience crossover and a similar number of followers.
Once you know where you stand, follow platform and industry best practices to increase your reach and maximize per-post engagement. This will help you cultivate stronger relationships and a more engaged audience over time.
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