Glossary/Engagement rate
What is engagement rate?
Short answer
Engagement rate is engagement measured against the size of the audience and given as a percentage: the number of reactions set against the number of people who saw the content or follow the account. That way you can compare a small profile with a large one. The figure itself says nothing about sales, or about how much money a campaign brought in.
How is engagement rate calculated?
You take the sum of reactions under a piece of content, divide it by the size of the audience and show the result as a percentage. The trouble is that the denominator varies: sometimes it is the follower count, sometimes the reach of the post, sometimes the number of views. Each version gives a different result, so when you compare offers, always ask what the creator calculated their figure from.
How is engagement rate different from engagement?
Engagement is the number of reactions; engagement rate is that same number set against the size of the audience. A large account will almost always collect more reactions in raw numbers, but once converted into percentages it often comes out worse than a smaller profile with a loyal community. That is why you look at the rate when choosing a creator, and at the raw number of reactions when settling a single post.
Why does this metric matter to a brand and to a creator?
For a brand it lets you put offers from accounts of completely different sizes side by side and see where an audience actually reacts. It also helps catch profiles with dead followers: a huge follower count next to a negligible number of reactions only stands out once you do the maths. For a creator it is an argument when the account is small but the community is alive. This metric does not measure sales.
Where to order it or find tasks
Related terms
Words that come up in the same conversations. Each has its own definition in the glossary.
- Engagement
- The audience's reactions to the material: likes, comments, saves, shares. It shows whether the content moved people or only scrolled past their eyes. Read more
- Fake followers
- Bought or inactive accounts among the followers. They lift the number on the profile, lower engagement and leave the campaign landing in a void. Read more
- Reach
- The number of people who saw the material. It does not say how many of them reacted or bought — which is why it is read together with engagement, not instead of it. Read more
- Views
- The number of times the material was played, repeats by the same people included. Always higher than reach, which is why it is easy to mistake for the number of viewers. Read more
Frequently asked questions
What is a good engagement rate?
There is no single value you could give for everyone. The figure depends on the platform, the format and the topic, so only compare accounts from the same niche and from the same period.
Why do two media kits give a different result for the same account?
Because they count the figure from something different: once from the follower count, once from the reach of a post. Before you compare offers, ask for the formula and for the period the data comes from.
Does engagement rate drop as an account grows?
Usually yes. Along with the follower count come people who found the profile by chance and react less often. So a drop on its own does not mean the creator's content has got worse.
