Calculating engagement on Instagram is far from an exact science. Do you just consider likes? Should comments hold more weight than likes? What about shares and saved posts?
Gauging exactly how engaged your audience is can be exhausting. We offer a few different methods to determine your engagement rate on Instagram, so you can track your posts and work to improve engagement on Instagram.
What Is A Good Engagement Rate on Instagram?
Instagram sees higher rates of engagement compared to Facebook and Twitter. While Facebook and Twitter users see an average of about 0.5 – 1% engagement, the average engagement rate on Instagram is around 3%.
Many Instagram users have complained about decreased engagement rates since the adoption of the new Instagram algorithm.
A general guideline to engagement rates on Instagram is as follows:
< 1% = Low Engagement
1-3% = Low – Average Engagement
3-6% = Average – High Engagement
> 6% = Very High Engagement
Most paid influencers have an engagement rate of at least 8%.
How To Calculate Instagram Engagement Rate
Engagement rates on Instagram are hard to pin down. The difficulty in assessing engagement is the question of what factors to include.
There’s also the question of how you use your engagement rate. Some users want to know the engagement rate for their entire account, but this measure is very broad.
To assess the engagement rate of your account in general, you would need to find the average amount of likes and comments per post and divide by followers. The issue is that your follower count has probably grown since your first post, and has fluctuated across posts.
It’s better to calculate engagement per post so that you can see your progress on Instagram over time. Engagement by post also lets you know what content resonates with your audience so that you can use that same strategy for future posts.
There are a few different methods to gauge your engagement rate on Instagram. We’ll walk you through each method.
Instagram Engagement by Followers
One method of tracking Instagram engagement is adding up all the likes and comments on a post and dividing by total number of followers. Multiply that number by 100 for a percentage of how many followers engaged with that post.
This method is simple, and one benefit of this measurement is that you can easily check another account’s engagement. Since number of followers, likes, and comments on a post are public information, you can track competitors and see how their engagement rate compares to your own.
Instagram Engagement by Impressions
Another option is to look at engagement by impressions. If you run a business account on Instagram, you can see the total number of impressions on a photo in your Insights tab.
Impressions, often confused with reach, means the number of times your post could have been seen. If a follower views your post twice, that would result in two impressions even though it was seen by the same user.
Influencers tend to use impressions to gauge engagement over followers, since it gives a more accurate estimation based on how many users actually viewed your post. This method eliminates inactive followers or fake accounts that don’t actually view your posts, as well as anyone who simply didn’t scroll past that specific post.
Instagram’s Definition of Engagement
Instagram defines engagement as likes, comments, and saves. Instagram users can choose to save posts for later, and Instagram counts this metric in its own measurement of engagement.
Instagram’s measurement of engagement is almost the same as the above method by impressions, just with the number of people who saved the post factored in. This should yield a similar number as the second method by impressions.
You can also choose to include saved posts but still calculate based on followers instead of impressions if you want. Some users also choose to factor in the number of shares on a post as well.
Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator
If you’re looking for your average engagement across all posts, the easiest method is to use an engagement rate calculator. If you have another app that reveals your average likes per post, you can also use this number along with average comments to determine an average engagement rate.
Social Buddy offers a free tool to check your engagement, so that you don’t have to do all the work. Simply click the button below to check out our free analytics tool and see your average engagement!
How To Use Instagram Engagement
The important thing about calculating your engagement rate is tracking its progress. You can choose to measure engagement with any of these methods or all of them, but check in on yourself and re-measure every week or month to see how your engagement has changed. Learn from what posts experience great engagement and what posts don’t seem to work so that you can slowly improve overall engagement and grow your Instagram account.
To organically grow your followers and improve engagement, sign up with Social Buddy. Our Instagram growth service brings you targeted, real followers based on your interests and niche, so that your Instagram grows in both followers and engagement rate.