In the beginning of social media, the focus was largely on the number of followers to determine who was influential. Logic dictated that the more followers you had, the more eyes would see the post and then, convert into fans or customers. But, that was then, and this is now.
Now, we have fake accounts, bots, and scam artists that promise for only $200 they will give you 10,000 REAL FOLLOWERS!!!!! As many influencers have seen, when the channels focus on cracking down and deleting these fake accounts, your follower numbers will suffer. There are tons of stories out there of people waking up to their Instagram accounts taking a major follower loss. So, what's an influencer to do? How should a brand figure out who's a real influencer or who just buys their followers to inflate numbers and overcharge for a post that won't give your brand any traction or ROI? The answer is engagement rates.
Engagement rates define if someone is an influencer, who will influence sales and brand awareness for your brand, or not. Engagement is actions that are taken on the piece of content (likes, comments, shares, etc). Less than 1% is bad, which means that it's likely a fake account or using bots. An average rate is 1%-3.5% and 3.5%-6% is considered a high engagement rate. Anything higher than 6% is an impressive engagement rate, and those influencers are likely to be highly selective with who they partner with and they will charge a higher price per post.
Now, that you know what it is, let's calulate your engagement rate and see where you fall! If your a brand, you can use this for any influencer you may be considering.
To keep it easy, I tend to use a month's worth of posts to get a realistic average. So, calculate all engagements over a month's period of time (likes, comments, shares, regrams, etc), and divide that by your current number of total followers. Then, divide that by total number of posts to get the average engagement rate per post.
I'll use my personal IG account (@bossmama247) for an example: in the last month I had 1,235 engagements for 16 posts and 2,150 followers.
1235/2150= .574
.574/16 = .0359
.0359 x 100 = 3.59% average rate of engagement
What's your engagement rate? Let me know in the comments below! If you're looking for help with influencer marketing or increasing engagement, book a complimentary call to see how I might be able to help.
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