Sharpening your Social Skills: Measuring Engagement on Instagram


Today I have a guest post from Social Media Guru and president of the DigiDust Agency, Pierre Olivier Carles, who helps us understand some of the more tricky side of social media. Finding out how well you are doing by measuring how well you are engaging with your followers.

But first… follow @aguyonclematis on instagram!

How good are you on Instagram?

Let’s face it. When you use Instagram you are not just looking to get a lot of followers, what you should really want is a good way to communicate and “engage” with the followers that you have. This is what you call an “engagement rate”, the quality of your followers, not just the quantity.

Let’s get into the details and turn you into an Instagram Marketing Guru 🙂

Instagram is the most efficient and cost effective marketing platform available in 2017. You just have to do it right. Of course, it takes some time, efforts and consistency but it is definitely worth it.

People always ask me how to get more followers, where the right question should be how to get a better engagement rate. Having more followers is just a consequence, not a goal.

Why the engagement rate is so important? Because this is the main metric Instagram’s algorithm uses to give you more exposure. More exposure means more people from your targeted audience seeing your posts, and it ends up piling tons of real enthusiastic and active followers on your account. You see? Followers are a consequence. Leads you generate then too.

How to calculate your current Engagement Rate? It’s pretty simple.

Take your last 20 posts and add all the likes and the comments you had on them. Once you have that number, divide it by the number of your followers. Here’s the calculation for @pocarles, my own Instagram account.

All together, I had 27,795 likes and comments on my last 20 posts and I have 14,707 followers.

27,795 / 14,707 = 1.754

It means my engagement rate is 175.4%

So now, what is a good engagement rate? Well, it depends on the size of your account. It’s easier to have a high engagement rate when you have a small account, and naturally your engagement rate decreases as your account grows.

A good engagement for Instagram is:
. Your account has less than 2,000 followers: 300%+
. From 2,000 to 5,000 followers: 250%+
. From 5,000 to 10,000 followers: 200%+
. From 10,000 to 25,000 followers: 150%+
. More than 25,000 followers: 100%+

Based on the calculation I made with my own account, I’m doing OK. Yes, you’re right. The contrary would have been pretty embarrassing 🙂

So now, you know if you are doing good on Instagram from a marketing point of view, and if your consistent efforts will help grow your personal branding, your business and of course, your followers.


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