If you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ll have already heard or know of influencer engagement rates. But for those of you who are new to the neighborhood, here’s what it is:

What Is Influencer Engagement Rate?

Influencer engagement rate is a measurement that provides a representation of the activity levels between content creators and their audiences. It is calculated based on the number of followers or subscribers an influencer has and the number of comments and likes they receive on their posts.

High Engagement Rate

A high influencer engagement rate is between 1% and 6%. It is rare to have higher engagement rates. However, most of the time when you do come across 30% engagement or even higher, it’s with the micro-influencers. They tend to have a closer bond with their audience. That’s because they have fewer followers and can make the time to respond to all their comments.

Low Engagement Rate

Low engagement rates are generally less than 1%. In some severe cases, you’ll find posts with ZERO engagement rates. You would probably imagine that the smaller, low-profile influencers would have below 1% engagement rates. But the reality is, that many mega influencers have crazy low engagement rates. They have millions of followers, but a high percentage of these influencers are not actively engaging with their audiences.

It’s important to note that just because an influencer has a low engagement rate, doesn’t mean a brand should stay clear of them when it comes to a partnership deal.

Think about it. If an influencer has 1 million followers on Instagram, but their average engagement rate on their posts is 0.5%, that’s still 5 thousand active followers. This means if you were to have the influencer promote your products in their posts, it would get love from an audience of 5k strong.

Why Does Influencer Engagement Matter?

Understanding influencer engagement rates is crucial when it comes time to pick the right influencer for your marketing campaign. Knowing how well an influencer engages with their audience gives you a rough indication of how your marketing efforts will be fair.

Here’s a scenario:

Your brand has just manufactured a brand new kitchen appliance. There has never been a product of its kind and it’s going to revolutionize the kitchen space. However, there will continue to be no product like it on the market if you can’t get the word out about your revolutionary product.

You decide to invest in some healthy influencer marketing. The content marketing plans have been mapped out and you just need the right influencers to pitch the product to their followers. Now, in the vast sea of influencers, how are you going to narrow down the field?

How about targeting influencers who create posts related to cooking and home gadgets? And let’s knock any influencers off the list if they have less than 100k followers.

Now you have a page of 50 potential influencers who could promote your new product. But you only have a budget to pay 5 influencers. So you need to narrow the field even further.

That’s when you start looking at the engagement rates of these influencers. We all know (well most of us) about fake influencer accounts with hundreds of thousands of bought followers. The last thing you want is to land one of these fake influencers. So you go ahead and calculate their engagement rates (more about that later on). If an influencer has a high number of followers but a very low engagement rate, it may be best to stay clear of them.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that an influencer with a high engagement rate is reliable. They may also be operating fake accounts—buying likes and comments.

If you want to learn more on how to spot fake Instagram accounts, READ THIS POST.

Calculating Engagement Rates

There are 6 different methods for calculating influencer engagement rates on social media. In most cases, you’ll find that total engagements are based on a collective of views, likes, comments, shares, retweets, and clicks. But the calculations are dependent on the platform you are focusing on.

5 Best Methods to Calculate Engagement

1. Engagement Rate by Reach (ERR)

Calculating the engagement rate by reach is the most common method used when researching potential influencers. It measures the percentage of viewers who decided to take action after seeing a piece of content.

Here’s the formula for calculating the engagement of a single post:

ERR = (Total engagements per post / Reach per post) x 100

Here’s the formula for the average engagement of ALL posts combined:

Average ERR = Total ERR for ALL posts / Total number of posts

2. Engagement Rate by Post (ER Post)

This method is similar to ERR, except the only difference is that it measures the rate an influencer’s followers engage with their post. This is the preferred method of many influencers for calculating their own engagement rates.

Here’s the formula:

ER Post = (Total post engagements / Total number of followers) x 100

3. Engagement Rate by Impressions (ER Impressions)

Impressions highlight the number of times a piece of content appears on people’s screens. So audiences don’t necessarily have to engage with the content. This way you can understand whether or not your post is click-friendly based on comparing impressions with reach.

Here’s the formula for calculating impressions:

ER Impressions = (Total post engagements / Total impressions) x 100

4. Daily Engagement Rate (Daily ER)

On certain occasions, you may want to know how followers are engaging with influencers on a day-to-today basis. But keep in mind that daily engagement rates can vary depending on how regular and on which days your potential influencers release new posts.

Here’s the formula:

Daily ER = (Total daily engagements / Total number of followers) x 100

5. Engagement Rate by Views (ER Views)

Social media platforms that allow video content can also measure engagement rates based on the number of views. However, keep in mind that the calculations treat full video views and partial views equally. So you won’t know if the majority of the viewers watched only 1 minute of the video or if they watched the full 10 minutes.

Here’s the formula:

ER Views = (Total video engagements / Total views) x 100

Engagement Rate Calculator

Not a huge fan of doing your own math? then perhaps you’d be more comfortable using a free influencer engagement rate calculator? We have tracked down a few good ones for you.

1. Instagram Engagement Calculator – here’s a free calculator you can use to assess influencers on Instagram. You just need to input the influencer’s Instagram handle and the tool does all the work. You get 3 free daily calculations.
2. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok Engagement Calculator – allow you to get engagement reports from 3 different social media platforms. To get hold of a full report, you need to subscribe to their newsletter.
3. Instagram Engagement Rate Calculator – offers detailed results including graphs and even shows the influencers’ recent posts. To get the results you just need to fill in the influencers’ usernames.

Top Metrics When Choosing An Influencer

So now you know all about influencer engagement rates. But how does it compare with other metrics used when deciding which influencers to work with? According to surveys sent out to marketers, engagement rate is the preferred metric.

Here are the top 5 metrics:

• Engagement rate (82.4%)
• Content quality (64.7%)
• Number of followers (55.9%)
• Influencer language (57.8%)
• Influencer location (50%)