How is Instagram Engagement Rate Calculated?

This question is simple but has a complex answer: how to calculate engagement rate on Instagram?

For finding the engagement rate on Instagram, you may require of dividing the engagement, either by impressions or followers.

So, what’s the debate about?

Well, main issue is that actually, there exist few methods to calculate engagement rate. Talking about the best way, well, it depends on person you ask this question!

So, let’s begin with the part of engagement.  

As many people find out the engagement while including comments and likes, others think that they should include also that how often posts were saved.

Also, there exists an ever-present thing about if likes and Buy Instagram Custom Comments must be equally treated or no. as in, is one comment equal to one like for engagement?

A reason of this coming up is due to few accounts receive thousands and thousands of the comments and just few hundred likes, while some other accounts receive thousands of thousands of likes and just few comments. If likes and comments are regarded equal, then those accounts which get many comments however less likes, would get disadvantage in terms of engagement.

Also, these complications don’t stop there!

Thus, where does these leave is? Does any perfect method exist there to calculate engagement rate on Instagram?

Following are the highly three famous ways given for calculation of engagement rate, have a look at them and decide which way suits you.

#1: Followers

So, the first method to calculate the engagement rate on Instagram is dividing the total amount of comments and likes by the follower count. After then, multiply it by 100 for getting percentage. The benefit if using this way is that as the data utilized in formula is available publically, it gets easier for benchmarking against the other accounts.

This is the reason that many content and social strategists prefer to 10000 Instagram Followers. Impressions can give much more accuracy for a brand, however often while comparing, when you know that you got a competition and this won’t be correct to make use different formula to calculate. This is a strong argument to use followers for calculations than impressions. While you try to compare the engagement rate with the competitors, making use of followers can be actually the best.

Same is true while evaluating your engagement rate or rate of a strong influencer. While using the Instagram Analytics, take a snapshot of the best posts during last one week or last 3 months. The top best posts are present in the Overview section, present at bottom of screen.

Quickly, you will be knowing the amount of comments and likes which posts got. Also, another benefit if using Instagram Analytics is availability of engagement rate calculation!                                

#2: Impressions

Second way is to divide the total comments and likes by the impressions and multiply with 100 for getting percentage. It is a slight accurate way as it considers the total amount of users who see your posts actually instead of the total amount of followers (who may not see the posts).

Actually, with the help of impressions, you can have a better knowledge of amount of users for santander online business banking who choose and see for either engaging to or not engaging with the posts, which is very essential as per definition of the engagement rate.

Obviously, as just you notice impressions of your account, it is also very much impossible to compare the engagement rate of other accounts by using this procedure.

#3: True Engagement & impressions

Third method is to make use of the true engagement for calculating the engagement rate. This method includes not only comments and likes, but also the amount of times the posts were saved. For the business accounts, this data can be found out in the content insights, however actually, Instagram includes the saved posts in the engagement metric, thus you only need to divide the engagement by the impressions and then multiply it with 100.

As users use to comment and likes the posts mostly instead of saving them, the calculations must not be different, however there is no harm to include the saved posts in the calculation.

Which is the best? Well, …it Depends!

Unluckily, there exists no clear “the best method” for calculating the Instagram engagement rate! It totally depends on the goal and if you have your own account or not. For instance, if you analyze simply your own account’s engagement rate, impression method will be the best as it provides very accurate results of how content resonates with users who see your posts.      

While if the goal is just to benchmark the engagement rate of your competitors, or while you’re calculating the engagement rate of your potential influencer partner, follower’s method is the best as data will be available publically.