What Instagram engagement is and how to calculate it automatically

Are you thinking about creating an influencer campaign for your business? Do you want to know the impact of your Instagram account posts? And if your audience is as loyal as you thought? Well, if your answer is yes to any of these questions, stick around and I’ll explain a little bit about what this is all about.

What is Instagram Engagement?

Instagram engagement rate is an indicator of the level of commitment and interaction that the audience has with a particular brand on this social network. When we talk about engagement, we have to take into account certain aspects:

• It’s a very variable concept over time. You can have good interaction at certain times of the year, with certain publications, or even with certain fashions.
• A large audience does not always generate good engagement. In fact, if you have a lot of followers, the engagement rates tend to be lower.
• Engagement is part of a strategy. This metric alone will not sell your products or services. You can have lots of followers interacting with your content, but they won’t necessarily buy from you. You need to include goals, optimized sales pages where you offer your services or products, additional metrics, etc.

How does Rafflys calculate the engagement rate?

Well, now that you know what Instagram engagement is and some of its characteristics, let’s get down to the important stuff…. How do we measure it?

If you want to do it manually, you’ll have to go back to your math books and brush up on your calculus lessons. If you’re short on time and prefer to have this tedious part done automatically and for free, just click on our tool to calculate Instagram engagement.

It takes into account the 18 most recent posts (including posts, videos, reels, carousels) and averages them to give you a broader view of your engagement rate.

What interactions are taken into account when calculating audience engagement?

Rafflys evaluates the following for each post:

• Likes and comments on your posts.
• Followers.
• The mentions of your account.
• The number of saved posts from your account.
• The number of times a post has been shared.
• The #hashtags associated with your brand.
• Direct messages.
• Clicks on links.

A high engagement rate on Instagram is crucial for measuring the success of your content strategy, identifying user interest trends, and evaluating influencer collaborations.

What is the data that appears in the tool’s results?

When we search for a specific influencer (or our own brand) in the app to calculate Instagram engagement, we get the following data:

• Number of followers.
• Number of accounts followed.
• Number of posts.

So far, these are the numbers you can find on Instagram, then comes the most interesting part:

• Engagement rate: this is the rate I told you about above.
• Average likes per post: An average of the last 18 posts.
• Average comments per post: An average also done over the last 18 posts.

It then compares the engagement found to the general rate to let you know if the account is below or above the average engagement rate.

Check out all the features of Makayla| NYC Vegan Foodie’s account. His engagement rate is extremely high, reflecting the high level of audience interaction with his content.

What level of engagement is considered successful?

Generally speaking, the average interaction rate is between 1% and 5%. There are several factors that affect this. One of the most important is having a large number of followers. While this gives your account more visibility, it is more difficult to maintain a high engagement rate.

What is the point of calculating the engagement rate?

Ok, once I have the data, what do I do with it?

Knowing whether the engagement rate of your Instagram account is high or low is useful not only to make or break your day, but also to optimize certain aspects of your communication strategy on Instagram. Let’s see why you need to know your company’s engagement rate:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of your content strategy: Engagement is a clear measure of how your followers are responding to the content you publish or promote. A high engagement rate indicates that your content is relevant and appealing to your audience, and if you are promoting your products or services, this translates directly into sales. On the other hand, a low engagement rate may indicate that you need to change your strategy to generate more interaction and participation.
• Identify interest trends: By analyzing the engagement rate of different publications, you can determine what type of content resonates best with your audience. This allows you to adjust your content strategy to focus on topics or formats that generate more engagement and participation. For example, if you see that posts with images have a higher engagement rate than text posts, you can prioritize the use of images in your future posts.
• Evaluate the impact of influencer collaborations: If you’re working with influencers to promote your business or products on Instagram, knowing the engagement rate of their accounts is critical to evaluating the effectiveness of this type of strategy. A high engagement rate on an influencer’s posts indicates that their audience is highly engaged and more likely to respond positively to recommendations or promotions that the influencer makes on behalf of your brand.

In this regard, there are different types of influencers (depending on the number of Instagram followers they have) and, therefore, different successful engagement rates:

Type	ER Average	ER Good	ER Excellent
Nano-influencers  (5-10k followers)	2,6%	5,9%	11,2%
Micro-influencers (10-100k followers)	1,8%	4,1%	8,1%
Macro-influencers (100k-1m followers)	1,5%	3,6%	7,3%
Celebrities (+1m followers)	1,5%	3,7%	7,2%

• Compare with your competition: By knowing the engagement rate of your Instagram account, you can compare your performance to your competitors in the same industry or market niche. This gives you valuable information about how you’re positioning yourself relative to other brands, and helps you identify areas where you can improve your content strategy or differentiate yourself from the competition to attract more attention and audience engagement.
• Optimize your marketing metrics: Calculating your engagement rate will help you evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of your Instagram marketing efforts. By understanding how much your followers are interacting with your content, you can determine if you are achieving your goals and effectively utilizing your resources and budget on this platform. This allows you to make informed decisions about how to most effectively allocate your marketing resources to maximize impact and get a greater return on your Instagram investment.

How can I boost my engagement rate?

If, after reviewing your engagement rate, you think your Instagram account needs a lift to optimize your content strategy on this network, here are some tips to help you achieve that goal:

• Get to know your audience: Or rather, your potential customers, the people most likely to buy your services or products. Conduct surveys, ask for their opinions, and publish content that is new, original, and interesting to your audience.
• Stay in touch with your community: Reply or respond to useful comments, clarify doubts, answer questions, etc.
• Don’t forget to publish: If your feed is not updated with information about your products or services, news, promotions or discounts, your audience’s level of interaction will decrease. If your main communication strategy is on Instagram, be consistent and post at strategic times for your audience.
• Create engaging content: As the first law, it is crucial that your audience receives valuable content in relation to the useful and new information you can provide. But if you entertain them with enjoyable or fun content, you will get more interactions. Go for reels, stories, quality images, and carousels.
• Do #hashtags have an impact? Of course they do! Choose the ones that align with your brand and are original. You can create your own hashtags and add them to your Instagram posts.

Improve your engagement rate on Instagram with relevant and engaging content, genuine interaction with your followers, strategic collaborations with influencers, and constant analysis of your metrics.

What are you waiting for to optimize your Instagram communication strategy? Calculate the engagement of your account (and the influencers you want to work with) in seconds with Rafflys. If you need help, don’t hesitate to contact our team!