Your business manages social media profiles to reach more people and to communicate. Social media engagement refers to the level of interaction between your business and your audience.

Engagement can include likes, comments, shares, direct messages, and all kinds of interaction on your social media posts and profiles.

Engagement is an important metric for your business to track. It tells you the level of interest and connection that people have with your brand.

A high level of engagement will lead to increased brand awareness, customer loyalty, and the opportunity to make new sales.

Measuring Social Media Engagement

Your business should be measuring the rate of social media engagement often.

The engagement rate is calculated as the total number of interactions your content receives divided by your total number of followers, multiplied by 100%.

Engagement Rate = Total Engagement ÷ Total Followers x 100%

For example, Business #1 posted to their 10,000 followers.
They received 50 likes | 10 comments | 5 shares
Their total engagement would be 65 (50+10+5).
65 ÷ 10,000 x 100% = 0.65% Engagement Rate
Ooh, that’s not very good.

We all have to strive for something better than that!

My posts typically fall into the Average Engagement (1% – 3.5%). Trying to get people excited about marketing tips can be a challenge.

When your engagement rate is higher, it tells the social media algorithm that people found value in your content. Your future content will be more likely to be seen by more people through organic reach.

Why Engagement Matters on Social Media

Engagement on your profiles has a major impact on everything from brand awareness to customer loyalty.

Without engagement, social media is just… media.

In recent years, organic reach has dropped on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram – except for accounts with higher social media engagement.

The higher the engagement, the least those accounts are affected.

That means that social media posts with more active and thoughtful interactions will get more reach.

You Have to Be Social, Too!

Engagement goes two ways! People expect you to engage in return.
You have to socialize by interacting with those who engage on your profiles and posts.

Reply to comments on posts.

Engage with posts that mention your business.

Respond to direct messages (DMs) in a timely manner.

Avoid Fake Social Media Engagement

I post about this a lot: Do not buy followers.

In the engagement rate example, my guess is that Business #1 purchased followers who will never engage. This hurts Business #1’s engagement rate – now and forever.

Avoid fake social media “engagement” and never purchase followers. These are fake accounts who will never engage with your content and they will never be your customer.

Social media engagement needs to be real interactions with real people.

Marcie Wolf is an approachable web developer known for providing unique, dynamic, and trusted business marketing services for more than twenty years. Learn more at abuzzcreative.com.