What is a Good Engagement Rate on Instagram?
Understand what a good engagement rate is for an Instagram influencer
Recently on the Scrunch blog, we’ve looked at engagement rate and defined what it is, and why it is so important in influencer marketing. Now, we’re weighing in on what exactly a good engagement rate is on Instagram and how you can find out the expected engagement rate of an influencer you are planning to collaborate with.
The Equation
If you’ve read our previous blog posts “What is Engagement Rate and Why is it Important in Influencer Marketing?” and “How To Measure An Influencer’s Engagement Rate”, you’ll know a bit about engagement rates on Instagram.
To calculate an engagement rate on Instagram, follow the steps below:
Look at all of the influencers posts for the last 30 days and add up the total number of likes and comments on each post (e.g. if there are 17 posts in the last 30 days, add up the number of likes and comments on each of the 17 posts).
Divide that number by the number of posts there are in the last 30 days (e.g. divide the total number of likes and comments from above, by the number of posts - 17 in this example).
Now that you have the average engagements per post, divide that by the number of followers the influencer has.
Finally, times the number above by 100, to turn the numbers into a percentage (the percentage will usually be between 0 and 10). This is the engagement rate of the influencer on Instagram.
It's a very manual process, especially if you are trying to work out the engagement rate of a list of 30 influencers. So, instead of doing it manually, you can sign up to Scrunch and see the engagement rate of each influencer in the Directory, which has over 20 million influencer profiles. The Starter Plan is free and will help you get started with influencer marketing and understand the engagement rate of each influencer you are considering working with.
Making Sense of The Numbers
Once you have the engagement rate, you can start to analyze and understand what the number actually means and whether it is good or bad. Below is an industry standard guideline so you can benchmark results:
Less than 1% = low engagement rate
Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
Above 6% = very high engagement rate
In summary, as an industry standard, an engagement rate on Instagram between 1% and 3% is generally good, it is the average we see on an influencer's profile. If the engagement rate is higher than 3%, that is a good sign that their audience is very engaged with their content, and if it is below 1%, it means their audience as a whole is not very engaged with their content.
Keep in mind, a number of things influence engagement rate on Instagram, such as the time of each individual post, the frequency of posting, the number of followers, the content and messaging and the Instagram algorithm (and the limitations that sometimes come with it).
So when you are deciding what influencer to work with, or comparing a cohort of influencers, make sure you consider engagement rate. It's an important metric to consider and should not be ignored when choosing influencers for your campaign.
If you have any questions about engagement rates on Instagram, get in touch to chat with our team any time.
