What is engagement rate?

Likes, comments, shares and saves on a post, divided by the people who saw it or by follower count.

Engagement rate adds up the actions people take on a post (likes, comments, shares, saves) and divides by an audience number. That audience number varies. Some reports use views, some use reach, some use follower count, so the same post can have three different engagement rates.

Rates are useful for comparing posts of different sizes. They can also hide the most important thing. In a real Arcus audience report for a streaming service, which looked at 293 TikToks young men posted themselves, sincere posts were liked 107 times per 1,000 views and acted-out comedy bits 106 times. The bits reached 42 times as many people. Judged on engagement rate, it was a tie.

Why it matters

It tells you how hard a post landed with the people who saw it. It doesn’t tell you how many people that was.

An example

Example (made-up numbers): post A gets 1,000 views and 100 engagements, a 10% rate. Post B gets 100,000 views and 5,000 engagements, a 5% rate. A wins on rate. B put the brand in front of 100 times as many people and drew 50 times the engagement.

Where it misleads

Comparing engagement rates calculated on different bases, like one report dividing by followers and another by views, or ranking posts on rate without looking at reach.

How Arcus handles it

We show the count and the rate together, say what the rate is divided by, and use the same base for every post and every report.

More in our guide: How to tell which of your posts work