How to calculate the engagement rate on Instagram?

So let's say you have found a list of influencers matching your brand image, values, and needs. The next step is analyzing their profile to increase your chances of working with a good influencer. How exactly you might be thinking... Easy! You should check their key performance indicators such as their account growth, audience quality, account activity, and many more, but first and foremost, their engagement rate!

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This metric is by war one of the most important indicators to choose a good influencer. And that is what we will be discussing in this article: the importance of the engagement rate and how to calculate an engagement rate on Instagram. So without further due, let's get right to it!

Is it important to calculate the engagement rate on Instagram?

So what exactly is the engagement rate? This metric measures the frequency of an audience interacting with an influencer's content. In other words, are users commenting and liking the influencer's posts, sharing their content to other contacts, resharing their stories etc. 

 If a content creator has a negative or very low engagement rate, it means the influencer's audience doesn't interact with their content. This is problematic since influencer partnership objectives are gaining visibility, boosting your sales, or growing your brand's engagement. Working with an influencer with a positive engagement rate is essential for all three goals. If content creator doesn't communicate with their audience, they don't have trust-based relationships. Thus their community is less committed and won't necessarily pay attention to the product placement.

However, if the influencer has a great engagement rate, their audience trusts their judgment and will be more receptive to partnerships. Moreover, when posting the collab, the content creator can also give their opinion on the product, share their likes about the partnership, specify the brand's values, why they like your brand, tell the story behind the product etc. And since their followers are used to communicating with the influencer, they won't hesitate to ask a few questions about the product, share their doubts, ask for more details etc. 

Here's a quick recap on why it is essential to calculate the engagement rate in Instagram:

• Certainty: by calculating an influencer's engagement rate, you reduce the risk of working with an influencer that doesn't communicate with their audience. Thus multiplying your chances of planning a successful partnership.
• The influencer has a trust-based relationship with their community. Because content creators often communicate with their followers, their audience trusts the quality of their collabs. Thus, they are more likely to purchase after coming through the collab. 
• Positive impact on your brand image. Since the influencer has many channels to communicate with their audience, they also have many formats to share their brand opinions. Thus influencers can share their appreciation for your brand in the comments, the caption, on a live, in their story etc. 
• Evaluating your influencer campaign: after working with an influencer, you can track the evolution of the post's reactions. Thanks to the engagement, you can define if the influencer collab was successful or not.

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Now that we understand the importance of calculating an influencer's engagement rate on Instagram let's look at how to calculate this key performance indicator correctly! 

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Ways to calculate the engagement rate on Instagram.

To calculate an influencer's engagement rate on Instagram, many engagement metrics must be taken into account. On Instagram the essential ones are:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Saves
• Direct messages
• Mentions

Yet there are many other engagement metrics you can use to calculate an engagement rate on Instagram, such as:

• Profile visits
• Comment replies 
• Reposts (on stories)

P.S.: If you calculate an influencer campaign engagement rate, you can also consider the hashtag of the brand campaign used by other users.

The first and most common way to calculate an influencer's engagement rate on Instagram is to calculate their Engagement Rate by Reach as such:

Engagement Rate by Reach (ERR) = total engagement per post/reach per post * 100

Average ERR = total ERR (all ERR from posts added up together)/ number of posts 

A second method would be to calculate the Engagement Rate per Post:

Engagement Rate per Post = total engagement on a post / total number of followers * 100

Average Engagement Rate per Post = total engagement rate per post / total posts

Finally, you can use other methods depending on the factors you prioritize and value for your influencer campaign. For instance, if your objective is to gain visibility, you could use the Engagement Rate by Views or the Engagement Rate by impressions. However, you could also calculate their Daily Engagement Rate, which can be useful to plan on which day your influencer should post your collab and choose the day with the highest engagement rate. Moreover, it gives you insight into a time-based metric, contrary to a content-based one, which we calculated in the ER by Post.

Now there is an easier and quicker way to calculate an influencer's engagement rate... Favikon does it for you! On Favikon you'll find all the scores details such as the content creator's engagement rate, audience quality, buzz ratio, content diversity, account activity, and many other KPIs. Finally, Favikon regroups all these scores into one Favikon Score. This grade helps brands lower the risk of working with the wrong influencer by analyzing the audits of the influencers they are interested in. And voila! With a single click, you can search for your favorite influencer, have a look at their engagement rate, and plan a successful partnership. 

And that's not it! Favikon can also help you evaluate the evolution of your influencer campaigns. With the campaign feature, you can enter your influencer collab. Favikon will track all posts published by your influencers and analyze their engagement (number of likes, comments, shares, etc) to tell you if your influencer campaign is doing well. And all that in real-time!

To wrap it all in a shell, engagement rate is crucial in influencer marketing, especially when planning your influencer collaborations. When finding the perfect influencer for your brand (matching your values, objectives, and needs), you should always check their metrics and scores before contacting them. It lowers the risk of planning an influencer campaign with zero return, low sales, and a negative return on investment. Moreover, if you are willing to build a long-term partnership with an influencer, the engagement rate will be twice as important. Why so? Because since the audience of content creators with a great engagement rate is committed, they pay attention to the influencers' content and interact with them and other followers. Thus, you can be confident that they will notice that your brand appeared numerous times on their feed, so you'll have higher chances of boosting your sales by working with an influencer with a long-term partnership.