Is My Social Media Engagement Good?

What's Happening 

Industry benchmark reports are rolling out for 2022. The results are hugely helpful in guiding your social media efforts for the year and giving you a perspective on what’s “normal” or "good" for your industry.

Usually, it’s a big morale booster because you find out you’re doing better than you realized!

If you’re unfamiliar, these reports are independent studies done on hundreds of business social media accounts across many industries.

I pick one to use year-over-year, thus comparing apples to apples, so to speak. I’ve historically used this one from Rival IQ, but there’s also a great one from Social Insider.

I like these reports specifically because they focus on the results businesses garnered on social media, not influencers or average users.

Use it for Your Business

The Rival IQ report tells me what’s trending and engagement benchmarks on each platform.

Report Takeaways

First, I read through the whole report and make note of anything I could use to improve my strategies this year.

The takeaways (directly quoted) from this year’s report:

1. Brands seeing less organic engagement this year: Engagement rates are on the decline for Instagram for the third year in a row but holding pretty steady for Facebook and Twitter.
2. Posting frequency on the decline: Post frequency is flat on Instagram but took a ~20% dive on Facebook and Twitter.
3. It’s all about the holiday hashtags: Almost every industry earned top engagement rates from holiday-hashtagged posts, while contests and giveaways were less popular than in other years.*
4. Every brand should post Reels on Instagram: Reels have officially entered the chat on Instagram, dethroning ever-popular carousels for many industries in the race for the most engaging post type.
5. TikTok is topping the charts: With a median engagement rate of 5.69%, TikTok was every industry’s best friend this year.

*As discussed last week, Instagram rebalanced the algorithm in January. Reels and carousels now perform equally.

Compare My Stats to Industry Benchmarks

Secondly, I note the engagement rates for each platform for the industries my clients are in. I add these engagement rates as a benchmark line in my monthly social media stat reports.

If you’ve never tracked your stats before, it doesn’t have to be fancy. You can open a Google Sheet and put the months in the columns. In the rows, list each platform as headers and then list the metrics you will track under each platform.

I recommend tracking each of these metrics per platform:

• Follower count
• Engagement rate (total likes/comments/shares divided by follower count)
• Website referrals (# clicks to your website)
• Most popular posts

You can consult the report for your industry benchmarks, but if you don’t fall under one of those, here are the median engagement rates across all industries:

• Facebook = .06%
• Instagram = .47%
• Twitter = .035%
• TikTok = 5.69%

An example to give you some perspective: If you have 1,000 Facebook followers and you post each weekday (25 times over the month), and you collectively get 10 likes on those posts – you hit the industry benchmark!

That’s right. You don’t even need to get an engagement on every post to be doing well on Facebook right now.

I hope you see now how tracing your stats can be a huge relief and help you focus on what’s actually happening on your social media, not what you think should be happening.

Relevancy Rating

Just because it's new doesn't mean it's worth your time: Is learning where your social stands compared to your industry worth your time?

Yes!: I give it 5 out of 5 thumbs up.

Tracking stats is hardly what I consider a good time, but it’s essential to helping you grow your social. After all, you can’t manage it if you don’t measure it.

Social media is constantly changing. Sign up for This Week in Social Media Marketing to stay informed of the trends and decide whether it’s worth your time to try them.