In today’s highly competitive business environment, having a good social strategy is paramount for your business. In 2018, Facebooks remains one of the most popular channels used by top B2C and B2B brands. Statistics show that active users on Facebook jumped from 1.94 billion in March 2017 to 2.2 billion as of March 2018; and the number of mobile daily users have been increasing over the past few years. These statistics continue to highlight the importance of running digital marketing campaigns on Facebook.
It goes without saying that engagement plays an essential role in digital marketing campaigns. Why is engagement rate important? Because it tells you how well individuals interact with your Facebook content. Engagement rate is an indicator of whether individuals find your content interesting, resonant, and worth interacting with.
How do we calculate Facebook engagement rate? Interestingly, marketers and businesses may calculate Facebook engagement rate in different ways. Before we dive into the various ways of calculating Facebook engagement rate, let’s first look at what some of the most commonly used digital marketing terms mean.
Now that you have a general understanding of these commonly used social media marketing terms, let’s talk about the different types of measurement methods for Facebook engagement rate, as well as their pros and cons.
1) Engagement Rate = Total Engagements/Followers
Followers/fans are those individuals whom your post could potentially be directly exposed to. This type of calculation measures engagement on a per follower/fan basis.
Pros: Easy to calculate; follower/fan-base quality assessment.
Cons: Non-follower engagement is not taken into account at all.
2) Engagement Rate = Total Engagements/Reaches
Reaches refer to the number of individuals that you post is exposed to. This type of calculation measures engagement on a per individual basis.
Pros: Post quality assessment
Cons: Impression frequency is not taken into consideration
3) Engagement Rate = Total Engagements/Impressions
Impressions refer to the number of times your content is viewed/displayed. This type of calculation measures engagement on a per view/display basis.
Pros: Useful metric for measuring cost per thousand (CPM)
Cons: Variable frequency can lead to inconsistent results (impression = reach x frequency).
Okay. We have covered 3 types of Facebook engagement rate measurement method. Let’s discuss what a good Facebook engagement rate actually is.
- For the fan/follower-based measurement method, a Facebook engagement rate that’s above 1% is considered good. If your posts continuously have a lower than 1% engagement rate, chances are you have a very inactive follower base and your followers aren’t engaged with your content. You should work out a strategy to re-energise your content and engage with your followers/fans again.
- For the reach- and impression-based measurement method, a 1% - 2% Facebook engagement rate is considered good. This is because promoted content is usually tailored to a unique group of audience. You can select the targeting criteria before promoting the content. If your posts have a lower than 0.7% engagement rate on average, you may need to rework your targeting criteria as you could be targeting the wrong audience. Also, it’s possible that the content you created is just not as engaging as you thought it would be.
To sum up, there are different types of measurement methods to calculate Facebook engagement rate. It’s crucial for businesses and marketers to choose campaign KPIs that best align with their goals and objectives. It’s time for you to start putting more effort into deciding on how the campaign results can be categorised and used to improve your future campaign performance.
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