Followers matter but engagement matters more!
Written by Nyemade Boiwu
Having a successful Social Media presence is about more than just being seen. Many businesses understand the importance of having Instagram but they don’t get why they’re not seeing the growth they want. This is because they’re using their page for the purpose of being seen but forgetting the most critical part – engagement. Engagement is what shows that your followers are vested in you. When they like or comment on your posts that’s how they show their support.
The first step is to figure out your current engagement. The formula is your impressions divided by your followers multiplied by 100. If you’re a business you should have a public business profile. This will allow you to have access to your analytics which will give you your impressions. If you don’t have a business profile you can still manually figure out your engagement.
First get your average sum of likes and comments per month. Add your likes and comments for all posts in the month. Take that total and divide it by the total number of posts made that month. Next, divide that sum by the total number of followers you have. Multiple that number by 100 to get the %.
Now that you’ve done the math you might a little worried because your percent is low. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems. The truth is the average engagement rate on IG is 1% – 3%. If your number is above that give yourself a pat on the back because you’re doing Instagram right. If you number is below that don’t worry there are ways to bring that number up.
If you’re a business it’s important to know your total engagement percentage for a few reasons.
- You can use that number to market yourself to other businesses. Digital marketing is huge right now so if you can show a business why they should pay you to promote their product it’s a great way to make additional income
- You can use that number to figure out what resonates with your current followers. The formula above can be used for individual posts as well as your monthly average. Once you see which posts get the most engagement you give your audience more of what they want.
- As a business you can calculate other people’s engagement before reaching out to them for a collaboration. A lot of people get impressed by the number of followers a page has. While that number is important, if their engagement is below 1% they’re not having much of an impact on their followers. This means collaboration with them may not generate the influx in followers or business you’re looking for. Often pages with lower follower counts may have higher engagement. This means their followers are more invested in them and therefore more likely to support their collaborations in a way that’s beneficial to you.
There are many different ways to increase your engagement. The thing to remember is that if you want others to engage with you, you need to engage with them. True growth comes from viewing your IG as a relationship. Don’t just post and run. Reply back to your followers when they comment. When you include several hashtags in your post, go into each of those and like the pictures of other people who have used the same hashtag. Pick a few to leave comments on as well. We all know IG runs all algorithms now so you need to engage with others so they engage with your page. This will help you appear more on the timeline of your followers and even on search pages. It’s time consuming but if you really want to see growth it’s worth it.
Remember: followers matter but engagement matters more!
Learn more about Nyemade Boiwu today! Owner of African Butterfly Business Solutions – a virtual assistant business that specializes in social media!