Engagement Rate is Dead, Part 1: “An Ancient Formula”
Social Media Marketing has a central KPI: Engagement Rate. It has two main formulas these days. Both are wrong.
It was 2010. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Social media marketing was a newborn baby and we were unknowingly building its foundations at the agencies.
It was a world where even Instagram did not exist yet. Facebook and Twitter were our core social marketing channels. Largest brands were just building their follower base.
It was a world where we posted something on Facebook, and it reached at least half of our followers.
There were no promoted posts, no messages. There was no Facebook Business.
Social media was completely different 15 year ago. Many people are still using the Engagement Rate formula of that age.
I don’t think there is a single person who works on social media and does not calculate Engagement Rate.
Which formula do you use?
There are basically two these days:
ER = Number of Post Engagements / Number of Followers
or
ER = Number of Post Engagements / Post Reach
Bad news: Both are wrong. Good news: There is another way.
Let’s get rid of the “wronger” one, first.
If you ask a statistician for the sensible way to measure engagement, they will tell you the second one makes more sense.
Why?
Because ER is a measurement about a post’s success, and Number of Followers has little to do with that.
First problem is the Follower List.
Fact:
Honestly, almost no brand has any idea who their followers are today.
Some followed you 10 years ago for a single post, some others came for an old discount campaign, some are there for a series of ads you had in the past.
God forbid, some of your followers might even be bought by a former employee.
So, the Number of Followers has no place in your success measurement.
How come it’s in the formula then? Why does it still appear when you Google “Engagement Rate”?
Because 15 years ago, it was useful.
Back in 2010, there were no promoted posts. Each content reached more or less the same percentage of an account’s followers, and it reached nobody but those followers.
Followers were more relevant to what that account was doing at the moment.
Follower Lists were not an accumulated mess 10 years ago.
So, while we were dividing the Number of Engagements with Number of Followers, we were actually using it as a proxy for Post Reach.
And it was more useful than Reach, because it was public. We could calculate the ER for competition with this formula. It enabled approximations for comparisons.
Today, Post Reach algorithm changes continuously, and it has no stable relationship with the Number of Followers.
Meaning:
Number of Followers has no place in the ER formula today. It tells you nothing.
That leaves the other one: “Number of Engagements / Post Reach”
What’s wrong with that one?
Let’s leave that to the next article.
Cover photo by @coldbeer. https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-white-photo-of-a-woman-using-a-vintage-computer-12950487/
