Engagement Rate is Dead, Part 2: “What does success mean for you?”
You will recognize success only after you define it. Otherwise, you will be lost in measuring everything. That’s why we need to retire “Engagement Rate”.
There are two popular formulas to calculate Engagement Rate, and the one with the Number of Followers should be abandoned completely. I made that much clear in the previous article.
But the other formula is not great. It just has less problems:
“ER = Number of Post Engagements / Post Reach”
The reason it’s great is that it can compare any set of content among each other as long as they have enough Reach (around at least a few hundred).
If the content works and you aim at Engagement, more Post Reach should lead to more Engagement. In the end, it’s a percentage.
It lets you even compare a promoted post with 1M Reach with another with 1K.
But it has the problematic term: “Engagement”.
What’s wrong with it?
Actually, there’s nothing wrong with measuring “Engagement”, if you are solely trying to measure “Attention”. But you shouldn’t assign any positive value to that attention.
👉🏼 Good marketing is never interested in “Attention” per se. We want to know whether it’s positive or negative.
In the end, a boycott might carry a stronger attention than thousands of purchase.
Why isn’t “Engagement”, as it’s defined, positive?
Simple: would you be happy if someone told you that one of your posts got 10X comments when compared to others?
No. You’d want to see those comments to be sure if everything is ok.
“Number of Engagements” is a mix of a variety of engagements today. Likes, Comments, Saves, Shares, and Clicks all mean different reactions to your post.
The Number of Likes means an instant interest in the post, while the Number of Comments (and that of Replies on Twitter) means some type of conversation.
The Number of Saves (and that of Bookmarks on Twitter) means long term interest in the topic of the content, while the Number of Shares (and that of Retweets) means viral value.
When you add all these up together, what do you get?
Not much.
Engagement Rate originally used to mean “Like Rate” on Facebook and “Retweet and Favorite Rate” on Twitter. It was mostly about instant interest.
Not today. So, what is the solution?
We need better formulas.
Although the old formula is an old solution, old solutions often come handy in finding new ones.
The essence of the formula makes sense.
You expect some result (R) from a post, and you calculate:
👉🏼 “R Rate” = Number of “R”s on the Post / Post Reach
Statistically, this measures how successful your post is in terms of generating whatever that “R” is. You take a type of engagement, and see how many of it your post generates.
Taking a specific type of Engagement and dividing it by Post Reach makes much more sense due to another reason, too: variables in this type of calculation mostly work through Unique User Accounts (except for Comments). It has no redundancy, in contrast with the calculation where you add the Like, Comment, and Save all coming from the same user, and then base your measurement on it.
(Note: LinkedIn doesn’t give you Post Reach as of April 2024. So on here, unfortunately, you need to divide R by Impressions)
So, let’s generate some formulas to actually measure things:
A Set of Engagement Formulas
Engagement is not a monolith; it’s a set of different actions. Each action should measure a relevant reaction.
Influence Rate (IR)
= Divide the Number of Likes by Post Reach
Do you want to know if your content leaves a positive impression at first glance or not? To measure that, divide the Number of Likes by Post Reach. It will give you how many positive reactions it gets per 100 users.
This will measure the success of your visual and verbal messaging: the top of the content’s attention funnel. Influence Rate will show you how good the content suits its channel.
Appeal Rate (AR)
= Divide the Number of Saves (or Bookmarks) by Post Reach
You might be more interested in your content’s ability to generate long term interest rather than instant influence. Saves on Instagram/Pinterest and Bookmarks on Twitter symbolize that. When you divide the Number of Saves (or Bookmarks) by Post Reach, you can compare each content in terms of long term attention it gets. The higher AR is, the more that content puts your brand inside that user’s collections.
Diffusion Rate (DR)
= Divide the Number of Shares (or Retweets) by Post Reach
In a world where Impression means Money, and users are spending more and more time on closed groups, diffusion is necessary for any content.
Diffusion Rate, meaning the % of users that share your content with others, gives that. Whatever message you put on that content must be valuable for users if a content has high DR: they are acting as its messengers.
It rarely means trouble — and when it does, you will definitely get signals through comments. If people do not openly give negative reactions on that content, high DR means that your content is doing well.
High-DR content generally has an invisible aspect, too: many users prefer to share it through links or screenshots.
Conversation Rate (CR)
= Divide the Number of Comments (or Replies) by Post Reach
While some brands want a peaceful life, others invest in triggering as many conversations as possible.
👉🏼 Some types of products or services, such as snacks and entertainment might like any increase in the Number of Comments.
A concert venue would want any posts teasing a new event get many comments — because those comments are probably questions about dates, prices or other details.
For such brands, Conversation Rate is golden, and it should be measured specifically. These brands are not expected to have much creativity in content lingo: in the end, they post too many to be original every time. They just need to find the right wording/visual and use it as long as it works. Dividing the Number of Comments by Post Reach will reveal which formula works.
Remember: Engagement is not indispensable
A content can be successful only if you know what success means. Each of the formulas above are relevant only when it’s relevant to what you expect from that content. However, you might be expecting something else.
👉🏼 Say you’re in a prestigious celebrity collaboration, and you have invested in ads to reach new potential consumers.
If so, don’t expect any type of Engagement on that content to surpass your organic content: you have put your money on Impressions. Measure something relevant, such as CPM.
Or you might be trying to generate traffic for your website through content. If so, remember that it’s very rare for a user to both engage with a content and click on a link. Only one of these happen most of the time. If you are investing in clicks, measure clicks, measure CTR.
In short, any KPI is just that: a “Key Performance Indicator”. It should measure “performance”, whatever that means.
The first step to measuring success is defining it, not losing yourself in a sea of possible KPIs.
