Glossary
Engagement rate
Engagement rate is the share of people who did something with a post or story, such as reply, share or tap, instead of just watching it.
What is engagement rate?
Engagement rate measures how many people acted on a post instead of scrolling past it. On an Instagram story the actions are replies (emoji reactions included), shares, profile visits, follows and taps on a link. Add them up, divide by the audience, multiply by 100, and you have a percentage.
The catch is the audience you divide by. Some tools use followers, some use reach, some use views, and the three give very different numbers for the same story. A rate is only comparable with another rate calculated the same way, so check which one you are looking at before you compare two promoters or two events.
How to calculate it
There are three common versions, each answering a slightly different question:
- By followers: interactions ÷ followers. Handy for comparing accounts of different sizes, but harsh on stories, which only a fraction of followers ever open.
- By reach: interactions ÷ accounts reached. Tells you how the people who actually saw it responded.
- By views: interactions ÷ story views. A little lower than by reach, since repeat views count, and the easiest to read next to a CPM.
Example: two promoters, one night
Say two promoters post for the same open air in Cologne. One has 12,000 followers; her story gets 1,500 views and 15 interactions, a rate of 1% by views. The other has 1,800 followers; his story gets 400 views and 22 interactions, 5.5%. The first put the date in front of more people. The second started more conversations, and replies like "who else is going?" are often how a group of friends decides to come. Both stories were useful, for different things.
Tips for better story engagement
- Give people something to do: a link sticker to the tickets, a question, a poll. A story with nothing to tap cannot collect taps.
- Read rates per story, not as one average across a campaign. An average hides the one post that worked.
- Be wary of very high rates on tiny audiences. Ten replies from 60 views is a group chat, not a campaign.
- Look at what the interactions were. Follows and link taps usually say more about ticket sales than a row of emoji reactions.
Engagement on Parmo
Organizer stats have an Engagement column, per event and per story: replies, shares, profile visits, follows and link taps added up and divided by views. The figures come from Instagram Insights on each verified story. An event nobody has viewed yet shows no rate rather than a zero, because nobody engaging and nobody having seen it are different things. See Reading your stats.
Common questions
- What is a good engagement rate on Instagram stories?
- There is no fixed benchmark, because it depends on audience size and on whether the story asks for anything. Small, close audiences usually engage at higher rates than large ones.
- How do you calculate engagement rate?
- Add up the interactions (replies, shares, profile visits, follows, link taps), divide by followers, reach or views, and multiply by 100. Always say which of the three you divided by.
- Is engagement rate more important than reach?
- They answer different questions. Reach says how many people heard about the night; engagement rate says how many of them cared enough to act.