How to calculate your Instagram engagement rate

Have you ever wondered how to calculate your Instagram engagement rate?

Today’s tip is on how to calculate and improve your engagement rate so you can better measure your content’s performance.

updated December 2022

Why should you understand your engagement rate?

Your engagement rate is the primary indicator of how positively your audience is responding to your content. If your content is encouraging your followers to like, share, save and comment, then you will have a good engagement rate (and therefore a better return on your investment in Instagram).

Understanding engagement rates can also be helpful for benchmarking your content and profile’s performance against similar Instagram profiles in your industry/niche.

Knowledge of engagement rates (and how to calculate them) is important if you are considering working with an Instagram influencer or taking part in a collaboration with other Instagram profiles. Knowing someone’s engagement rate will help you assess the value in the collaboration.

Once you have an understanding of your engagement rate and what content performs well, you can be more strategic in your content creation and make better use of your time on Instagram.

What is the average Instagram engagement rate?

The average engagement rate will vary across different industry/niches.

In 2020 when this post was originally written, the following rates were the benchmarks:

Less than 1% = poor engagement rate
Between 1% – 3% = low/average engagement rate
Between 3% – 6% = average/good/high engagement rate
Above 6% = very high engagement rate

In late 2022 when this post was updated, the following rates were the benchmarks:

Less than 0.5% = poor engagement rate
Between 1% – 2% = average engagement rate
Between 2% – 4% = high engagement rate
Above 4% = very high engagement rate

How to calculate your Instagram engagement rate

There are several methods to calculate your Instagram engagement rate, however, the formula below is used by many social media managers and analysts.

Divide a post’s total number of likes and comments by your follower count, and then multiply by 100 to give you a percentage figure (that is your engagement rate).

See the formula below:

For example, to find the engagement rate on a post from my annemaree.c Instagram account I used the formula above:

To get a more comprehensive figure and understand a profile’s total engagement rate you could analyse several posts rather than just one post (which may have performed higher or lower than average).

How to improve your engagement rate

If you have a high engagement rate – congrats – you are doing Insta right!

A high engagement rate means that a large section of your followers are actively engaging with your content. Keep up the good work!

If your engagement rate is on the lower side, it could be a result of several factors.

If you need to improve your engagement rate, consider implementing the following tips:

Are you posting at the optimum time (when most of your followers are online)?
Is your caption engaging?
Are you using relevant hashtags? (read more about hashtags here and here).
Is your content ‘on-brand’?
Are you quickly responding to comments?
Is your image high-quality?
Have you also shared your post in your Story?