Engagement rate
A metric that measures how much your audience interacts with a post relative to its reach or follower count — a quick proxy for content quality.
What is engagement rate?
Engagement rate is the percentage of an audience that interacted with a post — likes, comments, shares, saves, clicks — divided by either the post's reach or the account's follower count. It tells you how much your content actually moved people, not just how many eyeballs scrolled past.
How it's calculated
Two common formulas:
Engagement rate by reach:
(total interactions / reach) × 100
Engagement rate by followers:
(total interactions / followers) × 100
Reach-based rates are more honest because reach reflects who actually saw the post; follower-based rates penalize bigger accounts whose followers see only a fraction of their posts.
What counts as an interaction
Each network counts differently, but the general bucket: likes/reactions, comments, shares/reposts, saves/bookmarks, link clicks, profile clicks, and sometimes story replies or DMs from a post.
Benchmarks
Engagement rates vary by network. Rough industry benchmarks: Instagram around 0.5–2%, LinkedIn around 1–3%, X around 0.05–0.3%, TikTok often 5–10%+ on reach. These shift constantly, so compare to your own historical numbers, not blanket averages.
Why TryPost surfaces it
TryPost shows engagement rate per post and per network so you can see which formats and topics actually land with your audience — and double down on them in the calendar.