Engagement rate, strictly, is the number of engagements divided by reach on a post.

As a formula, engagement rate is measured like this:

Engagements / Reach

What if you don’t have the reach on the post?

If you don’t own the post in question, or have access to any reports about the post, you won’t be able to measure the pure engagement rate.

This happens often with influencer marketing. If you’re trying to qualify an influencer, it’s helpful to know what their engagement rate is so you can tell if their audiences are engaged — or if they’re just digital ghosts.

What engagement rate measuring tools can I use?

To best way to calculate the engagement rate of an influencer if you don’t have access to their reporting is to use a tool that has access to the Instagram Graph API.

There are plenty of these tools all over the Internet, but at Rooster we use SocialBlade.

What if I want to measure engagement rate manually?

I mean, sure.

If you’re manually measuring an influencer’s engagement rate, the easiest methodology will be to get the engagements on their nine most recent posts, add it all up, divide it by nine, and divide that by the number of followers they have.

As a formula:

Engagements on 9 most recent posts / 9 / number of followers

You will find that tools like SocialBlade and the Instagram Graph API will give different results to your manual measurement. This is because the Instagram Graph API gives access to accurate reach and engagement results.

If you’d like some more help running your influencer campaigns, get in touch with us at Rooster.

Written by Zac van Manen, Rooster’s resident Social Media Manager.