How Is Facebook Engagement Measured?

Marketers know that being able to obtain unbiased measurements of their outreach and promotional success is crucial. Clients and brands want to know that the advertising and social media dollars they’re spending are being put to good use. Providing the kind of proof necessary to establish your campaigns are worthwhile can be a complex endeavor. Fortunately, Facebook offers a tool specifically for use within its platform that allows you, as a Page admin, to gain valuable insight into the level of engagement for each post you make. Let’s take a look at how Facebook engagement is measured.

About Facebook Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is just one of the metrics collected within Facebook Insights. With this resource you can examine such data points as fan and organic reach, people talking about each post, click-through rate and negative engagement rate.

All of these criteria serve unique purposes and illustrate various points of interest. Facebook defines engagement rate as, “the number of people who clicked anywhere on your post.” Besides knowing the total number of people who have likely viewed your post, or your reach, engagement is of particular interest to marketers. This concept includes any actions taken on your page such as likes, comments, negative feedback and sharing.

How to Measure Facebook Engagement

Your Facebook engagement rate is, essentially, the percentage of your total audience that acted on or engaged with your content. There is more than one way to calculate this. Let’s focus on using the data from Facebook Insights since that information is so handily available within the platform itself. With this information, you can calculate your brand’s reach by incorporating the sum of all actions taken on your posts and the reach. This is more accurate than basing engagement on numbers of likes, shares and comments. To calculate your Facebook engagement rate of a post using this data, you add the number of people who liked, commented on, shared or clicked on your post and divide that sum by the total number of people who saw your post. The resulting percentage is your engagement rate.

Why Engagement Rate Is Important

Knowing your engagement is valuable for a few reasons. It allows you to compare rates on different posts on your page. This insight can give you a clue as to the kinds of content that perform best with your audience. You can also get a feel for the engagement of those in your same indusrty by adding the total likes, shares and comments on a particular post and then dividing that number by the number of total fans the competitor has. This comparative analysis can show you the level of your audience engagement in comparison to that of your competition. You can also tell the strength of your content in relation to a competing brand.

Facebook engagement is one of the most important metrics available to marketing teams. You can see now that measuring your engagement isn’t all that complicated, but doing so can provide you with the kind of valuable information necessary for continued growth. Keeping up with your brand’s social media performance is essential to maintaining a competitive edge.

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