Social media monitoring firm Socialbakers is switching its metric of choice, now favouring ‘interactions’ (absolute number of likes, comments, and shares) over engagement rate (interactions divided by audience) when looking at brand success on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Until recently the firm advocated tracking Engagement Rate as the best competitive measure to […]
Social media monitoring firm Socialbakers is switching its metric of choice, now favouring ‘interactions’ (absolute number of likes, comments, and shares) over engagement rate (interactions divided by audience) when looking at brand success on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Until recently the firm advocated tracking Engagement Rate as the best competitive measure to understand post performance. Now, they are changing that recommendation to ‘Interactions’.
View a sample comparing the Renault and Citroen car brands in the UK below:
Socialbakers was quick to point out that Engagement Rate remains important and that both metrics heavily correlate.
In a blog post, the firm said: “We have recommended engagement rate to benchmark performance over the past few years because we felt it to be completely transparent and a good proportionate measure – as your engagement rate is interactions divided by audience – allowing you to compare all brands equally.
However, with the rise of News Feed-based advertising, the playing field is no longer leveled, and pages with higher ad budgets are able to boost their engagement rate on a more regular basis as these posts reach more and more non-fans. Basically, for pages and industries that do paid too much, the comparison of engagement is not a measure that would always work (even though in many cases, it is).”
For paid advertising, Socialbakers said that the reach of an average post is split 82% to 18% in favour of fans versus non-fans. With posts that are boosted in the News Feed, this changes to 68% of non-fans seeing the post.
This is a big difference, and the interactions gained from the non-fans affects engagement rate, making it less reliable as a proportionate and public metric.
For interactions the level of interactions is non-dependent on page size and therefore is a fairer metric to measure, the firm said.
Socialbakers concluded by saying: “We recommend that brands follow overall Interactions (Engagement, not Engagement Rate), check the structure of the interactions (i.e. types of interactions – likes, comments, shares), and anchor their interaction levels with comparisons to benchmarks at location and industry level, as well as with competitors. By understanding how your interaction levels are comparing to your industry or within your region you can benchmark your performance, and by understanding the structure of your interactions you can judge value, as naturally a share holds more weight than a simple like.”
Read the full blog post here
