Why Engagement is More Important than Followers

By Emily Klempel, Social Media Manager @ Foodie Tribe

Having a large following on social media is just the first step in growing your brand, but follower count alone does not produce brand awareness if they’re not engaging on your posts. Engagement, or interactions on a post, go far beyond just liking a post. It’s any way that someone interacts with a social media post that they just don’t scroll past, such as liking, commenting, sharing, saving, clicking on links, and watching a video. Here are a few reasons why we at Foodie Tribe prioritize engagement over follower counts:

Engagement affects your content’s reach

Have you ever noticed that you rarely see posts from some people you follow on Instagram? This is because you aren’t interacting with their posts so Instagram won’t show them to you as much. Your feed is filled with posts from accounts that you interact with more or posts that a lot of people are engaging with.  

As a business account, you’ll see that your post reach is lower than your follower count. Instagram isn’t going to show everything you post to all your followers. However, the more people that engage with your posts the more people Instagram will show the post to. So even if you have 100K followers your posts may reach 5,000 or 50,000 accounts, depending on your engagement rate.  Every time someone interacts with your content on social media, overall awareness of your brand increases. 

Engagement tells you if your followers resonate with your content

According to Engageware “A study conducted by Market Path found that 83% of companies see brand awareness as a central goal of their social strategy.” To build brand awareness your social media content has to provide some kind of value to your followers. This can be done in multiple ways based on your audience and brand goals. To deliver quality content you have to understand what your followers want from you and how you can provide genuine value. 

Engagement is a great way to know if your followers are resonating with your content. Having high engagement on a post tells you that your followers value that content in some way. While low engagement shows you that your followers likely scrolled past your post without giving it a second thought. 

Engagement can turn followers into customers

If you’re using social media for marketing purposes, your goal is probably to sell a product or service. To be successful, accounts need followers that buy their products, not just like their posts. Social media followers are not necessarily customers of your business, especially if they’re ghost followers. If a follower engages with your post that means you actually have their attention and they are more likely to be a customer as well. Having a large following can be a good thing because you have a potential reach, but if that following isn’t turning into customers, you’ll have a low ROI. 

How should you calculate engagement rate?

Knowing your average engagement rate is a great way to understand if your content is resonating with your followers. Here at Foodie Tribe, we like to calculate engagement rate using impressions, not followers. Why? Because impressions will give you a more realistic insight into how followers are reacting to your content. Like we said, if you have 100k followers, not all 100k will see your post. So let’s say your post had 10,000 impressions. That’s 10,000 people that actually viewed your post. Now of those 10,000 people, how many took an action? That’s a more accurate representation of your engagement rate! Use the following formula to calculate your engagement rate:

Engagement Rate on a post = Total Engagements (likes, comments, shares, saves) / Total Impressions x 100

One of the main things to ask yourself when trying to create engaging content is “Will my followers want to share this with their friends and family?” It’s important that your brand is seen as authentic and relatable so your followers don’t picture you as a soulless robot. You want your followers to be trusting and loyal so you can build a community! 

Looking for some help to spruce up your brand’s social media strategy and boost engagement? We can help with that! Reach out to us here to set up some time to chat.