Engagements on social media platforms is a metric to measure the interaction of the user with the content. The forms of interaction that are taken into account can vary depending on the social media platform. In general, the metric contains:
According to the platform additional metrics may be included into engagement. As an example for LinkedIn, Follows count as a part of o the engagement metric. Twitter further counts Retweets, Replies and Follows towards the engagement.
Reasons to track Engagement
Tracking engagement is especially important in social media marketing. Further it is a component of the engagement rate, which highlights the ratio between number of users reached (depending on the platform it may be impressions or reach) and the number of interactions derived from the audience.
Common variations of Engagement
Different social media platforms provide variations of the term engagement. We highlighted the most common ones and shortly explained how the platform defines them.
| Name | Description | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Billed Engagement | Is defined as the total number of billed engagements. Meaning the engagements originated from an Ad. | |
| Media Engagement | Containing the total number of clicks of media across Video, Vines, GIFs, and Images. | |
| Organic Engagement | Including only the engagement steaming from organic activity. | |
| Total Engagement | The metric includes all LinkedIn member interaction with content, paid as well as organic. |
How can tracking Engagement help you to become more data-driven?
One of the most important things to keep in mind, when comparing engagement across channels, is the different definitions from the different providers. Hence further interpretation needs to be made with caution, to mitigate misleading conclusions.
Engagement is a good metric to start with and in combination with for instance community goals, great value can be derived out of the tracking. A comparison of engagement on various posts can give insight into what works best for your audience and followers.
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Additional information about Engagement
- A great read, about the underlying psychology of engagements
- Are you wondering what the difference between engagement and interaction is, read more about it here
- Have you tried these methods to increase engagement?