Working out an influencer's engagement rate, and judging it

Picture two creators. One has 200,000 followers and collects a few hundred likes a post; most of that audience has quietly stopped looking. The other has 20,000 followers and 1,500 likes a post, and the audience is plainly still there. Engagement rate is the figure that exposes the gap, which is why it turns up in nearly every influencer shortlist, pitch and campaign report.

It is also one of the most misread figures in influencer marketing. The arithmetic is easy. The errors creep in through what goes into the sum and what the result is compared with, and if you are paying creators to reach your customers, both matter.

The calculation

The standard version divides interactions by followers:

Engagement rate = likes plus comments, divided by followers, multiplied by 100, then averaged across recent posts.

The averaging is the important part, because one post only tells you about that post. Take roughly the last twelve, add up the interactions on each, divide by the follower count and average the results. Leave giveaways out: "comment to win" posts inflate comments in a way ordinary content never repeats.

An illustrative example: a creator has 40,000 Instagram followers, and their last twelve posts average 900 likes and 60 comments. That is 960 interactions divided by 40,000, multiplied by 100, or 2.4 percent.

Decide what counts as an interaction

On Instagram the usual pair is likes and comments, since both are visible on every public post. TikTok shows shares publicly as well, and a share says a great deal about whether someone cared enough to pass a video on, so a TikTok rate usually counts likes, comments and shares. Saves, clicks and profile visits appear only in the creator's own insights.

Any of these choices can be defended. What cannot be defended is counting shares and saves for one creator but not another, then ranking them side by side. Choose one set of interactions per platform and apply it to every creator you assess.

Per follower or per view?

Some agencies and platforms divide by reach or views instead of followers. The result is higher, because it only counts the people who actually saw the post. That is a useful figure, particularly on TikTok, where videos routinely reach people who do not follow the account at all, but it is a different figure.

A per-follower rate can be worked out for any public account, so it is the right one for comparing creators before you book them. A per-reach rate relies on the creator's insights, so it suits reporting on a campaign that has already run. Whoever prepares the numbers, you or your agency, should state which method was used every time. A report that blends the two is comparing unlike things.

Good depends on the size of the account

Engagement rate drops as an account grows. Smaller audiences tend to sit closer to the creator, while larger ones gather people who followed once and stopped looking. So 2 percent is weak for an account with 5,000 followers and strong for one with a million. Only ever judge a creator against accounts of a similar size.

The ranges below are the working ranges behind our free influencer tools. They are rounded figures of the kind reported again and again across the industry, not a dataset of Gulf creators, and they are there to flag whether a number is unusual rather than to grade it to a decimal point. Each gives the low end, the typical figure and the high end, calculated per follower.

• Instagram, under 10,000 followers: 2 to 7 percent, typically around 4.
• Instagram, 10,000 to 100,000 followers: 1 to 4 percent, typically around 2.2.
• Instagram, 100,000 to 1 million followers: 0.7 to 3 percent, typically around 1.5.
• Instagram, over 1 million followers: 0.4 to 2 percent, typically around 1.
• TikTok, under 10,000 followers: 6 to 20 percent, typically around 12.
• TikTok, 10,000 to 100,000 followers: 4 to 14 percent, typically around 8.
• TikTok, 100,000 to 1 million followers: 3 to 10 percent, typically around 6.
• TikTok, over 1 million followers: 2 to 8 percent, typically around 4.

TikTok runs higher because its rate includes shares and because the platform shows videos well beyond the follower base, so never set a TikTok rate against an Instagram one. The creator in the worked example, at 2.4 percent with 40,000 Instagram followers, sits comfortably within the typical range for that size.

Numbers that deserve a second look

A rate well below the range for the account's size is the clearest sign of an audience that is not paying attention, and sometimes of followers that were bought. A rate far above the range deserves scrutiny too. Check whether one viral post is propping up the average, whether comments look unusually high against likes, which can point to an engagement group, and whether the comments are so generic they could sit under any post.

Engagement rate also measures what an audience does, not who is in it. A creator can post an excellent rate to an audience that lives in the wrong country. Before booking, ask for audience insights by country, age and gender, especially when the campaign is aimed at a single Gulf market.

A filter, not a verdict

Engagement rate narrows a long list down to the creators worth a closer look. It does not tell you whom to book. That decision still rests on the audience, the fit with your brand, the quality of the content and what the creator charges for it.

If you are putting together an influencer campaign and would like a second opinion on the shortlist, from engagement to where the audience actually lives, get in touch with ALXO. We are happy to go through the numbers with you.