If you use social media frequently and follow any digital influencers, you’ve probably noticed that they’re always encouraging their followers to “like” and comment on their posts, some even joke around asking people to help with their “engagement”.
Others adopt bolder strategies, promising prizes to followers who comment the most or react to the most Stories, for example. But do you know why they are so interested in your likes and comments?
It all comes down to the famous “engagement”. The term gained strength with the rise of social networks and content creators and means nothing more than participation in something. In the case of influencers, engagement is the participation of followers in their profile, whether by liking, commenting or even sharing the posts.
Engagement in the digital scenario is any interaction we have with posts on social media, whether comments, reactions, shares, likes, it is any action that the user actively takes with a publication”, explained the SEO coordinator of the digital marketing agency UK, with SmmStore UK.
Why is like so important?
Engagement is a way for digital creators to show companies and brands that their profile followers are active and, consequently, will generate results in possible closed advertising. And it is through the infamous “ads” that influencers make money.
“Engagement is one of the metrics used by an advertiser to decide to use a digital influencer in a project and also for the influencer to price their work. Furthermore, it is an indication of the influence of that profile in the decision-making of those who follow it. “An audience can be engaged because of the influencer’s authority on a given subject, their knowledge, their position or even the relationship/way they interact with their audience,” he continued.
Engagement is also essential to verify the real fame of a digital content creator; after all, the practice of buying followers is very common in this environment.
However, there is little point in having many followers if your engagement is weak, this shows that people do not really follow you and, often, that these profiles in the “Followers” tab may have been bought – the infamous bots.
Engagement often serves to measure the ‘quality’ of a profile, as there is no point in an influencer/company having 1 million followers if this is not reflected in interactions. Thus, the number of followers can be a double-edged sword, as it draws attention due to the volume, but it also raises suspicion if the engagement is not proportional.
How to measure engagement?
Explained that the metric for measuring a profile’s engagement involves the following calculation: likes and comments (+ other interaction metrics that you, the advertiser, consider relevant) ÷ number of followers x 100 = engagement rate based on followers.
“Currently, Meta’s analytics tools provide this data already tabulated and easily accessible for companies to calculate the evolution of this rate in their profiles. In fact, it is important to note that to access this type of tool, you need to have a company or content creator profile on social media.
