The Many Definitions of Social Media “Engagement”

If you're evaluating social platform effectiveness for your brand, hear me out.

Almost everyone knows that measuring engagement rate – (total engagements / total impressions) * 100 – is important in social.

In my experience, far fewer people know that the engagement rates reported directly by social platforms (i.e., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.) are all calculated differently from one another.

Because they all define "engagements" differently. And none of them are super open about it.

Here's an example:

🐦 Twitter Post Engagements Definition:
- Retweets
- Favorites
- Replies
- URL Clicks
- Hashtag Clicks
- Mention Clicks
- Media Views

📷 Instagram Post Engagements Definition:
- Likes (Comparable to Twitter "Favorites")
- Shares (Comparable to Twitter "Retweets")
- Comments (Comparable to Twitter "Replies")
- Saves

As you can see, there are far more opportunities for a Tweet to receive an "engagement," as the definition of "engagement" is significantly expanded for Tweets vs. Instagram posts.

The issue with this? Given that the definition of the denominator (impressions) remains the same across both platforms, having a variable definition for the numerator (engagement) makes cross-channel comparison with platform-provided engagement rate figures a terrible mistake.

Assuming that audience sizes, publishing activity, and content quality are comparable across Instagram and Twitter, the odds are stacked heavily in Twitter's favor to have a (much) higher engagement rate – leading many marketers to make decisions on where to put time, effort, and (most importantly) budget based on flawed/incomplete data.

I'm gonna cut myself off now, but if you want to know how I suggest managing this pesky little detail, feel free to reach out via email. :)