Engagement rate
Engagement rate measures how actively an audience interacts with content, usually calculated as likes, comments, saves, and shares divided by followers or by reach, expressed as a percentage. A post with 10,000 reach and 500 interactions has a 5% engagement rate on the reach-based calculation.
Why it matters for creators
Raw likes flatter big accounts; engagement rate is the fairer ruler. It tells you how much of the audience that saw a post actually did something with it, which makes a 5,000-follower account comparable to a 500,000-follower one — and it's a number brands look at when pricing partnerships.
It also responds to how you post. Content that invites interaction — a genuine question, a comment-keyword offer, a story poll — earns more comments and replies than content people watch and scroll past. One caution: check which base a number uses before comparing, because rate-by-followers and rate-by-reach can differ a lot on the same post.