The importance of the engagement rate: an interesting indicator for companies
Project Week and Learnings
My Task: This week was all about analyzing marketing key figures and afterwards building an explanatory Dashboard giving helpful insights. First I checked the data in detail and looked at all the tables and possible numbers to work with in more detail. My Plan: Above all, I wanted to generate insights. My question was "what could be new to the Stakeholder?" For these questions I like to use calculations ("calculated fields"). Of course I did some backround search and jumped into Marketing topics, but apart from this, I would like to use my old university book for this*(source is cited below). It is a nice overview of all interesting KPI's ("bwl key figures") in German-English. It always served as a good inspiration to me and reminds me of what key figures are really important to Stakeholders.
But while we were focusing on the numbers, I stumbled across another metric: the "Engagement Rate".
What I found regarding Marketing topics was the "Conversion Rate" meaning to what extent online advertising contacts lead to online orders. For those calculations I had no suitable data. But it reminded me of something similar. How about analyzing something regarding social media success. I did some further research and finally found out how to calculate the engagement rate which I implemented in PowerBI by this:
Engagement Rate = DIVIDE([Comments] + [Likes] + [Shares],[Followers gained])
I realized that engagement rate can tell a lot about how a target audience responds to a company's messaging and content.
Yes, ROI (Return of Investment) is important, no question. But the engagement rate offers a different perspective, a look at the relationship between companies and customers beyond the pure numbers. It shows how strong the bond with a brand is, how deep the interest in its content goes and how active the community around it is. I want to keep this in mind for future analyses.
The client confirmed the importance of ROI, but the engagement rate was not that important to him. I wondered if it doesn't also tell a valuable story about the interactions between companies and their target audience. I thought it is a really helpful measure, but the client was not excited.
Of ourse, I was challenged and I found a really interesting study on this topic* (cited also below). The authors analyze the relationship between the interaction rates (likes, comments, shares) of social media posts and the number of new followers or subscribers. The results show that a higher interaction rate with the posts leads to a significant increase in followers. This study provides important insights into the way how organizations can increase their engagement with stakeholders through targeted social media communication. So next time I am prepared to use uncommon KPI's and to have a better answer as to why this metric could be interesting.
For me this study clarifies my thoughts and motivations behind looking at the engagement rate.
Interesting Sources
*"https://www.beck-shop.de/Erlen-Isaak-BWL-Kennzahlen-Deutsch-Englisch/product/13442875"
Debnath, R., Bardhan, R., Shah, D.U. et al. Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector. Sci Rep 12, 19017 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23624-9