We Analyzed 2,810 Pages to Calculate Average Facebook Engagement Rate

Want to know the average Facebook engagement rate? Then you’ve landed on the right article.

Iconosquare, providing in-depth Facebook analytics for worldwide brands, has recently analyzed 2,810 Facebook Business Pages to identify what a good Facebook engagement rate looks like for industries like Shopping & Retail, Media, Food & Beverage, Consumer Brands, Travel, Public Figures, and more.

We looked into metrics like the average Facebook Page Engagement rate, engagement rate per post, post frequency per day, FB posts’ click-through rates, and also reaction distributions.

Curious to see what the stats look like?

Then keep reading 🤓

First of all, while it may seem like the days of Facebook are gone, it’s not really true. Billions of people still use Facebook every day, so businesses do need to maintain their presence on the platform. Facebook Stories are on the rise, too.

All this means that brands need to be developing tactics to engage their Facebook audience and ensure their fans are interested in the content published — and are clicking through.

And that said, monitoring your Facebook engagement rate is often the way to indicate if those tactics are successful or not.

However, answering the question “What’s the average Facebook engagement rate?” can be tricky. As I explained previously when we published a similar study for Instagram, engagement rates can vastly differ, depending on a variety of factors: your industry, your location, the size of your following and, of course, the quality of your content.

But then again, a little research never hurt anybody!

So recently, we looked into 2,810 Facebook Business Pages to find out what engagement on Facebook truly looks like amongst dozens of industries of different fan sizes.

We discovered that, globally, the average page engagement rate on Facebook is 28.3%, while the average engagement rate per post is 3.22% and the average engagement on reach is 0.09%.

What do these stats mean?

Average Fan’s Page Engagement Rate: Your page engagement (likes, comments, clicks and shares) divided by your number of fans (page likes). For example: 100 people clicked on my page/content and I have 250 fans. My Facebook Page’s engagement rate is 40%.

Average Engagement Rate per Post: Is calculated by taking the total engagement (likes, comments, clicks and shares) received, divided by the number of fans at the time of each post during the selected date range.

Average Engagement on Reach: Your page engagement (likes, comments, clicks and shares) divided by the number of people you’ve reached. For example: 25 people clicked on your page/content and you have reached 218 people. Therefore, your engagement rate on reach is 11.47%.

For more detailed explanations of Facebook metrics, check out our FAQ.

Across all industries, here are the averages:

• Average Facebook page engagement rate: 28.3%
• Average engagement rate per post: 3.22%
• Average engagement on reach: 0.09%
• Average number of posts per day: 1.5
• Average click-through rate: 3.1%
• Average reaction distribution:
• “Like”: 77.55%
• “Love”: 15.44%
• “Wow”: 1.78%
• “Haha”: 3.19%
• “Sad”: 0.83%
• “Angry”: 1.21%

A global average engagement rate of 28.3% seems super high, doesn’t it?

At first glance, yes.

But let’s look at it from a different perspective. Keep in mind that the total engagement rate of your fan page accumulates all actions of engagement, including clicks-through — and on Facebook, more people click than like nowadays.

Thus, it makes more sense to focus on your average engagement rate per post, as it would be a more accurate representation of how your content is actually performing.

Here are the benchmarks of the top industries for 15 key areas of Facebook engagement:

How to turn your Facebook engagement metrics into actionable tactics?

So now that you know what the average Facebook engagement rate is, the question is: How can you improve yours?

Don’t forget: numbers are just numbers if you don’t act upon them. Interpreting your KPIs and developing an action plan based on that interpretation can — and will — lead to boosting your Facebook page’s overall performance. So why not do it?

We previously published an in-depth guide on how to boost your Facebook engagement organically, but here are a few quick tips you can try today:

1. Audit your Facebook performance

Whether you like it or not, a Facebook audit is not something you can do once and forget about. For it to be successful, you need to be constantly monitoring what’s happening, what’s working, and what isn’t — otherwise, it’s easy to lose direction.

Whether you decide to look at the last year, or the last 3 months (a year could mean a lot of data to sift through!), you want to be looking at the fluctuation of your engagement rate and figure out what you posted when your engagement peaked – and what you did when it troughed.

2. Engage your audience

You can also be proactive and ask questions in your posts, or run surveys or polls on relevant topics. You could ask something as simple as whether they want to see a certain feature implemented on your website!

Make your audience feel valued and involved and they’re more likely to want to stick around and engage with your content.

3. UGC on Facebook

Speaking of making your fans feel valued, another good way to boost Facebook engagement is to share their content.

Shine a spotlight on your community by featuring content they’ve either shared with you through a hashtag campaign, or through a competition. Just pick a simple but effective theme, a prize, and a hashtag, and encourage users to get involved.

4. Be responsive

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: engagement feeds engagement.

If you want to grow your engagement rate, you’ve got to engage and respond to those who have engaged with you.

Keep an eye on post comments and be sure to answer everyone – even if they’re commenting to complain about something! Showing your Facebook fans that you’re listening to them and value their opinion will encourage them to engage with your brand. They’ll also remember how helpful you were next time they consider buying from you.

5. Be authentic

Most importantly, don’t forget to let your authenticity shine through. A sense of humor can get you through a lot, for example. Show some personality! Remember that you’re creating content for real people, not robots.

See where you stand

Did you know that Iconosquare can help you benchmark your Facebook performance against your competitors? It’s a useful feature that compares your Facebook engagement metrics to the rest of businesses in your same business category.

Log into Iconosquare and go to Listening → Industry Benchmark, and you’ll see 10 comparative metrics based on data collected over the last 30 days.

Try Iconosquare’s Facebook Industry Benchmarks feature
to see where you stand!

Conclusion

While the average Facebook engagement rate may be 28.3%, it makes more sense to look at your average engagement rate per post, which accounts for 3.22% globally across all industries.

That said, keep in mind that even this benchmark is very individual. It depends on which industry and country you’re in, how big your audience is and ultimately, how engaging your content is.

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