Episode 101: How Small Owners Can Check Their Engagement Rate on Instagram and Be Strategic With It
Are you using Instagram for your business? Do you use a tool to check your engagement rate? Have you ever wondered whether or not your content is worth showing to your audience? In this quick tip episode with Fiona, she shares a tool she uses to check how her Instagram is doing in terms of engagement and how she can use this to gauge what strategy works for her and which ones do not.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Good Business Group
Engagement Rate
Using An Engagement Calculator
How It Can Help You
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Episode 101 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. I had so much feedback on the episode, I think it was Episode 99, all about setting limits on Instagram. I also did a live in the Good Business Group, all about kind of how to use Instagram for business without spending all of your time on it and kind of getting sucked down the rabbit hole.
And if you're not already in the Good Business Group that I have on Facebook, come on over and join a 1000+ small business owners inside, it's free. You can catch the video of my talk about, you know, how to use Instagram for business without spending your life on it over there. So we'll link to that in the show notes. But it's also just the Good Business Group on Facebook.
So anyway, today is a tip episode. And I thought because of the feedback around Instagram, I would do another quick tip episode about Instagram. So let's get into it, shall we? So today, it is a Tuesday, which means it's a tip, tool, or tactic. And today I'm going to talk about a tool. Now, this is a tool that has been around for many years for in particular Instagram. And it's something that can help you if you are using Instagram for business but can help you be a bit more strategic with it.
So the tool that I'm talking about is the Phlanx Engagement Calculator. And of course, we'll link to the actual tool in the show notes. But if you have a pen and paper and you're not driving or anything, you can find it at phlanx.com/engagement-calculator. And what that is, is really an opportunity for you to plug in your handle, your Instagram handle. You can put it in anyone's at all.
And what it will do is all find the engagement right now. This is really important for so many reasons. One, it's often how I mean, no one knows exactly how it works, but it's often how the algorithm will calculate things to see whether or not, you know, your content is worth showing to your audience, but also to potential audience. So, showing in things like the explore feed showing on all sorts of ways and the engagement calculator basically spits out what your engagement number is.
It also shows you your average interactions per post, which is likes and comments. And of course, we know that engagement comes from so much more than that. It comes from people saving and sharing your content, sending you DMs, you know, sending you emoji replies in stories, watching you realise all of that adds up to your engagement. But the Phlanx Engagement Calculator also gives you the average engagement rate on Instagram for people with certain following amounts. So, say, for instance, if you have 20,000 to 100,000, this sort of tool says that your average or the average engagement rate for people with 20,000-200,000 followers is 2.15%.
The other thing that's really interesting about this is that people are not often looking at the kind of engagement rate unless you have a social media manager or unless you're really awesome and you're checking analytics. But I find that a lot of people do not track this. And the thing that's really interesting to look at is that you might go, oh, my gosh, you know, I've got 5000 followers, but your engagement rate might be less than one per cent, which means that less than one percent of those people are actively engaging or even caring about what you're putting out.
Now, I know last time I was talking about the limits for Instagram, and I think knowing your engagement rate is really good because, one, it shows you just how few people are actually seeing what you're putting out, but also it gives you a benchmark. And I think this is such a great thing to have on any kind of analytics that you have for business, because once you have a benchmark, you can do the work to change it.
So if you go over to the Phlanx Engagement Calculator and you say, OK, let's say that example, you've got 5000 followers, the engagement rates, 1%. Now, you know that the people who are engaged, that small percentage are actually coming over to your website or they're joining your email list or, you know, because you're tracking analytics on your website or your e-commerce store, that people who come from Instagram as a traffic source convert higher than you know.
OK, I've got a 1% engagement rate on Instagram. What if I could up that to 2%? What would that look like with the follow through? As in more people are engaged on Instagram, more people from Instagram taking action, such as coming to your website, signing up to an email, getting in touch with you, and then, you know, because you've got analytics on the other side of the website or e-commerce store that those people are more likely to convert.
So I know that might be a lot to take in, especially if you're not used to discussing analytics or looking at them. But the tool, which is really what I'm talking about, is the Phlanx Engagement Calculator for Instagram. And the reason that I think it's so important is, one, it'll show you what your average engagement rate is so that you can set a benchmark, but also so that you realise, like I say all the time, Instagram is not a marketing strategy on its own.
And you might realise, oh, my gosh, I've spent all this time trying to grow these followers, and yet the engagement rate hasn't grown. So I've got you know, it's like all these people standing in a physical shop, none of them are buying. None of them are talking to. None of them are putting their email address down at the point of sale. So I love Instagram. It's been such a great tool for me. And I don't want to just spend my whole life bagging it out.
I think it's fantastic in so many ways. But I also think people need to use it strategically. And it can't be something that you spend 90% of your marketing time on that you get really stressed out that kind of plays with your mental health and yet you're potentially. Not even having that great engagement right on it and then on the other side, when you look at your traffic sources, is Instagram converting or are people that come to your website or your e-commerce store from Instagram actually doing anything once they get there?
And it might be that they are that they are the most highly engaged, awesome people to come to your website. And so if you use the Phlanx Engagement Calculator, you might realise, OK, you know, for the next two months I'm going to do more reels. I'm going to get into the DMs, I'm going to, you know, be social on social media and then I'm going to track if our engagement rate goes up. I'm also going to track on the other side how many conversions come through our site where Instagram is the traffic source.
So I hope that makes sense. As mentioned before, the tool that I'm talking about is the Phlanx Engagement Calculator, and you can find it at phlanx.com/engagement-calculator. We will of course, link to that in the show notes and you can find those over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/101. As this is episode 101, I would love to know if you use this calculator, if you have another tool that you think is awesome for Instagram, how you track how your Instagram is performing in terms of being a marketing channel for your business.
I would just yet love to know what you think of this. So please come on over to Instagram and send me a DM at @mydailybusinesscoach and if you found this episode useful, I would love it so much. If you take, you know, two, three seconds to hit the stars and leave a review. It really, really helps us get found by other small business owners. All right. That's it for now. See you next time.
Bye. Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at my daily business. Go to Dotcom or hit me up on Instagram at my daily business coach.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
