Facebook Engagement Rate Benchmark

Public vs Private Engagement Rate on Facebook

The thing about the Engagement Rate is that there is no industry-standard way that marketers use to calculate it. Instead, there are 2 primary calculations: public engagement rate (Reactions, Comments & Shares divided by Page Likes) and private engagement rate (All 8 Engagements divided by Reach). Check out the full calculations below.

Then to confuse things, there are another 2 methods which are less common but nonetheless used by some marketers. The key is to understand and decide on which version of the Engagement Rate to use and in what context you’re going to use it.

Most marketers use the Public Engagement Rate for competitive analysis and the Private Engagement Rate for owned, historical analysis. The differences between the two rates can be significant, so make sure your stakeholders clearly understand the difference.

Average Facebook Engagement Rate last month

Each month we publish the average Facebook Public and Private Engagement Rate benchmarks based on the hundreds of thousands of Facebook posts from all around the world indexed by Social Status.

The Public Engagement Rate average comes from our Competitor Analytics tool which enables performance tracking of public metrics for all Facebook Pages. The Private Engagement Rate average comes from our Profile Analytics tool which enables performance tracking of all metrics (public & private) for Facebook Pages you admin.

The average Public Engagement Rate on Facebook last month was:

The average Private Engagement Rate on Facebook last month was:

How has the Facebook Engagement Rate changed over time?

This chart shows the historical Facebook Public Engagement Rate for the past year:

Highest engaged posts on Facebook

Below are the highest engaged posts on Facebook last month. Use the Time Interval dropdown to see previous months. These posts have the highest Public Engagement Rate across hundreds of thousands of Facebook posts published last month. You can tap the date on any post to open it directly on Facebook:

How to calculate Engagement Rate on Facebook

As we mentioned in the intro, there are four different ways to calculate the Engagement Rate (ER) on Facebook 

Unfortunately there is no “right or wrong” way to calculate it – just different approaches.

Let’s run through them…

1. Public Engagement Rate
This is the most common method since it’s used to benchmark against competitors. Remember though with the Public Engagement Rate you’re limited to just the publicly viewable interactions only. For Facebook this is Reactions, Comments and Shares:

Post ER = (Reactions + Comments + Shares) divided by Page Likes

Profile ER = Average of all Post ER’s during the given time interval (ie: last month)

Notice how we divide by Page Likes (not Reach). This is because Reach is a private metric and not available publicly. Reach can only be seen by Page Admins. This is why we divide the public Interactions by the Page Likes.

2. Private Engagement Rate
This is the true way to calculate the Facebook Engagement Rate and it is what we recommend for benchmarking your own performance historically over time:

Post ER = (Reactions + Comments + Shares + 3-sec Video Views + Clicks to Play + Photo Views + Link Clicks + Other Clicks) divided by Reach

Profile ER = Average of all Post ER’s during the given time interval (ie: last month)

3. Private Engagement Rate (Reactions, Comments & Shares only)
Some marketers base their Private ER on Reactions, Comments & Shares only:

Post ER = (Reactions + Comments + Shares) divided by Reach

Profile ER = Average of all Post ER’s during the given time interval (ie: last month)

The rationale for this is that Reactions, Comments and Shares are real interactions whereas the others are not only hidden from public view but are also “light-weight” actions. As for Video Views, no physical action takes place but one could argue that someone watching more than 3 seconds of a video is indeed engagement in itself.

4. Private Engagement Rate (based on Impressions)
Some marketers base their Private ER calculation on Impressions instead of Reach:

Post ER = (Reactions + Comments + Shares + 3-sec Video Views + Clicks to Play + Photo Views + Link Clicks + Other Clicks) divided by Impressions

Profile ER = Average of all Post ER’s during the given time interval (ie: last month) This is probably the least common approach. When dividing by Impressions, you’ll end up with a lower Engagement Rate overall which is probably not the best thing when reporting to stakeholders!

What affects the Facebook Engagement Rate?

There are many factors which affect the performance of Facebook posts organically, here are just a few:

– The way people interact with your content (reactions vs comments vs shares)
– Posting different media types (photos vs videos vs links)
– Changes to the Newsfeed algorithm
– Posting about different themes and subjects
– When you post (day and time)
– Tagging others in the post