You know how people always talk about football stats and use them to compare players? Well, the same is true for content creators! Your content creator stats are used by potential brand partners (or even customers) to look at how effective your content is and how well it performs, and they ultimately use this in deciding whether or not they want to work with you.
I know it sounds kind of intimidating and confusing (I sure felt this way when I started!), but these stats aren’t here to make you feel insecure compared to others; they’re meant to help you see what you do really well and what you need to improve on to achieve your goals! I’ve broken down the two most talked about content creator stats, reach & engagement rate, into how you can calculate it, what it means, and how you can use this info when talking with brands. I’ve also included some other helpful stats you may want to consider when you’re looking to pitch to brands, so read on…
How to calculate reach on Instagram…
Instagram reach is basically the amount of unique people who see your posts. It’s different than Instagram impressions, which count everyone who viewed your content, even if they viewed it multiple times from the same account. In essence, if the same person sees your post more than once, it won’t increase your reach, but it will increase your impressions; your reach only increases with each new unique view. (Confused yet?)
Instagram reach is important because, as I’m sure you’re familiar with, Instagram’s algorithm likes to show people content they’ll like and find interesting. If your post reaches a lot of people, that means your post was interesting and therefore shown to more users. Usually, the more followers you have, the lower your reach rate is.
So, here’s how to calculate average reach on Instagram:
On your Instagram profile, tap on Insights and you can see the amount of people you reached in the last 7 days. Divide this number by 7 to get your average reach per day. Take this number and divide it by the amount of followers you have and you’ll get a percentage describing your average reach. For example, if you have 400 reach and 1000 followers, your reach rate is 40%. I personally like calculating it this way because using the reach from just a single post isn’t the most accurate; instead, using the average reach per day helps even things out if you had one or two posts perform poorly. See the graphic below for more info…
If you need help increasing your reach rate, try things to increase engagement rate, such as reciprocating more comments, engaging with followers you may not see on your feed, and engaging with a similar niche via the Instagram explore page.
How to calculate engagement rate on Instagram…
Now for the Instagram metric everyone talks about: Engagement Rate. Basically, of all the people who saw your stuff, how many were motivated to like, comment, and save your post? Here’s how you calculate Instagram engagement rate…
Take the average likes and comments you get per week (you can find this info under your profile Insights), add them together, then divide that number by the number of followers you have and multiply by 100. See the graphic below…
This is important to helping you determine how engaging your content is (ie how much people value it). If you want to increase your Instagram engagement rate, consider looking at your best performing posts in terms of likes and comments, and creating more content like that to see how it performs.
Other helpful social media stats…
Here are some other stats to include in a media kit, or just look at in general to help you better understand and plan the direction of your content:
- Average or monthly views on Pinterest and YouTube
- Average Instagram Reels views
- Average comments
- Average Facebook page follows/likes
- Average likes per Instagram post
- Number of YouTube subscribers
- Number of Pinterest and blog followers
Again, all these stats aren’t meant to cause anxiety, and you definitely shouldn’t stress over the numbers, but you should be aware of where you stand and how you can improve in order to grow! Little changes here and there in your content and engagement can really boost your Instagram following. Plus, having a strong presence on other platforms you can show off to brands will help increase your chances of landing a paid brand deal!
I hope these tips help, drop a comment below if you have questions & I’d be happy to help!!
Xx Tabi
