What Is TikTok Engagement Rate and How Does It Impact Influencer Marketing Campaigns?

It is generally accepted that TikTok has a strong impact on the operation of all social networks, and that an influencer’s engagement rate on TikTok has an impact on creators and advertisers.

Well, both statements can be true.

TikTok definitely deserves your attention as, since 2019, it has already gathered more than one billion users, and its popularity continues to grow! Below, we’ll study why TikTok is attractive to advertisers, why they should pay special attention to the engagement rate, and how to make all the necessary calculations and check the creators.

What is ER on TikTok and how to calculate it?

A lively and involved audience makes purchases with greater enthusiasm. In addition, such an audience costs more if you sell ads. The indicator that reflects the interest of the subscribers is the engagement rate.

It has recently become clear that the size of the audience is not as important as its quality: on TikTok, an influencer can have 100,000 subscribers, but if they are not active, then such an audience will not bring any commercial value.

Activity is determined by the number of reactions to the content. These are likes, comments, reposts, and clicks. But calculating ER by simply adding up the sum of all reactions will not work: you need a formula or a special TikTok engagement rate calculator. 

There are two ways to calculate ER by applying the formula:

• Based on reach, that is users who saw the post.
• Based on the number of subscribers.

Many experts prefer the first option since, with its help, it is possible to find out how interested in the publication the audience is. Typically, the share of followers interacting with a post is 10-20% or less. Moreover, a publication is visible to many users who have not yet subscribed to the account.

If you calculate the ER based on the number of subscribers, you will be able to understand the attitude to the publication of only a small part of users. The reaction of non-subscribers interacting with the post will not be taken into account.

When wondering how to calculate the engagement rate, you need to remember that to get correct results, you should focus not on the number of subscribers, but on the overall reach. Then it will be possible to understand the real quality of the posted publication.

However, there are situations when calculating only subscribers is even useful. So it turns out to assess the level of the audience's involvement. It is possible to test the subscriber base – how it responds to content.

Which formula to use?

To calculate the engagement rate on TikTok based on the number of subscribers, you need to use one of the following formulas.

ER = reaction / followers * 100%

ER = responses / coverage * 100%

Reactions include the number of video views, likes, comments, and shares. So it is possible to find out the activity of users in the distribution of content and discussion. The disadvantage of this approach is that it doesn’t consider a post being specific and posted in a particular period.

The above formulas serve as an example of calculating the metric. We recommend using them only for the first evaluation of a TikTok influencer you would like to cooperate with. If you need to understand the general characteristics of a creator’s channel, then you can perform an engagement calculation for all published materials.

You can also calculate ER by the number of posts. For this, similar formulas are used:

ER = post reactions / followers * 100%

ER = post reactions / reach * 100%

It is considered the right decision to measure engagement for specific posts. This way, it is possible to identify patterns and find out whether people are interested in a particular topic.

If the engagement on the topic of the post is above the average coefficient of 10-20%, then the publication is successful. You can ask an influencer to create more content based on such activity to increase audience loyalty and reach new users.

It is worth additionally figuring out the difference between reach and subscriber base indicators. It is not recommended to compare metrics with each other, because the ratio by subscribers is always lower.

For example:

Let's say, an influencer has 1,000 subscribers on the TikTok channel, and the publication got 10 likes. It turns out that ER = 1%. At the same time, only 100 people could see this publication, 40 of which were not subscribed to the channel at all. It turns out that the user engagement rate is 10%. It is this difference that makes it clear that the two approaches cannot be directly compared.

We advise evaluating each type of TikTok engagement rate separately, finding out how much they exceed or lag behind the average for the audience segment. In this way, it will be possible to discover whether an audience with the same interests in the topic of publications has gathered around the TikTok channel. If the answer is positive, then cooperation will be beneficial for both the influencer and the advertiser.

In addition, there is an ER formula for the time interval, which takes into account the average daily user engagement rate and the daily rate. Thus, it is possible to find out the quality of the posts on a particular day. It is possible to understand how subscribers and other users reacted to the publication on a particular TikTok channel during a particular day. In the same way, you can evaluate the posts of a month or specify any other period.

ER marketing has almost become a kind of science that you have to study if you want your advertising campaign to be a success. 

Note that TikTok’s engagement rate is high compared to other social networks, especially for big influencers. While most social media has seen a gradual drop in organic posting activity in recent years, TikTok has seen only a relatively small drop. And most importantly, the engagement rate of TikTok influencers is high at all levels.

However, there has been one notable change in 2021. TikTok now breaks the general rule of social media interaction. Mega-influencers have the highest engagement rate, while small influencers have the lowest, although it is still high compared to other platforms.

Perhaps this is due to the power of the TikTok algorithm in targeting content to the interests of its users. TikTok is probably smart enough to show the videos of its most popular influencers to most of the “For You” users.

What ER is considered good?

Unfortunately, it is rarely possible to certainly point out which TikTok ER is high and which is low enough, since this indicator is influenced by many factors: channel specifics, content type, audience composition, and so on.

However, according to the recent Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, the average TikTok engagement rate is 13%. Each channel should be considered individually. For example, a channel that specializes in creating and selling products for the B2B segment has more problems in achieving good engagement rates.

Do you really need a TikTok engagement calculator?

If you have decided to launch an advertising campaign with a popular TikTok creator, you have several advertising tools available:

• Branded masks and filters – just like on Instagram. Augmented reality (AR) clips are very popular on TikTok, so this kind of integration is the most interesting. The effectiveness of such ads is measured by the number of videos with a branded effect, the number of views of such clips, as well as the number of likes, comments, and shares.
• Native product placement – this type of advertising integration assumes that you will find TikTok influencer suitable creators and agree on a collaboration with them. The reaction of the TikTok audience to native or funny ads is mostly positive, so this type of advertising works quite well.
• Hashtag Challenge is one of the most effective ad formats on TikTok. The mechanics of launching such an advertising campaign involves starting among influencers with a large audience coverage, whose videos gain many views very quickly. The effectiveness of this feature can be measured by the number of views of all user clips that participated in the promo challenge, as well as the number of likes and comments. 

If you decide to search for influencers independently, be prepared for unsystematic pricing. Advertising prices vary depending on formats, topics and other circumstances. However, in almost all cases, one thing remains the same: influencers get paid more if they have a high engagement rate, as well as a large number of live, active followers who interact with their publications.

You can calculate the ER of the most interesting accounts for advertising campaigns using the formulas we’ve discussed above.

There is another way – use a special engagement rate calculator: it is rather easy to use, you only need to enter the total number of likes, total number of followers, and the number of videos. You will get the ER and the approximate earnings per post. Such an app is rather useful, especially if you already know which TikTok creator you would like to cooperate with.

However, you may have doubts about the candidates, how to compare them, how to select the ideal one, and how not to get mad analyzing all the data. In this case, opt for the BuzzGuru discovery and analytics platform.

First of all, on our platform, you will have access to a database including more than 6 million active TikTok creators. Secondly, we offer complete channel analysis and the ER is already calculated for your convenience. You will only need to follow some easy steps:

• On the dashboard, select the “Influencer Discovery” tab and then choose TikTok as a platform you are going to search for an influencer on:

• You will get a list of TikTok creators to choose from:

You can select an influencer by entering the name in the search bar or applying our filters. One of them allows you to filter influencers by the engagement rate:

• When you select an influencer, you are redirected to the page containing all the necessary analytics. On the very top, we’ve collected the most important metrics, including the number of subscribers, the average number of views and likes, the number of comments, and the ER:

• Next, you can get a quick assessment of the channel quality – a score from 1 to 100 that is calculated based on 4 main parameters: the engagement rate, the number of views, the number of comments, and the number of shares:
  
• One more important indicator that you can study on our platform is the audience type. It helps to understand who are the subscribers of the selected influencer. If the majority of subscribers are mass followers, the advertising campaign will hardly bring any result: 

• In addition, we suggest paying attention to the “Activity chart”. This chart allows you to analyze the channel’s activity within the specified period: 

• You will get access to the “Account Analytics” section. Our platform’s AI calculates the ER of the selected channel, double-checks the channel’s quality, and compares the metrics of the selected channel to those of the competitors. It will provide you with a better understanding of how the selected influencer performs compared to the others like them:

Conclusion

TikTok has already established itself as one of the most important influencer marketing tools for most brands in 2022. Using the helpful insights from this article, you will definitely not miss the amazing opportunity to cooperate with a reliable TikTok creator.

And if you don’t want to spend time learning the whole TikTok promotion process and calculating the engagement rates, then you can always opt for the BuzzGuru analytics platform. It will provide you with all the necessary information about TikTok influencers and will help to start a successful advertising campaign.