Your Social Media Engagement Numbers

Picture of a cheering crowd with text overlaid saying: A 5% engagement is on posts is really good"
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Your Social Media Engagement Numbers

(5 Minute Read) If your engagement rate on social media is anywhere above or even approaching 5%, you’re doing great. I did some research to see how this rate stacked up against popular social media content creators and found that they don’t do much better than 5% engagement on their posts. So if that’s what you’re at now and you’re worried that it’s low, don’t worry, because you’re doing better than Justin Bieber (No, really, you are! Read on to find out engagement rates on his mega-popular videos).

Gathering Data On Social Media Engagement Rates

I often tell my clients that an engagement rate of around 5% on social media is really fantastic. But I realized I was basing that assertion on intuition. So, I wanted to get some good solid data to either validate my claim, or change what I asserted going forward (you should always be willing to change your mind if you are presented with evidence that contrasts with what you had previously held to be true).

To measure social media engagement, I looked at posts on YouTube from content creators with large, involved followings. I took the 5 most recent posts from 12 creators, spread out across a wide variety of topics. I figured these were representative samples because they are so popular and diverse. With findings from these creators, we can measure what really great engagement rates look like across social media.

Your current level of social media engagement is probably better than you think!

Tons Of Very Popular Channels Have An Average of 5% Social Media Engagement

What I found in my research was really interesting. My 5% threshold turned out to be true, and a lot of really highly performing social media channels performed a lot less highly than I thought.

I went into my research assuming that highly performing social media channels would have an engagement rate of at least 10%. I mean, if 1 out of 10 people watching a music video from, say Justin Bieber, clicked “like” while watching the video, that wouldn’t be surprising, right? Well, it turns out only about 5% of people engage with videos on popular social media accounts. So, only half of a person out of every 10 people like popular videos.

Additionally, the data skewed heavily toward lower engagement rates, with approximately 2/3rds of the videos I sampled having a 6% engagement rate or less. In fact, at the highest point, I only found 3 videos out of 60 that had engagement rates of over 11%.

A lot of very popular content creators, with millions of followers only have 5% social media engagement rates, so it's okay if yours is a little lower.

Even The Mega-Popular Posts Have Engagement Rates At Or Below 5%

Lastly, I chose videos from channels with a high number of subscribers that had dedicated followings in specific niches. So, these videos probably represent the high end of engagement by interest. To test that theory, I also took two videos from Justin Bieber that had views in the billions. The two videos I chose also had low engagement rates of 1% and 3% (to put that in perspective though, we’re talking about 27 million and 3 million engagements on each video). So, we can see that even mega-popular videos do not have a terribly high percentage of engagements either.

Keep churning out quality content and focus on providing value, not your engagement rates.

Conclusions

Although this research was not as rigorous as a scientific study, I do believe it was enough to be representative of social media trends as a whole. And, I think these data offer comforting news: a 5% engagement rate is what, by and large, a great deal of successful YouTube channels see on their posts. If you, as a small business, or someone with less than 100K subscribers or followers is getting engagement rates at or around this number, you’re doing really well compared to a wide sample of popular social media channels.

Methodology

This is a very unscientific study. I was looking for overall trends to benchmark against, not hyper specific figures meant to represent all of social media. I’ve included my data if you’d like to take a look or disagree with my conclusions.

To begin, I chose 12 popular YouTube channels across a variety of subjects to ensure freedom from a subject matter bias. If people who watch videos on one particular subject engage with videos more or less frequently than those in other subjects, it could skew the data. To try to prevent that I chose a diverse array of channels, spread across a variety of subjects (nature, law, art, marketing, comedy, art history, real estate, economics, movie reviews, and politics).

I chose to use YouTube to measure engagement on social media because the data from views are readily available and easy to use. I measured total views and then added the likes and dislikes for each individual video to find the percentage of engagement among viewers of that video.

I measured data from the 5 most recent videos of each channel in order to standardize the process and remove the possibility of me choosing videos I liked or disliked, which could have affected the results.

Finally, I looked at two Justin Bieber music videos with more than a billion views each to see if the data was much different at the highest end of the spectrum. It does not appear to be different.

Data On Social Media Engagement Rates

Improving Your Social Media Reach

If you’d like to learn more about improving your reach on social media, or how to convert your 5% of engagements into more customers, shoot us an email at:

 [email protected] 

Why Was My Facebook Ad Rejected?

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Getting Your Facebook Ad Approved

By West Kraemer

Sometimes Facebook rejects your ad for reasons that are difficult the understand. If this has happened to you and you’re wondering what do do, wonder no longer. Here is a breakdown of a few common reasons Facebook rejects ads, and what you can change to get your adds approved.

The Most Common Reason Facebook Rejects Ads

The most common reason Facebook rejects ads is because of the use of personal attributes. Here are some examples of ads that will likely be rejected, and how to fix them. (Hover over the text to see how to fix the problem and get your ad approved.)

Hover over the text on desktop or tap it on mobile to see how to fix the problem and get your ad approved.

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

Meet other black singles near you today!"

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

"Find black singles today"

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

"Are you a Christian looking to attend an Evangelical Church nearby?"

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

"Join an Evangelical Church in (the area you're targeting your Facebook Ads)"

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

Have you been injured in an accident? Call our law firm today!

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

Injured in an accident? Call our law firm today.

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

Are you a senior citizen who is having trouble with Medicaid and needs legal representation?

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

We are attorneys who help clients with disputes over Medicaid. Give us a call today.

How To Avoid Having Your Facebook Ad Rejected

Ultimately, the best way to get avoid getting your Facebook ad rejected is to focus your advertisement on your business. What good are you providing? Highlight that.

In the examples above, all of the rejected texts referred to personal identifiers, like religion, age, ethnicity, or health status. You want to avoid referencing these and other indicators like this if you want to get your ads approved. If you focus your ads instead on how you can help people who have been injured in an accident, while avoiding using the word “you” or specifically referring to if a person that your ad is targeting has been injured in an accident or not, you’ll be much more successful, and be much less likely to have your Facebook ad rejected.

Further Reading

If you would like to go straight to the source, Facebook publishes information about how this all works, and they go into some very useful detail. Read more about how to avoid having your Facebook Ad rejected here.

Do You Want Me To Help You Buy Facebook Ads For Your Business?

That is an important part of my business. If you’d like to retain my services for purchasing Facebook Ads, email me at [email protected] and we can schedule a phone call to get you started.

Why Was My Facebook Ad Rejected?

Picture of a woman in a confused posture with a thought bubble with test saying "Why did my Facebook ad get rejected?"

Getting Your Facebook Ad Approved

Sometimes Facebook rejects your ad for reasons that are difficult the understand. If this has happened to you and you’re wondering what do do, wonder no longer. Here is a breakdown of a few common reasons Facebook rejects ads, and what you can change to get your adds approved.

The Most Common Reason Facebook Rejects Ads

The most common reason Facebook rejects ads is because of the use of personal attributes. Here are some examples of ads that will likely be rejected, and how to fix them. (Hover over the text to see how to fix the problem and get your ad approved.)

Hover over the text on desktop or tap it on mobile to see how to fix the problem and get your ad approved.

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

Meet other black singles near you today!"

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

"Find black singles today"

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

"Are you a Christian looking to attend an Evangelical Church nearby?"

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

"Join an Evangelical Church in (the area you're targeting your Facebook Ads)"

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

Have you been injured in an accident? Call our law firm today!

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

Injured in an accident? Call our law firm today.

Using the text below will likely get your ad rejected:

Are you a senior citizen who is having trouble with Medicaid and needs legal representation?

This will be more likely to be approved and serve the same purpose

We are attorneys who help clients with disputes over Medicaid. Give us a call today.

How To Avoid Having Your Facebook Ad Rejected

Ultimately, the best way to get avoid getting your Facebook ad rejected is to focus your advertisement on your business. What good are you providing? Highlight that.

In the examples above, all of the rejected texts referred to personal identifiers, like religion, age, ethnicity, or health status. You want to avoid referencing these and other indicators like this if you want to get your ads approved. If you focus your ads instead on how you can help people who have been injured in an accident, while avoiding using the word “you” or specifically referring to if a person that your ad is targeting has been injured in an accident or not, you’ll be much more successful, and be much less likely to have your Facebook ad rejected.

Further Reading

If you would like to go straight to the source, Facebook publishes information about how this all works, and they go into some very useful detail. Read more about how to avoid having your Facebook Ad rejected here.

Do You Want Me To Help You Buy Facebook Ads For Your Business?

That is an important part of my business. If you’d like to retain my services for purchasing Facebook Ads, email me at [email protected] and we can schedule a phone call to get you started.

Lawyers: Make A Career Change With Leave Law Behind

Leave Law Behind

Although personal branding with Stand Out Professional Branding is definitely a strong way to go when you’re looking for a career change or get a new job, there are other ways to do that. Especially if you’re a lawyer.

Leave Law Behind is a company that helps lawyers transition out of law. And if you’re a lawyer, they can be a powerful resource for helping you leave a profession that is making you miserable.

Below I’ve included some articles and summaries from their blog to give you a sense of how Leave Law Behind can help you leave your frustrating, miserable career as an attorney, and transition to something much better suited to you.

The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Dream Career Out of the Law

Article Link –> https://leavelawbehind.com/alternative-careers-for-lawyers/ 
Summary –> Are you an unhappy attorney struggling to live the life you truly want? Do you feel like you’re hopelessly trapped in the practice of law? Are you not clear on the next steps you can take to leave the law and find an alternative career that you like (or even love)? In this article, the team at Leave Law Behind will discuss how you can take your first steps out of the law and make a satisfying career change. They will also highlight and prepare you for some of the challenges you will encounter as you begin this process.

The Real (Surprising) Reason You Hate Being a Lawyer

Article Link –> https://leavelawbehind.com/i-hate-being-a-lawyer/ 
Summary–> If you are tired of being a lawyer or you feel being a lawyer sucks, the team at Leave Law Behind understands. In this article, they help you unpack the core reason why you hate being an attorney (which they think will surprise you) and learn what steps you can take to explore an alternative career out of the law. There is hope!

career change

Attorney Burnout: Break Free from Your Lawyer Anxiety

Article Link –> https://leavelawbehind.com/lawyer-burnout/ 
Summary –> If there is one word lawyers in the Leave Law Behind community say more often than any other term, it is “burnout,” as in “I’m so burned out practicing law, I need to leave before my mental and physical health suffers any more.” In this article, the team at Leave Law Behind does a deep dive into what burnout means in the context of lawyers’ health. They examine why being a lawyer takes such a toll on you, as well as provide you with some actionable ways you can free yourself from this “broken system that is the legal profession.”

I Know What I’m Talking About So You Should Hire Me To Build Your Brand

My Prediction Came True, Quickly. It Shows Why You Need A Personal Brand

In April 2020, I saw a video of an app developer called Kilo Loco I follow on YouTube saying he’d been laid off. And I wrote an article here saying that I was sure he’d get a job soon because his personal brand and large following means he has career security. 

It turns out I was right and I know what I’m talking about when I say building a personal brand results in career security (so, you should probably get started building a your personal or business brand with Stand Out Professional Branding today, eh?)

Here’s a timeline of those events:

March 27, 2020: Kilo Loco posts on YouTube about his firing.

April 10th, 2020: I post about how his personal brand would help him get another job.

May 11th, 2020: Kilo Loco posts on YouTube about getting another job.

Proof That I Know What I'm Talking About

I Know What I'm Talking About And Can Help You Build A Personal Brand

Stand Out Professional Branding exists to help people and businesses build their brands to develop career security.

Here’s how that looks in practice:

  1. Develop a personal brand by providing value consistently over social media and in real life, over a long period of time to make connections with large groups of people. I’ve got lots of free guidance for how to do this in the articles on this website.
  2. There is no step 2.

Developing A Brand On Your Own Is Difficult, But Career Security Is Worth It.

I started Stand Out Professional Branding because I know what it’s like to have career insecurity and don’t want anyone else to go through that nightmare. I graduated from college into the financial crisis of 2008, which was no picnic. Since then I’ve spent the last decade+ learning how business, digital marketing, and branding work and how to leverage them effectively.

When the job market started tanking again recently because of the Covid crisis, I knew I had to do something so that job seekers wouldn’t go through what I did in 2008. 

To get started building your personal brand and and gaining career security with Stand Out Professional Branding, email us at: [email protected] or fill out our contact form here and we will get back to you ASAP.