With recent fluctuations in social media referrals trending downward for most industries, it can be a challenge to get a true read on how your content is really performing and whether the declines you're seeing are due to strategy failing to deliver or the platforms reducing reach and engagement.

For context, the latest Social Media Benchmarks report from Rival IQ can offer a little more context, such as the average engagement rates brands across various industries are seeing in all of the major apps.

The full report, which you can check out yourself here, is based on more than 5 million posts, and over 10 billion likes, comments, and favorites across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. It also includes industry breakdowns, providing more specific insight, but in this post, we'll take a look at the topline numbers.

First off, Facebook. "The median engagement rate of all industries sits at 0.063 percent — a slight hike from this time last year, and 0.060 percent," the data reveal.
It's sports engagement lifts that average up, while influence, education, and alcohol all continue relatively strong engagement levels within the app.

Yet even the best performers are only getting a tiny percentage of their audience to engage with their posts. That likely points to reach being a better metric to measure, as most people simply don't ever engage in social apps.

Does that mean that, as a marketing tool, social media is less effective than has been presented? Well, brand awareness, and therefore subsequent indirect action would probably still suggest that it's still worth the effort. But with fewer people actually looking to actively participate in social apps, preferring instead just to consume content, you might want to re-aim your KPIs more around other metrics - such as actual sales, email sign-ups, etc., for tracking relative performance.

Meanwhile, the Instagram engagement rate, considering all the said aspects, was decreased by 0.01 percent in 2023; however, to a lesser extent of 0.43 percent.

Instagram engagement rate has been gradually reducing with each passing year; average brand IG engagement had 0.98% according to this specific report as well in 2021.

So while still a pretty small percentage, in fact engagement has fallen over the last couple of years by more than half, partly because of more competition for eyeballs from users as well as changing the way they consume content from Meta and others, by focusing increasingly on AI-optimized recommendations.

Fewer eyeballs on brand updates means there are also fewer direct impressions or even clicks.

Of course, Rival IQ is still in the camp of never calling it "X". Average engagement for "Twitter" is 0.029%.
This is not a good referral driver, and the old Twitter platform has seen only a slight drop-off in average engagement rate from last year: 0.035%. And in reality, because X owner Elon Musk has said so explicitly to be clear that he would never help brands drive the referral traffic, it does not seem as bad I expected, but again, that means another drop in engagement, and the collective shift of which is:

And now there's TikTok, for which Rival IQ said that the brand engagements saw an all-time dip.
TikTok averaged engagement rate of 5.69% per clip last year, meaning TikTok referrals have been decreasing more than half on an average every year when compared to the previous one.

Though, on the other hand, brand engagement in the app is much higher than other platforms. And while brands have certainly taken a step backward, given the shift in TikTok usage behaviors, and in its algorithms' alignment, around different content - in addition to the fact, that more brands are publishing more frequently on the app, there's still quite the opportunity for reach and engagement for those that get it right.

The report from Rival IQ has some very interesting notes on brand engagement, as well as what you're going to be seeing in all of the major apps. Really, though, your actual results will depend on your own understanding of your audience in each app and how you drive action based on that, but it's probably also a little comforting to note that all brands are seeing relatively low engagement.

Does that mean people want to engage with brand content less, or that brands, in general, are not great at connecting with them? You decide.