Engagement

For social media marketers, engagement rate is a key metric to monitor. This tells the poster how users respond to their content, and especially whether or not they share it. For this reason, high engagement rates are a prized possession, and many marketers work hard for even small improvements. We looked at average engagement rates on Twitter, and whether using certain features improves them.

Looking to measure the engagement rate of any Twitter account? Check out our Twitter Engagement Calculator.

Download full report (33 pages)

Retweets

The average tweet receives 1690.46 retweets.
Engagements

The average tweet sees 1695.62 engagements (likes + RTs).
Median

The median number of both likes and retweets is 0.
Nothing

Tweets with no hashtags, emojis, or handles have the highest average engagement.

Average Twitter Engagement Rate

Engagements are simply a combination of likes and retweets. While many marketers may prioritize one over the other (usually retweets), a good overall engagement rate shows that users appreciate your content and are paying attention.

Our sample of more than 700 million tweets found an average engagement rate of 1695.62. In other words, the average tweet receives a total of 1695.62 retweets and likes combined. For many marketers, that's a large number.

Since this is an average, certain high profile users will be dragging that number higher. But the median engagement rate is 0. This shows just how many tweets receive no engagement whatsoever, and how powerful some of the top posts can be.

Twitter engagement rates

Average engagement rate

1695.62
Median engagement rate

0.5

Average Retweet Rate on Twitter

As previously stated, retweets tend to be more the most sought-after engagement. Retweets let a user share another user's post to all of their followers. Therefore when a user retweets a piece of content, it increases the reach of that post.

The average number of retweets is again surprisingly high. This is certain to be due to a small percentage of highly popular tweets. This time, the median rate is 0, which indicates that a majority of tweets get zero retweets.

Twitter retweet rates

Average retweet rate

1690.46
Median retweet rate

0

Do Hashtags, Emojis, or Handles Help Most?

Twitter users have access to a few basic features to make their posts more interesting. Hashtags let users similar tweets, handles let them tag other users directly, and emojis add tiny characters to a post.

Since one key reason users include these features in their posts is for engagement, we wanted to see if which ones actually help the most.

As you'll see in our section on hashtags, these seem to have a negative effect on engagement. And while, on average, posts with no extra features receive the most engagements, emojis and handles don't appear to overly affect engagement rates for the worse. Download full report (33 pages)

Engagement for hashtags, emojis, & handles

Average engagements

Next chapter