2022 Social Media Industry Benchmarks

Over the last few years, Instagram has gained and maintained its position as the most engaging social media network.

However, TikTok’s launch and increasing interest in this platform have led to a big turnover.

By analyzing over 27 million posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok we wanted to discover the average engagement rate for each social platform and compare those benchmarks to industry-specific data.

Continue reading to find out how your brand stacks up.⇣

A. Engagement insights: social benchmarks by industry

B. Industry to industry social media benchmarks

C. Methodology

TikTok is the most engaging social media platform of the moment, having an average engagement rate of 5.96%.

FMCG Food is the most engaging industry on TikTok, having a TikTok average engagement rate of 15.82%.

In 2021 TikTok’s average engagement rate increased by 14.26%.

Compared to 2020, Facebook and Instagram had significant decreases in engagement in 2021.

On Instagram and Facebook, most brands still have an image-focused content strategy.

The most engaging industry on Instagram is now the travel one, with an Instagram average engagement rate of 1.41%.

Twitter is the social media platform with the most diversified content.

The jewelry industry is the most engaging one on Twitter, having a double average engagement rate compared to the previous year.

Depending on the vertical of their business, some brands have an easier time communicating with their audience than others.

Simply put, specific industry audiences can be more or less responsive and engaging on social media depending on the business field.

To understand the potential of each industry benchmark on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you need to take a look at the average engagement rates per post.

Despite being the newest social media platform, when narrowed down to engagement, TikTok has the numeric advantage to make brands get on board and start experimenting with content on the platform.

As social media data indicates, TikTok is the most engaging social media platform of the moment, having an average engagement rate of 5.96%, which is way above every other network.

How do we calculate the engagement rate on TikTok?

TikTok engagement rate is calculated as the sum of likes, comments and shares on the post divided by the total number of followers that profile has. The result is then multiplied by 100.

When we’re talking about a video platform, there’s also another way of calculating engagement rate on TikTok.

The engagement rate on TikTok can be calculated as the sum of likes, comments, and shares divided by the number of views.

We decided to adopt the first approach to have similar pillars of comparison when looking overall, at all the social media platforms analyzed.

As for the other social media platforms, in 2021, the Facebook average engagement rate was 0.13%, the Twitter engagement rate reached a mere 0.05%, while Instagram scored an average engagement rate of 0.83%.

This means that brands whose stats fall beneath these scores need to put in a lot more effort into their social media strategies than industries from more engaging verticals, as well as manage their expectations when it comes to results.

Facebook and Instagram face significant drops in organic engagement.

There are a lot of changes that can influence the fluctuations of social media performance from year to year, and even on a more granular level.

In many cases, different social and economic factors are the most impactful ones.

However, this drop in engagement for both Facebook and Instagram surely has one more reason behind it.

The fact that many users have shifted their attention towards newer social media platforms like TikTok has automatically impacted the engagement on the other social networks, causing significant drops.

Many marketers have long been telling that on Facebook, organic reach is pretty much dead.

And, as data shows, engagement is slowly heading in the same direction.

If we look at the data with a positive approach, we can conclude that Instagram still offers pretty good engagement levels, especially compared to Facebook or Twitter.

However, the Instagram engagement drops should not be ignored.

If in 2021, Instagram’s average engagement rate decreased to its values from 2019, as our Instagram engagement study has shown, future fallings are more than ever expected to happen in the future.

This means that brands interested in investing in social media marketing in the future should divide their resources very carefully, think and analyze in greater detail the possibility of experimenting with some content on TikTok.

Let’s not forget video content is – after all – the future of social media marketing.

Instagram engagement rate per post is calculated as the sum of likes and comments of the post divided by total number of followers the profile has. Then the result is multiplied by 100.

While there’s also the possibility of calculating the average engagement by reach, we decided to adopt the first approach to have similar pillars of comparison when looking overall, at all the social media platforms analyzed.

As for the engagement rate per post on Facebook – it is calculated as the sum of likes, comments, and shares of a post divided by total number of followers the profile has. Then the result is multiplied by 100.

Most engaging industries on each platform: travel on Instagram, jewelry on Twitter, and FMCG food on both TikTok and Facebook.

Thanks to its strong visual appeal, specific to Instagram since the very first days of its initial launch, this particular platform is one of the best places for brands from the travel industry to promote themselves.

Therefore, for being a pretty good match between audiences, the travel industry is the most engaging one on Instagram, with an average engagement rate of 1.41%.

Nonetheless, the most surprising fact is that other industries for which having a solid visual content marketing strategy is most impactful, like the jewelry, fashion, or beauty sector, are actually the less engaging industries on Instagram.

On the other hand, the jewelry industry is the best performing one in terms of engagement on Twitter – with an average Twitter engagement rate of 0.18%

Surprisingly enough, the jewelry sector is the only one that has succeeded in doubling its Twitter engagement rate over 2021.

All in all, this is a great example of knowing your audiences and directing your marketing efforts towards where your prospects are.

According to data, 2021 was a good year for brands from the FMCG food industry.

TikTok – Millennials and Gen Z’s social media platform, is the new place where brands from the FMCG Food industry can put their creativity to work and expect to be rewarded with excellent engagement levels.

This category is not only the most engaging one on TikTok – with an average engagement rate of 15.82%, but also the best performing industry on Facebook – with an engagement of 0.36% on average.

On TikTok, the FMCG food sector has doubled its average engagement rate, which is a clear sign of the industry’s attempts to adapt to the trends.

Also, when looking at the least engaging industries on TikTok, we’ll be not surprised to see there are the same industries that overall have scored the lowest engagement scores: magazines-journals and media-house.

In Facebook’s case, there isn’t a single industry without any drops in engagement in 2021.

By making a comparison between TikTok’s average engagement values and industries’ hierarchy, we’ll see there are a couple of similarities when looking at the best-perming industries and the least engaging ones.

Like in TikTok’s ranking, the FMCG food and beverages industries have the highest average engagement rates, while the magazines-journals sector is the least performing.

Twitter is the platform with the most diversified content

When it comes to content diversity, it’s quite surprising that most brands’ content strategy is still centered around image posts for both Instagram and Facebook, although videos, for example, have proven to be a far better choice when aiming for better engagement rates.

As revealed by our Instagram engagement study, on Instagram carousels are more likely to make people press that heart button, while videos drive more conversations.

To look from another angle, this mismatch between the user’s preferences and the brand’s inability to adapt their content strategies accordingly can cause Instagram’s decreasing engagement values.

The tendency to have an image-centered posting strategy applies to Facebook for most brands.

But, in this case, there are a couple of differences between some industries, which will be interesting to analyze by correlating those industries’ average engagement rate values.

By briefly looking at social media data, we can see that 60.64% of the content posted by brands from the media house industry is made of links, while for the magazines-journals, this value is even higher – 76.78%.

Whatsoever, when looking at the average engagement rate for these two industries, we can see a quite low value – 0.11% engagement rate for media-house and 0,08% for magazine-journals, which are actually lower than 2020’s numbers.

These two examples are a great indicator of how much content diversity matters for generating social media engagement, don’t you think?

Compared to 2020, last year has brought many changes regarding the content diversity on Twitter.

This may also be correlated with Twitter’s overall higher engagement rates, opposing Facebook and Instagram’s drooping tendency.

Surprisingly enough, Twitter is the social media platform with the most diversified content for the moment.

To better understand how each industry behaves on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, let’s have a breakdown of their stats. ⇣

1. Arts & Crafts

Despite TikTok’s high engagement potential, there’s no guarantee all brands and industries would make it on the platform, as the arts & crafts industry’s engagement rate reveals.

Starting from an average TikTok engagement rate of 3.37% over the half of 2020, the industry faced constant fall downs in engagement ever since, at the time reaching a TikTok engagement rate of only 1.59% on average.

On Instagram, the arts & crafts sector kept pretty constant values of the average engagement, having an Instagram engagement rate of 0.53% on average, slightly lesser than 2020’s engagement stats.

As for Facebook’s benchmarks, the average engagement rate for the arts & crafts industry got a quite big hit over 2021, when it decreased by half of what it was back in 2020.

At the moment, the average Facebook engagement rate for the arts & crafts sector reaches a mere 0.17%.

However, there is some good news also. In Twitter’s case, the numbers look a bit better than they did in 2020, reaching a double value. In 2021, Twitter’s engagement rate was located at an average of 0.08%.

2. Automotive

Judging by its engagement levels across all the social media platforms and by the ascending trajectory on TikTok, it seems that brands from the automotive industry centered their strategy towards one goal in 2021: creating a solid TikTok presence.

When looking at the average TikTok engagement rates for all the industries analyzed, there was a situation and conclusion that popped up in every single case: the visible spikes in engagement are due to the network’s orientation.

For being a video-exclusive platform, the algorithms work differently compared to the other social channels.

Whenever a video is uploaded, the engagement level simply goes through the roof, only to decrease after that, until the next upload.

The last quarter of 2021 came with significant increases in the TikTok average engagement rate for automotive brands when they reached an average engagement of 4.82%.

Although brands from the automotive industry still face significant spikes in the average TikTok engagement rate, in 2021 they seem to have found a successful strategy.

Social posts from automotive brands doubled their engagement compared to 2020, for the moment having a TikTok engagement rate of 2.07% on average.

On Instagram, the automotive industry reaches an average engagement rate of 0.83.%, on Facebook, the average engagement rate goes up to 0.24%, while the Twitter engagement rate indicates an average of 0.08%.

3. Beauty

Quite unexpectedly, the beauty sector not only does not have through-the-roof levels of engagement on social media, despite its strong visual appeal but is actually the least engaging industry on Instagram at the moment.

From an average engagement rate standpoint, beauty brands are underperforming on social these days, having the following values: 1.26% on TikTok, 0.34% on Instagram, 0.08% on Facebook, and 0.02% on Twitter.

4. Beverages

As mentioned earlier, in 2021, some industries faced fall downs in engagement, some across all the social channels and others on specific platforms, the beverages sector being in the latter category.

For brands from the beverages industry, the biggest drop in engagement happened on Facebook.

Thus, according to this engagement chart, 2021 has also produced positive engagement changes if we look at the average engagement rate per post of the TikTok videos from the beverages industry brands.

This shift in engagement may reveal a change in the overall social media strategy, showing where the beverages industry is focusing its resources these days.

On TikTok, the engagement rate for this industry is located at the moment at an average of 3.15% but still increasing, while the Facebook average engagement rate has dropped to 0.19%.

Turning to the last remaining social media platforms, Instagram indicates an average engagement rate per post of 0.72%, and Twitter stands at a mere 0.06% average engagement.

5. Fashion

Overall, engagement for the fashion industry is pretty low – even with TikTok in the game, and despite its huge engagement potential, as we have seen it’s the case with other industries.

As far as engagement goes, the fashion industry is one of the least performing ones.

Fashion brands reach a TikTok engagement rate of 1.45% on average, a 0.36% average engagement rate on Instagram, an average Facebook engagement rate of 0.07%, and a 0.04% average engagement rate on Twitter.

6. FMCG Food

The FMCG food industry is one of the best-performing ones across all social media platforms in terms of engagement.

While engagement had been declining on Facebook and Instagram in 2021, the Twitter engagement rate for the FMCG food sector is slowly but surely increasing in 2022.

Looking at the overall average engagement rates per post, brands from the FCMCG food industry have the following values:

2.90% average engagement rate on TikTok,
0.75% average engagement rate on Instagram,
0.31% average engagement rate on Facebook,
and 0.06% average engagement rate on Twitter.

7. Home Living

Brands from the home-living industry count to those that in 2021 have shifted their social content strategy in an attempt to make the most out of the exposure potential of TikTok, as well.

At the moment, brands from the home-living industry have an average engagement rate on TikTok of 1.43%.

So far, they got the lowest engagement on TikTok in the last quarter of 2020, which corresponded with other industries’ trends.

Although over 2021, the average engagement on TikTok seems a bit more homogenous, a dropping tendency seems just around the corner.

This may indicate that in the future, brands from the home-living industry may struggle to keep good engagement rates across all social media channels.

Moving forward to the other social networks, brands representing the home-living industry have the following average engagement rates: 0.62% Instagram engagement rate, 0.15% Facebook engagement rate, and 0.07% Twitter engagement rate.

8. Jewelry

The most surprising thing about the jewelry industry is that in 2021 it became the most engaging one on Twitter – with an average Twitter engagement rate of 0.15%, having equal levels in engagement to Facebook.

Besides this, jewelry brands have scored an average engagement rate of 2.17% on TikTok and a poorly average engagement rate of 0.40% on Instagram.

In July 2020, jewelry brands recorded the highest engagement reached on TikTok – of 6.69% on average, but throughout the year, the industry faced striking spikes.

On the other side of the spectrum, 2021 brought a more consistent engagement for brands from the jewelry industry on TikTok.

Maybe as TikTok itself starts to enter into a more mature phase, thanks to more targeted updates to existing features and more in-depth researched launches, the engagement – once in huge spikes, is expected to begin to normalize itself slowly.

Also, having more and more brands present on the platform, the user’s attention and interest start to spread differently.

9. Magazines and Journals

Pages that represent magazines or journals fail to engage with their audience as much as other industries have proven to do.

These pages have recorded average engagement rates per post of 1.30% on TikTok, 0.71% on Instagram, 0.08% on Facebook, and 0.01% on Twitter being the least engaging industry on the last platforms mentioned.

However, judging by the spikes in engagement on TikTok, there’s a pretty good chance that by adjusting their strategy a bit here and there, the industry could start gaining more engagement on TikTok.

Media house pages have also scored low on average engagement rates per post: 1.11% on TikTok, 0.53% on Instagram, 0.08% on Facebook, and 0.01% on Twitter.

By comparing the average engagement rates of all the industries analyzed through 2021, it seems that media-house got the lowest place on TikTok.

The constant drop in engagement that the industry faced on TikTok is also a bit worrying – in just one year and a half, brands from the media-house sector decreased from a 2.74 average engagement to nowaday’s values.

11. NGOs

NGOs have found their voices and audience on Instagram, where their average engagement rate per post is 1.10%, being one of the top-performing industries on the platform.

Thanks to their great engagement rates on Instagram and now on TikTok as well, over the years, NGOs have proven most successful in reaching younger audiences on social media.

While having an average TikTok engagement rate of 1.95% at the moment, increases may happen at any time. For NGO brands, great times seem to have been at the beginning of 2021, when the TikTok average engagement rate went through the roof, reaching an average engagement rate of 4.41%.

Given the fact that every network has its very well-differentiated audiences, it’s quite clear that what works on a platform will not have the same success as the other ones.

This also explains the remaining last engaging rates on social – 0.18% Facebook average engagement rate and 0.05% average engagement rate for Twitter.

12. Travel

Once the travel restrictions of 2020 cooled off a bit, brands from the travel industry saw the opportunity to take over TikTok, improving their performance over 2021.

Having a TikTok average engagement rate of 3.25%, the industry still has some pretty big ups and downs in engagement here.

Actually, this is one of the industries with the most notables spikes in the TikTok engagement.

Between the last quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 travel brands had a major drop in engagement.

Nevertheless, considering its evolution over the rest of the year, it wouldn’t be such a surprise if anytime soon brands from the travel sector will subclass some of the most engaging industries on TikTok for the time being.

Switching over to Instagram, here businesses from the travel sector recorded an average engagement rate of 1.13%.

Moreover, looking at the rest of the engagement rates across the board, the industry has reached an average Facebook engagement rate of 0.21%, while Twitter pointed to an average of 0.03% engagement rate.

Methodology

For the analysis of these social media industry benchmarks on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok we looked into more than 27 million posts from a total of 52.767 business pages.

We used Socialinsider as a social media benchmarking tool to collect the data from the following social media platforms:

Instagram – 14.269 profiles
Facebook – 29.653 pages
Twitter – 8.845 profiles

To get a complete social media industry benchmarks reports, we analyzed:

4.293.928 Instagram posts
14.503.898 Facebook posts
8.691.410 Twitter posts

Within this social media benchmarking report, we provide a representative sample of international brands that had an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

The timeframe selected for this research was between January 2020 and December 2021, while also categorizing the profiles into industries based on their activity and page category settings.

To identify future trends on TikTok and to provide a reference point regarding the direction and average values of TikTok engagement, we manually analyzed 50 TikTok profiles from every industry, over July 2020 – December 2021.

We define social media engagement rate as measurable interactions on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok posts, including comments, reactions, and shares, with the particularities for each platform as it follows: