Instagram Influencer Engagement Rates Benchmarks

• For the travel industry, the like follower ratio (LFR) is 4.5% in 2019. 
• The follower ratio (LFR) is the "average number of likes on each post" per number of followers on an Instagram account.
• This benchmark metric has been significantly dropping each year in all verticals. For 2018, the travel industry's LFR is 8%.
• This might have been caused by increasing saturation in the influencer marketing space.
• The LFR figure provide an independent view for influencer marketers to determine how their competitors are generally doing.
• Travel influencers make up 5% of Instagram's total sponsored posts.
• In the United States, the average LFR of non-sponsored posts for the 1st quarter of 2019 is 1.9%. This is higher than the 1.6% average LFR of sponsored posts.
• Instagram accounts with more than 10,000 followers typically have the same LFRs.
• However, accounts with 5,000 to 10,000 followers got around 3% higher engagement. Nano influencers with around 1,000 to 5,000 followers got 2% more.  

Instagram Engagement Rate Calculation Method and Benchmarks

• The following is the typical method to calculate engagement rate:

• "Capture all the influencers' posts for the last thirty days and get the total number of likes and comments on each post."
• "Divide that number by the number of posts there are in the last 30 days."
•  Divide the average engagements per post, by the number of followers of the influencer. Multiply the resulting figure by 100 to make it a percentage. This will be the resulting engagement rate of the influencer.
• For all industries, the following are the average engagement rates for benchmarking purposes:
• Less than 1% = low engagement rate
• Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
• Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
• Above 6% = very high engagement rate
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Summary of Findings:

• Our one hour of research provided some available benchmark data of the engagement rates and the LFRs of Instagram influencers in the travel industry and in all types of industries.
• However, we were not able to find other benchmark calculation method aside from the formula presented above during our initial research.