Social Media Benchmarks 2026: Engagement Rates by Industry
Written by: Tim Eisenhauer
Last updated:
“All data is fake. Some data can be sold as true. Some of it is accidentally correct, but you can’t tell when that happens. But all data is ‘motivated,’ meaning the people producing it have a financial incentive.” — Scott Adams
What are good social media engagement rates by industry in 2026?
It depends on who you ask and how they define “engagement.”
Rival IQ reports median Instagram engagement rates from 0.14% (Health & Beauty) to 2.10% (Higher Education), calculated as interactions divided by follower count.
Hootsuite reports per-post engagement rates from 3.00% (Media) to 4.40% (Construction and Nonprofits) for Instagram.
These numbers use different methodologies and cannot be directly compared. TikTok consistently shows the highest engagement across industries, with rates 3–10x higher than other platforms.
Why do benchmark reports disagree on engagement rates?
There is no standard definition of “engagement rate.” Rival IQ calculates median interactions divided by followers across 150 companies per industry. Hootsuite measures average engagement per individual post. The same industry on the same platform can show 0.26% from one source and 3.80% from another — both technically correct. The companies publishing these reports also sell social media management and analytics tools, which means they have financial incentive to make social media look measurable and worth investing in.
A client called me last week. Runs a dental practice in Phoenix. Asked me the simplest question in social media marketing:
“What’s a good engagement rate for my Instagram?”
Simple question. Should have a simple answer. So I went looking.
Pulled up Rival IQ’s 2025 Industry Benchmark Report. Pulled up Hootsuite’s engagement rate data. Found reports from Dash Social and Socialinsider. Four credible sources, hundreds of data points, covering 30 industries across seven platforms.
For a healthcare-adjacent business on Instagram, one source says engagement runs around 0.14%. Another says 3.70%.
Not a rounding error. Not a minor discrepancy. One number is 26 times larger than the other.
This is a question we hear constantly from Apaya clients — business owners who’ve automated their posting and want to know if their numbers are “good.” And every time, I have to give the same unsatisfying answer: it depends on which report you read.
I stared at my screen for a while. Then I thought about something Scott Adams wrote about how all data is “motivated” — meaning the people producing it have a financial incentive to make it say what they want.
I’m about to give you a post full of social media benchmark data. Tables of numbers. Engagement rates by industry and platform. The works.
Read every number with that thought in the back of your head.
Before we get to the numbers
Let me be upfront about something.
This post exists because “social media engagement rate by industry” is one of the most searched topics in digital marketing. It’s the same reason we published 50 social media statistics for 2026 — data-driven content gets searched, bookmarked, and linked to. I know this post will rank. That’s the whole point of link-bait content, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But here’s what I’m going to do that most benchmark posts don’t: tell you why you should be skeptical of every number below. Including the ones from the four sources I’m citing. Including any conclusions I draw from them.
The methodology problem
When Rival IQ says the median Instagram engagement rate for Financial Services is 0.26%, here’s what they mean: they sampled 150 financial services companies, counted all the likes, comments, and shares on each post, divided by follower count, and reported the median.
When Hootsuite says the Instagram engagement rate for Financial Services is 3.80%, they’re measuring something different: average engagement per post, drawn from a different sample, normalized differently.
Same industry. Same platform. Same year.
0.26% versus 3.80%.
Both are “correct.” They’re answering different questions. Rival IQ is telling you what percentage of your followers interacted with your average post. Hootsuite is capturing something different about how individual posts perform.
And no benchmark report I’ve ever seen makes this distinction clear in the headline. They just say “engagement rate” like it means one universal thing.
It doesn’t.
This is why I’ve kept each source’s data in separate columns in every table below. Mixing them would be dishonest. Averaging them would be meaningless.
One more thing: Rival IQ samples 150 companies per industry. Which 150? We don’t know. Are they Fortune 500 brands or local businesses? That matters enormously, and nobody asks.
The incentive problem
Think about who produces social media benchmark data.
Rival IQ sells competitive analysis software for social media. Hootsuite sells social media management tools. Dash Social sells social media analytics. Socialinsider sells social media analytics.
Every company producing this data has a financial interest in making social media look important, measurable, and worth your time and money. None of them have any incentive to publish a report concluding “organic engagement is so low for most industries that your time might be better spent elsewhere.”
That doesn’t mean their data is fabricated. These are real companies with real analysts running real numbers. But it means the data comes from a place of motivation — not objectivity. Hold the numbers loosely. Treat them as directional signals, not gospel.
The data
We pulled data from four sources:
- Rival IQ — 2025 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. Methodology: median engagement rate (interactions ÷ followers). Sample: 150 companies per industry. Platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, TikTok.
- Hootsuite — Average Engagement Rates by Industry, January 2025. Methodology: average engagement rate per post. Platforms: LinkedIn, Instagram, Instagram Reels, X/Twitter, Facebook, TikTok.
- Dash Social — 2025 Social Media Benchmark Report. Real Estate industry only. Data period: July–December 2024.
- Socialinsider — Global Brand Benchmark Directory. Travel industry only. Data period: January–June 2025.
Where industries overlap between sources, I’m showing both numbers so you can see the discrepancy for yourself.
Quick reference: overall cross-industry averages (Hootsuite)
If you want one number per platform and don’t care about industry breakdowns, here are Hootsuite’s cross-industry averages. Take them with all the caveats above.
- Instagram: 3.50%
- LinkedIn: 3.40%
- Instagram Reels: 2.80%
- X/Twitter: 1.80%
- TikTok: 1.50%
- Facebook: 1.30%
Now for the industry-level data. Fair warning: there are a lot of tables below. I’m told search engines love tables. Humans, less so. But the whole point of this post is to be the most comprehensive benchmark reference on the internet, so here we are — writing for the algorithms that decide whether you find us. There’s some irony in that.
Instagram engagement rates by industry
| Industry | Rival IQ | Hootsuite |
|---|---|---|
| Agencies | — | 3.40% |
| Alcohol | 0.37% | — |
| Construction / Manufacturing | — | 4.40% |
| Consumer Goods / Retail | — | 3.00% |
| Dining / Hospitality / Tourism | — | 3.10% |
| Education | — | 4.20% |
| Fashion | 0.15% | — |
| Financial Services | 0.26% | 3.80% |
| Food & Beverage | 0.40% | — |
| Government | — | 3.50% |
| Health & Beauty | 0.14% | — |
| Healthcare / Pharma / Biotech | — | 3.70% |
| Higher Education | 2.10% | — |
| Home Decor | 0.14% | — |
| Influencers | 0.58% | — |
| Media / Entertainment | 0.44% | 3.00% |
| Nonprofits | 0.56% | 4.40% |
| Real Estate / Legal / Professional | — | 3.70% |
| Retail | 0.16% | — |
| Sports Teams | 1.30% | — |
| Tech & Software | 0.33% | 3.30% |
| Travel | 0.34% | — |
| Utilities / Energy | — | 3.80% |
Rival IQ: median interactions ÷ followers, 150 companies/industry. Hootsuite: average engagement per post.
Look at the rows where both sources have data. Financial Services: 0.26% versus 3.80%. Nonprofits: 0.56% versus 4.40%. Media: 0.44% versus 3.00%. Tech: 0.33% versus 3.30%. The Hootsuite numbers are consistently 6–14x higher.
If you Googled “good Instagram engagement rate for nonprofits” and found 0.56%, you’d think your 1.2% is phenomenal. If you found 4.40%, you’d think you’re failing. Same reality. Wildly different conclusion — depending on which tab you clicked.
For what it’s worth, Dash Social measured Real Estate Instagram at 0.30% and Socialinsider measured Travel at 0.60% — both using methodologies closer to Rival IQ’s. More data points, same confusion.
TikTok engagement rates by industry
| Industry | Rival IQ | Hootsuite |
|---|---|---|
| Agencies | — | 0.70% |
| Alcohol | 1.76% | — |
| Construction / Manufacturing | — | 2.60% |
| Consumer Goods / Retail | — | 1.60% |
| Dining / Hospitality / Tourism | — | 1.30% |
| Education | — | 2.30% |
| Fashion | 0.95% | — |
| Financial Services | 1.33% | 1.60% |
| Food & Beverage | 2.04% | — |
| Government | — | 1.60% |
| Health & Beauty | 0.85% | — |
| Healthcare / Pharma / Biotech | — | 1.00% |
| Higher Education | 7.36% | — |
| Home Decor | 1.52% | — |
| Influencers | 1.11% | — |
| Media / Entertainment | 1.34% | 1.80% |
| Nonprofits | 3.04% | 1.30% |
| Real Estate / Legal / Professional | — | 0.90% |
| Retail | 1.28% | — |
| Sports Teams | 2.68% | — |
| Tech & Software | 1.21% | 0.70% |
| Travel | 2.73% | — |
Rival IQ: median interactions ÷ followers. Hootsuite: average engagement per post.
TikTok is where the two sources’ numbers converge most closely. TikTok’s algorithm-driven distribution means per-follower and per-post metrics behave more similarly than on platforms where only your followers see your content.
Higher Education at 7.36% is the single highest engagement rate in the entire dataset, across any industry and any platform. Let that sink in. A 19-year-old filming a dorm room tour on their iPhone is generating more engagement than every corporate social media team with a six-figure content budget. Universities posting campus life and graduation content outperform every brand everywhere. If that doesn’t tell you something about what people want from social media, I don’t know what does.
Dash Social measured Real Estate TikTok at 3.10% with 1% monthly follower growth and — here’s the number that made me do a double-take — an average of 99,800 video views per post. Almost a hundred thousand views. For real estate content. On TikTok. Socialinsider puts Travel TikTok at 3.19%.
Facebook engagement rates by industry
| Industry | Rival IQ | Hootsuite |
|---|---|---|
| Agencies | — | 1.70% |
| Alcohol | 0.07% | — |
| Construction / Manufacturing | — | 1.70% |
| Consumer Goods / Retail | — | 1.00% |
| Dining / Hospitality / Tourism | — | 1.30% |
| Education | — | 2.20% |
| Fashion | 0.02% | — |
| Financial Services | 0.04% | 1.80% |
| Food & Beverage | 0.03% | — |
| Government | — | 1.50% |
| Health & Beauty | 0.02% | — |
| Healthcare / Pharma / Biotech | — | 1.90% |
| Higher Education | 0.13% | — |
| Home Decor | 0.02% | — |
| Influencers | 0.10% | — |
| Media / Entertainment | 0.02% | 0.80% |
| Nonprofits | 0.05% | 1.80% |
| Retail | 0.02% | — |
| Sports Teams | 0.23% | — |
| Tech & Software | 0.02% | 0.90% |
| Travel | 0.06% | — |
| Utilities / Energy | — | 1.60% |
Rival IQ: median interactions ÷ followers. Hootsuite: average engagement per post.
Rival IQ’s Facebook numbers tell a grim story. Most industries clock in at 0.02–0.07%. Let me put that in human terms: if you have 10,000 followers, your average post gets 2–7 interactions. Two to seven people. You could get more engagement by texting your friends.
I’ll be honest — I haven’t opened Facebook and scrolled through the feed in years. I’m going to have to advertise Apaya on there soon, and I’m dreading it. My plan is to get through the whole ad setup process without ever scrolling the feed. We’ll see if that’s possible. Facebook has become a paid advertising platform that happens to still have an organic feature nobody uses. The latest social media marketing statistics confirm organic reach has been declining for years.
Even Hootsuite’s more generous methodology tops out at 2.20% (Education). Facebook organic is on life support.
LinkedIn engagement rates by industry
Only Hootsuite tracks LinkedIn benchmarks in our dataset.
| Industry | Engagement Rate |
|---|---|
| Construction / Manufacturing | 4.00% |
| Consumer Goods / Retail | 3.90% |
| Dining / Hospitality / Tourism | 3.90% |
| Agencies | 3.70% |
| Technology | 3.60% |
| Healthcare / Pharma / Biotech | 3.30% |
| Utilities / Energy | 3.30% |
| Financial Services | 3.20% |
| Real Estate / Legal / Professional | 3.20% |
| Nonprofits | 3.00% |
| Education | 2.80% |
| Government | 2.70% |
| Media & Entertainment | 2.00% |
Hootsuite: average engagement per post.
LinkedIn shows consistently strong engagement across the board — higher than Instagram in several categories using the same Hootsuite methodology.
Full disclosure: I haven’t opened LinkedIn in probably years. I can’t tell you if I’ve ever scrolled a LinkedIn feed in my life. But apparently some people are, because these numbers are surprisingly strong. If you’re in professional services, healthcare, or financial services, LinkedIn might be where your time is best spent — even if, like me, you’ve been pretending it doesn’t exist.
X/Twitter engagement rates by industry
| Industry | Rival IQ | Hootsuite |
|---|---|---|
| Agencies | — | 1.70% |
| Alcohol | 0.02% | — |
| Construction / Manufacturing | — | 2.40% |
| Consumer Goods / Retail | — | 1.70% |
| Dining / Hospitality / Tourism | — | 2.00% |
| Education | — | 2.40% |
| Fashion | 0.00% | — |
| Financial Services | 0.03% | 2.10% |
| Food & Beverage | 0.00% | — |
| Government | — | 1.70% |
| Health & Beauty | 0.00% | — |
| Healthcare / Pharma / Biotech | — | 2.30% |
| Higher Education | 0.04% | — |
| Media / Entertainment | 0.01% | 1.70% |
| Nonprofits | 0.02% | 2.10% |
| Retail | 0.01% | — |
| Sports Teams | 0.07% | — |
| Tech & Software | 0.02% | 2.20% |
| Travel | 0.01% | — |
| Utilities / Energy | — | 2.40% |
Rival IQ: median interactions ÷ followers. Hootsuite: average engagement per post.
Rival IQ’s X/Twitter numbers are devastating. Fashion, Food & Beverage, and Health & Beauty show 0.00% engagement — literal zero to two decimal places. Even Tech & Software, which you’d expect to be X’s home turf, comes in at 0.02%.
Here’s what’s interesting: I’m on X constantly. I scroll it every day. But I’m following founders, CEOs, people in tech — individuals posting from their personal accounts about what they’re building and thinking. That’s what X is good for. What X is terrible for is businesses broadcasting to an audience. The engagement isn’t there. We see this with Apaya clients too — it’s rare for a business to even choose to include X when setting up their social accounts. They just skip it entirely.
Hootsuite is more optimistic at 1.70–2.40%, but the Rival IQ data and our own experience suggest brands in most industries have either stopped posting or stopped seeing any return when they do.
How often industries post per week
This data comes from Rival IQ only — they’re the sole source tracking posting frequency.
| Industry | X/Twitter | TikTok | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sports Teams | 19.78 | 25.20 | 44.25 | 3.08 |
| Media | 13.03 | 61.90 | 49.90 | 6.66 |
| Health & Beauty | 6.04 | 2.94 | 0.00 | 3.15 |
| Retail | 5.56 | 4.70 | 0.33 | 2.59 |
| Fashion | 5.23 | 3.39 | 0.02 | 2.14 |
| Home Decor | 4.70 | 3.56 | 0.02 | 2.13 |
| Influencers | 4.50 | 3.52 | 1.54 | 1.99 |
| Financial Services | 4.29 | 4.32 | 4.27 | 1.32 |
| Nonprofits | 4.18 | 5.51 | 5.68 | 1.42 |
| Higher Education | 4.07 | 6.35 | 4.90 | 1.59 |
| Travel | 3.58 | 3.10 | 0.34 | 2.11 |
| Tech & Software | 2.82 | 3.84 | 3.89 | 1.63 |
| Alcohol | 2.87 | 2.51 | 0.49 | 0.42 |
| Food & Beverage | 2.79 | 1.92 | 0.08 | 1.37 |
Rival IQ data. Sorted by Instagram posting frequency, highest first.
Media companies post 62 times per week on Facebook — nearly 9 times per day. Think about that. Nine posts a day. And most of it — I’ll say what everyone’s thinking — is recycled content slanted toward whatever political angle drives the most engagement, broadcast into echo chambers of people who already agree with them. They’re posting that volume because they’re trying to keep people coming back to their websites so they don’t die the slow death they’re already dying. That’s not a strategy any normal business should look at and think “I need to do that too.” (Not all media companies, but directionally? Yeah.)
Sports teams post 44 times per week on X. Meanwhile, Alcohol posts to TikTok 0.42 times per week. That’s once every two and a half weeks.
Fashion posts to X/Twitter 0.02 times per week. Home Decor, same. That’s roughly once every 50 weeks. Brands have quietly abandoned X in visual-first industries.
What content formats work best on Instagram
Across most industries in Rival IQ’s data, carousels are the top-performing Instagram format — outperforming or matching Reels in Financial Services, Alcohol, Food & Beverage, and Higher Education.
Health & Beauty is the exception: photos still lead, with Reels close behind.
This runs counter to the “just post Reels!” advice that every social media guru has been shouting for two years straight. I’ll be honest — until I looked at this data, I didn’t even know the difference between a carousel and a Reel. That’s how much attention I pay to social media guru advice. But the data says what it says: carousels are winning in most industries. No trending audio required.
For Facebook, photos are the top format across almost every industry. Not videos. Not link posts. The simplest content type wins on the platform that keeps pushing you toward video.
Six things that stand out
1. TikTok crushes every other platform for engagement.
Across every Rival IQ industry, TikTok has the highest engagement rate — by 3–10x versus Instagram. Higher Ed’s 7.36% on TikTok versus 2.10% on Instagram. Nonprofits’ 3.04% versus 0.56%. The algorithm-first distribution model means your content reaches people who don’t follow you, which naturally inflates per-follower engagement. But it also means TikTok gives new accounts a real chance to be seen — something Instagram and Facebook stopped doing years ago.
2. X/Twitter is dead for most industries.
Fashion posts to X once a year. Health & Beauty posts zero times per week. Engagement rounds to 0.00%. Unless you’re in media, sports, or tech, the data says X isn’t worth the effort. The social media trends shaping 2026 point in the same direction.
3. Carousels are Instagram’s quiet winner.
Despite the constant push toward short-form video, carousels outperform or match Reels in most industries Rival IQ tracks. If you’ve been neglecting carousel posts because some marketing guru told you “Reels are the only thing that matters,” this data says otherwise.
4. Higher Education is the engagement outlier.
Universities generate the highest engagement in the entire dataset — 7.36% on TikTok, 2.10% on Instagram. This is emotional, aspirational content: campus tours, graduation ceremonies, student life. The lesson for businesses: authentic, emotional content outperforms polished corporate material every time.
5. Facebook organic is barely alive.
Most industries show 0.02–0.07% organic engagement in Rival IQ’s data. Even Hootsuite’s more generous methodology caps out at 2.20%. If you’re still relying on organic Facebook reach to grow your business, these numbers should change your strategy.
6. LinkedIn deserves more attention than it gets.
With engagement rates of 2.00–4.00% across industries in Hootsuite’s data — often higher than Instagram using the same methodology — LinkedIn is quietly outperforming platforms that get far more marketing attention. If you’re in healthcare, professional services, financial services, or tech and you’re not posting on LinkedIn, you’re leaving engagement on the table.
What to do with any of this
Here’s what my dentist client in Phoenix should have asked me instead of “what’s a good engagement rate”:
“Is my content working better this month than last month?”
That’s the question that pays the bills.
Industry benchmarks give you a vague sense of whether you’re in the right ballpark. If your Instagram engagement is 0.01% and the data shows 0.14–4.40% (depending on who you believe), something is probably off. If you’re at 1.5%? You’re fine. Stop looking at benchmarks and go do something productive.
Beyond that rough sanity check, these numbers are too inconsistent between sources, too dependent on methodology, and too disconnected from your specific audience to be useful as targets. Here’s what you can do with them instead.
Pick your platforms based on where engagement exists. TikTok dominates engagement across every industry. LinkedIn is quietly strong. X is dying for most verticals. Facebook organic is nearly gone. Use this data to decide where to spend your time — not to obsess over decimal points on platforms that don’t move the needle. Then automate the consistent posting that drives the real benefits of social media.
Focus on content format over engagement rate. The most useful finding in this entire post isn’t an engagement percentage — it’s that carousels beat Reels for most industries on Instagram. That’s something you can act on tomorrow morning. “Your engagement rate should be X%” is not something you can act on.
Track your own numbers over time. Your engagement rate compared to an “industry average” compiled by a software company using 150 accounts you’ve never heard of — that tells you nothing useful. Your engagement rate this month compared to last month — that tells you everything.
That’s what Apaya’s analytics show you: not how you stack up against some phantom average, but whether your content is trending up or down. Whether your audience is growing. Whether the posts you’re making are working. Your data, your trajectory, your business.
Post consistently. The Rival IQ frequency data shows most successful brands post 3–6 times per week on Instagram and 2–5 times per week on Facebook. Forget engagement rate benchmarks — the most actionable number in this whole post is whether you’re showing up regularly.
And look — I know why you’re reading this. I know the psychological pull of benchmark data. You want a number to measure yourself against. You want someone to tell you that your engagement rate is good or bad so you can feel either reassured or panicked.
I’ve done the same thing. Compared my posts to “industry averages” at 2 AM and felt either smug or deflated depending on which source I was reading that night.
But the businesses I work with through Apaya who do the best on social media — they don’t read benchmark reports. They post consistently, track their own trajectory, and adjust based on what their data says. They’re not asking “what’s a good engagement rate for my industry?” They’re asking “did this week’s posts do better than last week’s?”
That’s the only benchmark worth losing sleep over.
What else you need to know about social media benchmarks
What is a “good” engagement rate on Instagram?
There is no single answer. Rival IQ’s data shows medians from 0.14% to 2.10% (interactions per follower). Hootsuite’s data shows 3.00% to 4.40% (per post). If you’re above the median for your industry in either methodology, you’re doing better than half your competitors. Whether that matters depends on whether engagement is translating to leads and revenue for your specific business.
What is a good engagement rate on TikTok?
TikTok shows the highest engagement of any major platform, ranging from 0.85% to 7.36% in Rival IQ’s data and 0.70% to 2.60% in Hootsuite’s. The algorithm-driven distribution means even accounts with small followings can see strong per-post engagement.
Should I still post on Facebook?
Organic Facebook engagement is at historic lows — 0.02% to 0.23% across most industries in Rival IQ’s data. If your audience is on Facebook and you’re willing to supplement with paid promotion, it can work. But expecting organic reach to drive meaningful results on Facebook in 2026 is unrealistic.
How often should I post on social media?
Based on Rival IQ’s data, most brands post 3–6 times per week on Instagram, 2–6 times per week on Facebook, and 1–3 times per week on TikTok. Consistency matters more than volume — posting 3 times every week beats posting 20 times one week and disappearing for two.
Are these benchmarks reliable?
Directionally, yes. As precise targets, no. Different sources use different methodologies, different samples, and different time periods. Use them as rough guideposts. Track your own data to measure real progress.
—
Every number in this post came from a company that wants you to buy their software. Including, if we’re being honest, the conclusions I’m drawing — I run Apaya, and I want you to automate your social media with us.
At least I’m telling you that upfront.
P.S. If you enjoy having your assumptions about data questioned, you might like my book — it applies the same skepticism to everything we think we know about how work gets done.
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