The LinkedIn Engagement Rate Calculator: Are You Above or Below Average?

You posted on LinkedIn three times this week. Got 62 likes, 11 comments and 4 shares on your best post. Is that good?

You genuinely have no idea. And neither does anyone else, because LinkedIn doesn't give you a benchmark. It shows you your numbers in isolation and lets you guess. It's like taking a test and getting a score of 73 with no context. Is 73 good? Is the average 50 or 90? Nobody tells you. You're just supposed to feel something about 73 and move on.

We built the benchmark. 10,222 posts. 494 creators. Every metric tracked. Here's how to calculate your engagement rate and figure out exactly where you stand. No more guessing. No more comparing yourself to that one person in your feed who seems to get 5,000 likes on everything they write.

How to Calculate Your LinkedIn Engagement Rate

There are two formulas. Use whichever one you have data for. Both give you useful information, but they measure slightly different things.

Formula 1: Impression-Based (More Accurate)

Engagement Rate = (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Impressions x 100

If your post got 80 likes, 15 comments, 3 shares and 12,000 impressions:

(80 + 15 + 3) / 12,000 x 100 = 0.82%

This is the most accurate measure because it's based on how many people actually saw your post. Not how many could have seen it. Not how many follow you. How many actually had your post appear on their screen. You can find impression data in LinkedIn's built-in analytics for each post.

Pro tip: Click on the analytics for any post you've published. LinkedIn shows impressions, clicks and engagement. It's not the most detailed analytics in the world (Instagram and YouTube give you far more data), but it's enough to calculate your rate. Make a habit of checking this for every post. The data accumulates and becomes genuinely useful over time.

Formula 2: Follower-Based (Rough Proxy)

Engagement Rate = (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Follower Count x 100

If you have 5,000 followers and your post got 80 likes, 15 comments and 3 shares:

(80 + 15 + 3) / 5,000 x 100 = 1.96%

This is a rougher estimate because not all followers see every post. LinkedIn shows your content to a fraction of your followers first (typically 5-15% in the initial test distribution), then expands if engagement is strong. So your actual impression count might be 750 for a post that a 5,000-follower account publishes. But it works as a quick-and-dirty metric when you don't want to dig into analytics for every post.

Pro tip: The follower-based formula becomes less accurate as your follower count grows. If you have 500 followers, LinkedIn might show your post to 40-50% of them. If you have 50,000 followers, it might only show it to 3-5% initially. So the same engagement rate can mean very different things at different follower counts. Use the impression-based formula when precision matters.

The impression-based formula is the standard. Use the follower-based formula for quick comparisons only. And never compare your follower-based rate to someone else's impression-based rate. That's comparing apples to refrigerators.

A Note on What Counts as "Engagement"

The basic formula uses likes, comments and shares. But not all engagement is created equal. Here's the hierarchy:

Comments are the most valuable, carrying roughly 8x the algorithmic weight of likes. A comment takes effort. Someone had to read your post, form a thought and type a response. That's a high-quality signal.

Shares are the rarest and arguably most meaningful. When someone shares your post, they're putting it in front of their own audience. They're betting their reputation on your content being worth reading. That's the highest compliment on LinkedIn.

Likes are the most common and least valuable per unit. They take one click. They're the minimum viable engagement. But they add up, and they still send a positive signal to the algorithm.

Saves aren't included in the standard formula, but they're worth tracking separately. A save means someone wants to come back to your content. That's a strong indicator of genuine value. LinkedIn doesn't make save counts public, but you can see them in your post analytics.

Pro tip: If you want a weighted engagement rate that better reflects content quality, try this: (Likes + Comments x 3 + Shares x 5) / Impressions x 100. The weighting reflects the relative algorithmic value and effort level of each engagement type. This gives you a truer picture of content quality than the simple formula.

Engagement Rate Benchmarks by Content Format

From our dataset of 10,222 posts:

Image Posts (Including Carousels)

• Benchmark engagement rate: 0.93%
• Average likes: 468
• Average comments: 85
• Average shares: 16

If your image posts are hitting above 0.93%, you're outperforming the average image post in our database. Above 1.5%, you're doing very well. Above 2%, you're in elite territory. Below 0.5%, your images or content need work.

Pro tip: The engagement rate for carousels specifically tends to be higher than single images, because carousels generate more dwell time (swiping through multiple slides). If your image post rate is below 0.93% but you're only using single images, try a carousel. The format change alone might push you above the benchmark.

Text Posts

• Benchmark engagement rate: 0.50%
• Average likes: 191
• Average comments: 33

If your text posts are hitting above 0.50%, you're above the benchmark. Text posts have a lower ceiling than image posts, so a 0.80% engagement rate on a text post is roughly equivalent to a 1.5% rate on an image post in terms of relative performance.

This means a text post with a 0.60% rate is actually outperforming its format, even though 0.60% looks unimpressive compared to image post benchmarks. Always compare within format. This is one of the most common benchmarking mistakes people make.

Poll Posts

• Benchmark engagement rate: 0.07%
• Average likes: 25
• Average comments: 23

There's no good benchmark for polls because the format is essentially dead. If you're still posting polls, the benchmark you should care about is: switch to literally any other format. The 0.07% rate is so low that even a mediocre text post will outperform a well-crafted poll by 7x. The economics of poll posts are terrible.

Pro tip: If you love the interactive element of polls (asking your audience a question), try this instead: write a text or image post that poses the same question, but in the body of the post. "Which do you prefer: A or B? Drop your answer in the comments." You get the interactive engagement without the poll format penalty. And the comments you generate are worth 8x what a poll vote is worth algorithmically.

Why Format Benchmarks Matter

This is critical. If you're comparing your text post engagement rate to an image post benchmark, you're getting the wrong answer. You'll think you're underperforming when you might actually be outperforming your format.

A text post with a 0.70% engagement rate is performing well. That same 0.70% on an image post is below the benchmark. Compare within format. Always. It's like comparing your mile time while running versus cycling. Different formats, different baselines.

Benchmarks by Raw Numbers

If you don't want to calculate rates, here's where you stand based on raw like and comment counts across our full dataset. These are the numbers most people instinctively check after publishing a post, so let's give them proper context.

Likes Benchmarks

Look at the gap between tiers. Going from "Average" to "Above average" requires roughly a 2-3x improvement. Going from "Good" to "Great" requires another 2x. Going from "Great" to "Viral" requires yet another 7x. The climb gets exponentially steeper. This is why obsessing over going viral is usually a waste of energy. The effort to move from "Average" to "Good" produces measurable business results. The effort to move from "Good" to "Viral" is massive and largely dependent on luck.

Pro tip: Print this table out (or screenshot it) and keep it near your desk. Next time you publish a post and get 120 likes, you can immediately look at the table and see: "Above average. Better than most." That context turns a number you might have been disappointed by into a number you can feel good about.

Comments Benchmarks

Comments are harder to generate than likes. Getting 20+ comments on a post is genuinely above average. If you're consistently hitting 30-40 comments, you're writing content that generates real discussion. That's a sign of audience quality, not just audience size.

Pro tip: Look at the quality of comments, not just the quantity. Ten comments that say "Great post!" are worth less than three comments that share personal experiences or ask follow-up questions. The latter indicates genuine engagement. The former indicates people scrolling through their feed on autopilot.

Shares Benchmarks

Shares are the least common engagement type. The average post in our data gets 16 shares. If you're consistently getting 20+ shares per post, you're above average.

Shares are worth paying attention to because they represent the strongest signal: someone thought your content was good enough to put in front of their own audience. That's a higher bar than a like or even a comment. A like costs one click. A share costs social capital. The person sharing is essentially saying "I vouch for this content" to their entire network.

Pro tip: Track which of your posts get the most shares. These are your best content. Not your most liked posts (which might just be emotionally resonant), but your most shared posts (which are genuinely useful or insightful enough that people want to be associated with them). Double down on the type of content that gets shared.

Why Engagement Rate Matters More Than Total Engagement

A post with 50 likes from an account with 500 followers has a 10% engagement rate.

A post with 200 likes from an account with 50,000 followers has a 0.4% engagement rate.

Which post performed better?

By raw numbers, the second post "won" with 4x more likes. But by engagement rate, the first post is 25x more effective. The 500-follower account is converting a massive percentage of their audience into engaged readers. The 50,000-follower account is barely moving the needle with most of their audience.

This distinction matters enormously for business outcomes. Here's why:

For business goals (leads, clients, partnerships, job offers), engagement rate is the better metric. A highly engaged small audience is more valuable than a disengaged large one. The 500-follower account with 10% engagement rate has people who actually read, think about and act on their content. These are warm connections. These are people who know your name, trust your expertise and might hire you. The 50,000-follower account has a lot of passive followers who scroll past without a second thought.

Total engagement matters for brand awareness and visibility. If you're trying to become a recognized name in your industry, raw numbers matter. If a recruiter or journalist searches for you, seeing "this person gets 500 likes per post" creates a credibility halo.

Engagement rate matters for audience quality and conversion potential. If you're trying to generate leads, close deals or build a community, the rate tells you whether your content actually connects with people.

Most business creators should optimize for rate. Not vanity numbers.

Pro tip: If your engagement rate is declining as your follower count grows, that's normal. Larger audiences are naturally less engaged on a per-follower basis. What matters is that your absolute engagement numbers (total likes, comments) are still growing. A 0.5% rate on 50,000 followers (250 engagements per post) is better business-wise than a 5% rate on 500 followers (25 engagements per post), even though the rate is 10x lower.

Engagement Rate by Niche: Your Category Changes Everything

This is where generic benchmarks fall apart. Different niches have radically different engagement rates. Using the overall benchmark without adjusting for your niche is like comparing a fish's ability to climb a tree.

Look at the spread. Software Engineering gets 2.57%. Personal Development gets 0.39%. That's a 6.5x difference. These are not the same game.

If you're a software engineer getting a 1.5% engagement rate, you might think you're crushing it. But against your category benchmark of 2.57%, you're actually below average for your niche. You're a fish among fish, and the other fish are swimming faster.

If you're posting personal development content and getting a 0.50% engagement rate, that looks mediocre against the overall platform. But against your category benchmark of 0.39%, you're significantly above average. You're actually outperforming your peers by a healthy margin.

Your category is your benchmark. Find your niche in the table above. That's the number that matters for you. Ignore the overall platform averages. They're about as useful as knowing the average temperature on Earth when you're trying to decide what to wear in Alaska.

Why Some Niches Have Higher Rates

The explanation is actually pretty intuitive once you think about it.

Niche professional audiences (Software Engineering, Sales) engage at higher rates because the content is directly relevant to their daily work. When a software engineer sees a post about a specific technical challenge, they're compelled to comment because it's their expertise. The content is actionable for their specific role. They can use it tomorrow. That urgency drives engagement.

Broad personal topics (Personal Development, Leadership) reach larger audiences but generate more passive engagement. People like a motivational post about resilience, but they don't feel the same urgency to comment as they do on a post about a bug in their tech stack. The like button is sufficient. They nod, tap the thumbs up and keep scrolling.

Social Media Marketing is an outlier: the audience is literally made up of professional social media users. Of course they comment more. Engaging with content is their job. It's like hosting a party where all the guests are professional party-goers. The engagement is going to be high.

Pro tip: If you're in a high-rate niche (Software Engineering, Sales, Social Media Marketing), you have a built-in engagement advantage. Use it. Post more, because your audience is primed to engage. If you're in a low-rate niche (Personal Development, broad Leadership), focus on hooks and images to close the gap. You need to work harder to earn the same engagement, but you also reach a larger potential audience.

The Niche Within the Niche

Here's an advanced move: find the sub-niche within your niche. If you write about "AI," you're competing in a category with 1,223 posts in our dataset. That's crowded. If you write about "AI for healthcare diagnostics" or "AI agents for sales teams," you're speaking to a much smaller, much more engaged subset.

We don't have specific engagement rates for sub-niches in our data, but the pattern is clear: the more specific you get, the higher the engagement rate. Software Engineering (2.57%) outperforms the generic "Tech" category. AI Automation (1.08%) outperforms generic AI. The pattern holds across categories.

Pro tip: Test sub-niches by writing 5-10 posts in each area and comparing engagement rates. You'll quickly find which narrow topic your specific audience is most engaged by. Then double down.

How to Measure Progress (The Right Way)

Stop evaluating performance post by post. A single post can spike or flop based on timing, luck or whether a large account happened to reshare it. One data point tells you nothing. Making decisions based on one post's performance is like judging a basketball player's skill based on one free throw.

Track Over 30 Days

Look at your last 12-15 posts (roughly a month of content if you post three times a week). Calculate the median engagement for that batch. That's your baseline.

Why median instead of average? Because averages get skewed by outliers. If one of your 15 posts went semi-viral (500 likes when your normal is 50), the average jumps to 80 but nothing actually changed about your typical performance. The median ignores the outlier and shows your true middle.

Next month, do the same calculation. Compare the two medians.

Are you improving? Staying flat? Declining?

The 30-day median removes the noise of individual viral spikes or random flops. It shows your true performance trend. This is the only number that actually tells you whether your content strategy is working.

Pro tip: Create a simple spreadsheet. One row per post. Columns for date, likes, comments, shares, impressions, format and topic. Update it after each post. At the end of each month, calculate your median. After three months, you'll have the clearest picture of your LinkedIn performance that any analytics tool can provide. Low-tech, high-value.

Set Incremental Goals

If your current median is 40 likes per post, set a goal for 60. Not 500. Not 1,000. Sixty.

Once you consistently hit 60, aim for 80. Then 100. Then 150.

Doubling your median over three months is an excellent result. It means your content is meaningfully better and your audience is growing. That's real progress. Don't let anyone tell you it's not impressive because it's not viral. Consistent, measurable improvement is more valuable than one lucky viral hit.

Pro tip: When you hit a new personal best, note what you did differently on that post. Was it the hook? The image? The topic? The time of day? These observations compound over time. After 50 posts of data, you'll have a clear picture of what works specifically for your audience. That's more valuable than any generic LinkedIn advice article (including this one, honestly).

Measure the Right Metric for Your Goal

This is where most people go wrong. They optimize for likes because likes are visible. But likes might not be the metric that matters for their actual goal.

If your goal is brand awareness: track total impressions and reach. Raw likes matter here because they correlate with visibility. You want maximum eyeballs. Engagement rate is less important than total distribution.

If your goal is lead generation: track comments and profile visits. A post with 30 likes and 15 comments from your target audience is more valuable than a post with 300 likes from random connections. Look at who is commenting. Are they potential clients? Partners? Employers? That's what matters.

Pro tip: After each post, check who engaged with it. If your target audience is CFOs and most of your likes are from marketing managers, your content is reaching the wrong people. The engagement rate might look fine, but the audience composition is off. Adjust your topics and language to attract the right people, not just more people.

If your goal is thought leadership: track shares and saves. People share content they want to be associated with. People save content they plan to reference later. Both signals indicate deep value. If your content gets liked but never shared, it's entertaining but not authoritative. If it gets shared regularly, you're building a reputation.

If your goal is growing your audience: track follower growth per post. Some posts drive follow conversions better than others, usually posts that showcase your unique expertise or perspective. Track which posts generate the most new followers, not which posts get the most likes. These are often different posts.

How to Improve Your Engagement Rate

Based on our data, here are the highest-impact changes ranked by potential improvement:

1. Switch to Image Posts

From 0.50% (text) to 0.93% (image). That's nearly a 2x improvement just by adding a visual to your post. This is the single easiest change with the largest measurable impact. You don't need to write better. You don't need to think harder. You just need to attach an image.

Pro tip: Build a library of reusable image templates. Create 3-5 simple designs in Canva (or whatever tool you prefer) with consistent branding. Each time you write a post, drop the key stat or insight into one of your templates. Five minutes per post, 87% engagement boost. That's an absurd ROI.

2. Write in the 500-1,200 Character Range

0.83% engagement rate for medium-length posts. Most people write too long. If your posts regularly hit 2,000+ characters, try cutting them to under 1,200. See if your rate improves. The discipline of cutting is painful but effective. Every sentence has to earn its place.

Pro tip: Write your post, then cut it by 30%. If it still makes sense (and it usually does), you've found the sweet spot. Most posts contain 30-40% filler that the writer needed but the reader doesn't. Ruthless editing is the fastest path to better engagement.

3. Post on High-Engagement Days

Tuesday (0.92%) versus Saturday (0.46%) is a 2x gap. Move your best content to Tuesday, Monday or Thursday. Save experimental or lower-effort content for other days. This is the definition of free optimization.

4. Optimize for Comments, Not Likes

Comments carry roughly 8x the algorithmic weight of likes. End your posts with specific, debatable questions. Not "Agree?" but "What's your experience with this?" Posts that generate real discussion get pushed to more feeds.

Pro tip: The question format matters. "Thoughts?" generates one-word responses. "What's the biggest mistake you've made with X?" generates stories. Stories are long comments. Long comments are high-quality engagement signals. Ask questions that require a real answer, not just a reaction.

5. Find Your Niche

Software Engineering: 2.57%. Sales: 1.01%. The more specific your topic, the more engaged your audience. If you're posting about "business" in general, narrow it to your specific domain. The specificity attracts a smaller but much more engaged audience. And a smaller, engaged audience is more valuable than a large, indifferent one.

6. Engage With Your Comments

Responding to every comment in the first hour boosts your post's algorithmic performance. Each reply counts as additional engagement. A post with 10 comments where you replied to all 10 has 20 total comment interactions. The algorithm sees that as a highly active discussion and pushes it to more feeds.

Pro tip: Don't just reply "Thanks!" to every comment. Add substance. Ask a follow-up question. Share an additional thought. Extend the conversation. This not only boosts the algorithmic signal but also builds genuine relationships. The person you engage with thoughtfully today might become a client, collaborator or referral source tomorrow.

The Engagement Trap

One warning before you start optimizing. This is the part of the article where we tell you that everything we just told you comes with a caveat. You're welcome.

Don't fall into the trap of chasing engagement metrics for their own sake. Ten comments from potential clients are worth more than 1,000 likes from random people who will never buy anything from you. This is the LinkedIn equivalent of a restaurant that's always packed but nobody orders food. Looks impressive. Generates no revenue.

The purpose of engagement isn't to feel good about your numbers. It's to build relationships with people who matter to your professional goals. A CFO who comments "This is exactly the problem we're facing" on your post is worth more than 500 likes from people outside your target audience. That CFO just raised their hand and said "I'm interested." That's a lead. That's business value.

Pro tip: After a post does well, scroll through the engagement and ask yourself: "Would I want any of these people as clients, partners or collaborators?" If the answer is yes, your content is attracting the right audience. If the answer is mostly no, you might have great engagement metrics but a targeting problem.

Engagement rate is a useful diagnostic tool. It tells you whether your content connects with your audience. But the ultimate metric isn't rate or likes or comments. It's whether your LinkedIn presence is producing real business outcomes: meetings, partnerships, deals, hires, opportunities.

Use engagement rate to measure content performance. Use business outcomes to measure LinkedIn ROI. The first is a leading indicator. The second is what actually matters.

Where Do You Stand?

Pull up your last 10 LinkedIn posts. Calculate your median likes and comments. This takes about five minutes. Do it now if you can.

Compare against the benchmarks:

• Overall median: 40 likes, 8 comments
• Image post average: 468 likes, 0.93% engagement rate
• Text post average: 191 likes, 0.50% engagement rate

Find your category benchmark in the table above.

Now you know. You're either above average, at average or below average. Not based on guesswork. Not based on what you see in your feed. Based on data from 10,222 real posts.

If you're below average, the improvement steps above will move you up. Start with images (biggest bang for the effort), then work on length, then timing. Layer the improvements.

If you're at average, you're doing better than you probably thought. The median is 40 likes. If you're consistently hitting 40-60, you're right in the middle of the pack. Now push toward 100.

If you're above average, you're doing something right. Keep going. Identify what's working and do more of it. Track your monthly median and keep pushing it upward.

Pro tip: Set a recurring monthly calendar event called "LinkedIn Performance Check." Take 10 minutes to calculate your median engagement, compare it to last month and note any trends. This small habit turns LinkedIn from a guessing game into a data-driven activity. And data-driven beats vibes-driven every single time.

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All benchmarks in this article are from ViralBrain's dataset of 10,222 LinkedIn posts across 494 creators. ViralBrain calculates your engagement rate automatically, benchmarks you against real data and scores each post so you always know where you stand.