Social media has been sending fewer visitors to websites across many industries lately. This drop makes it hard for Brands to know if their content is doing well or if the social platforms themselves are making it harder to reach and engage people.

A new report from Rival IQ offers insights into this issue. The report looks at how brands are doing on major social media apps. It uses data from over 5 million posts and more than 10 billion interactions, like likes and comments, on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. The report gives a general view as well as details for specific industries.

For Facebook, the report shows that the average engagement rate for brands is 0.063%. This is a tiny increase from last year's 0.060%. Sports, influencers, higher education, and alcohol brands do better than others on Facebook. However, even the top performers only see a small part of their audience interacting with their posts. This suggests that looking at how far posts reach might be a better way to measure success, as most people on social media watch but don't interact.

The report questions if social media is as effective for marketing as people think. It suggests that brands might need to focus on other goals, like sales or getting people to sign up for emails, to really see how they are doing.

Instagram's average engagement rate has gone down to 0.43% from last year, continuing a downward trend. The competition is increasing, and changes in how users consume content are affecting how many people see and interact with brand posts.

Twitter, now known as X, has an average engagement rate of 0.029%, a slight drop from last year. The platform's focus has shifted away from helping brands get traffic. Yet, the decline in engagement isn't as big as expected.

TikTok saw a big drop in brand engagement, with the average rate falling to 5.69% per clip. Despite this, TikTok still offers a better chance for brands to reach and engage people compared to other platforms.

Rival IQ's report shows that brand engagement is low across all major social media apps. This could mean that people are less interested in brand content or that brands are struggling to connect with their audience. The actual results for a brand will depend on how well they understand and engage their audience on each platform.

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