Are Your Social Media Results Actually Good? 2026 Benchmarks for Small Businesses

Your business has 2,000 Facebook followers. Is that good?

Your latest Instagram post received 75 likes. Is that good?

Your LinkedIn impressions increased 40% last month. Is that good?

Without more context, none of those numbers tells you very much.

Small businesses have access to more social media metrics than ever, but having more data does not necessarily make performance easier to understand. Follower counts, likes and impressions can all provide useful information. The problem starts when those numbers become the goal instead of helping you measure progress toward an actual business objective.

For a Murfreesboro small business, the better question is whether social media is helping the right people discover, engage with and ultimately choose your company.

Current social media benchmarks can provide useful context. But determining whether your social media marketing is actually working requires looking beyond a single engagement rate or follower count.

Start With the Goal Before Looking at the Metrics

Before deciding which social media metrics matter, decide what your business wants social media to accomplish.

A new restaurant may want to build awareness and encourage local customers to visit. A B2B company might use LinkedIn to demonstrate expertise and generate qualified website traffic. A retailer could focus on product discovery and purchases. A service business might want calls, direct messages or quote requests.

Those goals require different measurements.

If your objective is awareness, reach and impressions can be important.

If you want people to interact with your brand, comments, shares, saves and messages become more relevant.

If you want new business, clicks, inquiries, calls and conversions deserve more attention.

Your social media strategy should therefore start with the business outcome and work backward to the metrics that can indicate whether you’re making progress.

What Do 2026 Social Media Benchmarks Tell Small Businesses?

Industry benchmarks can help you understand how your results compare with other organizations, but they need to be used carefully.

Hootsuite’s 2026 social media benchmarks provide industry-level comparisons across major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. The data shows something important that is easy to overlook: performance varies considerably by platform and industry.

There is no single engagement rate that defines “good social media.”

These figures represent Hootsuite’s reported engagement rates for the strongest-performing content types in each category, not universal targets every account should achieve.

These datasets are not limited to small businesses, so Murfreesboro companies should use them as directional context rather than direct performance targets.

A healthcare organization on Facebook should not automatically compare its engagement with a restaurant on Instagram. A professional services firm with a small, highly targeted LinkedIn audience may have completely different objectives from a consumer brand trying to reach hundreds of thousands of TikTok users.

The benchmark should be a reference point, not a report card.

For most Murfreesboro businesses, the best comparison combines relevant industry data with something even more useful: your own historical performance.

Understand How Engagement Rate Is Calculated

One reason social media benchmarks can become confusing is that “engagement rate” does not always mean the same thing.

Engagement itself typically includes actions such as likes, comments, shares and other interactions. But the denominator used to calculate the rate can change.

For example, engagement might be divided by:

• Total followers
• Impressions
• Reach

Those calculations answer different questions.

Engagement by followers asks how interaction compares with the size of the account’s following.

Engagement by impressions asks how frequently people interacted relative to the total number of times the content was displayed.

Engagement by reach asks how frequently unique people who saw the content interacted with it.

You should not directly compare a 3% engagement-by-reach figure with a 3% engagement-by-followers benchmark and assume they represent the same performance.

For internal reporting, choose one formula and use it consistently when comparing your own results over time. When using an outside benchmark, confirm how the source calculated its rate before making the comparison.

Reach and Impressions Tell Different Stories

Reach and impressions are often grouped together, but they measure different things.

Reach generally tells you how many unique people saw your content.

Impressions generally measure how many times the content was displayed, which means the same person can contribute multiple impressions.

Both can help evaluate awareness.

If your goal is to make more people in Murfreesboro familiar with your company, increasing relevant local reach may be valuable even when every person does not immediately click or send a message.

But high reach alone does not prove the content was effective.

If thousands of people see a post and almost no one engages, visits the website or takes another action, you need to ask whether the content reached the right audience and gave them a reason to care.

Likes Are Not All Equal

Likes are easy to understand, which is one reason they receive so much attention.

But they require very little effort.

Someone can tap a heart while scrolling and forget the post seconds later.

Compare that with someone who saves the post because they want to return to it. Or shares it with a friend. Or sends your business a direct message. Or clicks through to your website.

Those actions generally indicate greater intent.

That does not make likes meaningless. They can still provide feedback about what catches your audience’s attention.

The key is not allowing the easiest metric to overshadow the actions that may have more value to your business.

A post with 40 likes and 12 website visits may be more valuable than one with 200 likes and no further activity.

Facebook: Look Beyond Page Followers

For many local businesses, Facebook remains useful because it connects businesses with local communities, events and customers.

Follower growth can show whether your audience is expanding, but businesses should also monitor reach, comments, shares, link clicks and messages.

Local actions can be particularly useful.

Did people ask questions about the service in the comments? Did an event post lead to attendance? Did someone message the business for pricing or availability? Did a post drive people to the website?

Those actions give social performance business context.

Your Facebook page also contributes to your overall online presence. People may discover the business through Google and then check Facebook before contacting you, or see a Facebook post and later search for your company directly.

That is one reason Boro Business Lab approaches digital marketing as a connected strategy rather than treating each platform as an isolated channel.

Instagram: Saves and Shares Can Reveal What Resonates

Instagram gives small businesses an opportunity to communicate visually through photos, carousels, Stories and Reels.

Different formats can produce different types of interaction.

Emplifi’s 2026 Social Media Benchmarks Report found that Instagram Reels and Carousels generated about 44% more median engagement than image posts.

A striking photo may attract likes. An educational carousel might generate saves. A useful Reel may get shared with friends. A Story could prompt a direct response.

Those distinctions matter.

If your goal is to demonstrate expertise, saves may tell you that people found the information valuable enough to revisit.

If your goal is awareness, shares and reach beyond existing followers can be particularly useful.

If the goal is lead generation, profile visits, website clicks and direct messages may deserve more attention.

Rather than asking whether your Instagram engagement rate is universally “good,” look at whether the interactions support what you are trying to accomplish.

LinkedIn: A Smaller Audience Can Still Have High Value

LinkedIn deserves a different approach, particularly for B2B and professional service businesses.

A Murfreesboro company may have far fewer LinkedIn followers than Facebook or Instagram followers and still generate significant business value from the platform.

Why?

Because audience relevance matters.

A post reaching 500 people in the right industries or job roles could potentially be more valuable than a consumer post reaching 10,000 people with little connection to the business.

Watch impressions and engagement, but also monitor profile visits, website clicks, inquiries and conversations that begin on the platform.

For B2B companies, thought leadership from individual employees or company leaders may also support the organization’s overall presence.

The objective is not necessarily to build the largest possible audience. It is to reach people who matter to the business.

TikTok: Views Need Context Too

TikTok can produce large view counts, particularly when a piece of content reaches beyond an account’s existing audience.

That makes views exciting, but the same rule applies: visibility is only one part of performance.

Look at watch behavior, shares, comments, profile activity and actions that happen after someone encounters your content.

A locally focused business should also consider geography.

A Murfreesboro restaurant receiving 100,000 views sounds impressive. But if most of those viewers live hundreds of miles away, the business impact may be limited.

A video with 8,000 views concentrated among people in Middle Tennessee could potentially be more useful.

Virality and business value are not always the same thing.

Organic Social and Paid Social Should Be Evaluated Differently

Organic and paid social media can support each other, but they should not necessarily be measured the same way.

Organic social depends heavily on existing audiences, platform algorithms, content quality and how users naturally engage with a post.

Paid social gives businesses greater control over targeting, budget and campaign objectives.

A paid campaign might be designed specifically for website traffic, leads, purchases or another measurable conversion. In that case, cost per result and conversion performance become especially important.

Organic content can play a broader role in visibility, trust and ongoing customer relationships.

Businesses should evaluate each according to its purpose instead of blending every social metric into one overall number.

For Local Businesses, Local Actions Matter

National social media benchmarks can be useful, but a Murfreesboro small business ultimately needs customers it can serve.

That makes local actions particularly valuable.

Depending on the type of business, watch for:

• Calls
• Direct messages
• Website visits
• Requests for directions
• Event attendance
• Appointment requests
• Quote requests
• Reservations
• Purchases

Not every customer journey will be perfectly trackable. Someone might see several Instagram posts over a period of months and then call after finding the company on Google.

But tracking as many meaningful actions as possible gives you a better picture than follower counts alone.

What Kind of Content Creates Meaningful Engagement?

The answer depends on your audience, but the best place to start is your own data.

Look at your highest-performing content and identify patterns.

Do behind-the-scenes posts generate conversation? Do educational posts get saved? Does employee-focused content receive shares? Do short videos reach new audiences? Do project photos produce inquiries?

Then look at the posts that underperform.

The goal is not to repeat one successful post indefinitely. It is to understand the themes and formats your audience consistently responds to.

Your content marketing should give people a reason to follow the business beyond simply seeing another sales pitch.

Useful information, recognizable expertise, local relevance, personality and genuine stories can all contribute to a stronger connection.

Consistency Matters, but More Posts Are Not Always Better

Posting regularly helps maintain visibility and gives you more opportunities to learn what your audience responds to.

But quantity alone is not a strategy.

Publishing five forgettable posts every week is not necessarily better than publishing two pieces of content that are useful, relevant and aligned with your brand.

The right posting frequency depends on your platform, resources, audience and ability to create worthwhile content.

A realistic schedule that your business can sustain is usually more useful than an aggressive calendar that results in rushed, repetitive posts.

Consistency should apply to the brand as well.

Visuals, messaging and tone should reinforce how you want customers to perceive the company. Boro Business Lab’s branding services can help establish that foundation so your social presence feels connected to the rest of your marketing.

Connect Social Media With Website Analytics

Platform analytics tell you what happened on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok.

Website analytics help show what happened next.

Use appropriate tracking to identify how much website traffic comes from social channels and what those visitors do after they arrive.

Do they leave immediately? Read multiple pages? Visit a service page? Submit a form?

That information helps distinguish social activity from business impact.

It also reinforces why your website matters to social media performance.

If a great social post earns the click but sends people to a confusing, outdated or difficult-to-use website, the marketing journey can break down at the final step.

Compare Your Performance Three Ways

When deciding whether your social media results are good, use three points of comparison.

First, look at relevant industry and platform benchmarks from sources such as Hootsuite and Emplifi. Make sure you understand how each metric was calculated before comparing it with your own.

Second, compare your results with your own historical performance. Are you reaching more relevant people than six months ago? Are website clicks improving? Are certain content formats consistently producing stronger engagement?

Third, compare performance with your business goals.

If the objective is local awareness, is your content reaching people in your market?

If you want leads, are social visitors becoming inquiries?

If you want stronger customer relationships, are people commenting, messaging and returning to engage again?

That third comparison is often the one that matters most.

Don’t Let One Viral Post Rewrite Your Strategy

Social media performance can fluctuate dramatically.

One post may suddenly generate five times your typical reach. The next may struggle.

Avoid changing your entire strategy based on either result.

Look for patterns across weeks and months.

If short educational videos consistently outperform static promotional graphics, that is useful information. If employee-focused content repeatedly generates stronger engagement, investigate why. If posts about a particular service produce website traffic and inquiries, consider creating more content around that subject.

Social media strategy improves when decisions are based on repeatable patterns rather than emotional reactions to individual posts.

So, Are Your Social Media Results Actually Good?

The answer is not hiding in your follower count.

Current 2026 benchmarks from Hootsuite and Emplifi can help businesses understand how social media performance varies by industry, platform and content type. But no single engagement percentage defines success for every small business.

A Murfreesboro restaurant, contractor, professional service firm and retailer can all use social media successfully while producing very different metrics.

Instead, determine whether your content is reaching the right people and moving them toward actions that matter.

Are people sharing and saving your content? Are they visiting your website? Are local customers sending messages? Are prospective clients calling? Is social media helping people recognize and trust your business?

Those are the questions that turn social media metrics into business metrics.

Boro Business Lab helps Middle Tennessee businesses connect social media marketing, content, branding, web design and broader digital marketing into a strategy built around business goals rather than vanity metrics.

Want a clearer picture of what your social media numbers are actually telling you? Talk with our team about a strategy focused on the results that matter to your business.