What is a good engagement rate for a nano-influencer on Instagram?

Anything above 2.71% is above average. That's the figure a 2025 sector analysis by archive.com lands on for nano-influencers on Instagram — the highest average of any tier on that platform.

That number is a reference point, not a target. Engagement rate drops structurally as an account grows: with macro-influencers it sinks towards 1%. A nano account with 3,000 followers and 90 likes isn't underperforming, it's performing normally.

Where the engagement comes from matters more than the percentage. Twenty comments from people who ride the same loop weigh more than two hundred likes out of an engagement pod. When we select, we look at three things: whether the responses come from the sport, whether the profile posts consistently — not three posts in one week and then six weeks of silence — and whether saves and shares move along with the likes.

In our own collabs we see plenty of outliers above that average. In the WOWOW pilot the strongest profile sat at 11.8% engagement. Not because that athlete had more followers, but because the audience sat exactly where the product belonged.

So use 2.71% as a benchmark, not as a cut-off. A profile with 1,200 followers documenting a real training week every week is worth more than one with 9,000 and tidy numbers with no sport behind them.