Glossary
Median, and your own baseline
What does median, and your own baseline mean?
- Reading the question
- Writing it in plain words
The part worth reading
What it does not tell you.
Averages are pulled around by single outliers, so one reel that reached ten times your usual makes every later post look like a failure against the average it created. The median ignores that. This is what a phrase like "against your own median" means: not whether a post did well in general, which nobody can say, but whether it did well for this account, at this size, right now. Comparing yourself to an industry benchmark is nearly always less useful, because the benchmark was not measured on your audience.
Worked example
Ten posts with reach of 2,000 to 3,000 and one with 40,000 have a median near 2,500, which is what a normal post does.
The usual mistake
Using the average to judge a normal post. One viral post drags the average up and makes every ordinary post look like a failure.
Read next
Words that go with it.
- OutlierAn outlier is one of your posts that performed far above or far below your own normal range.
- Engagement rateEngagement rate is the share of people who interacted with a post, written as a percentage of either your followers or the accounts the post reached.
- Reach rateReach rate is the share of your followers a post reached, written as a percentage.
Now the harder question. What do yours say?
Ask Synclify in the same plain words and it reads your own account. Every dashboard and chart in it is free to use on every plan.
Cancel any time. Every dashboard and report is free to open.