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Mail & Guardian engagement report

@mailandguardian - 1.1M followers on X

Measured over 102 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026.

Engagement

Bottom 10% for its size
Per follower
0%
of 1.1M followers
Per impression
0.12%
4.2K views on a typical post
Reach
0.37%
of its followers see a post
Typical post
5
interactions (median)
Saved
0%
0 bookmarks on a typical post
Posting rate
3.4/day
active 37% of days
Peak time
11:00 UTC
Friday

A typical post picks up 5 interactions against 1.1M followers, an engagement rate of 0%. Measured over 102 original posts, its engagement rate beats 6% of 3,791 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 4.2K times each, and 0.12% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.367% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 3.4 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 37% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 11:00 UTC, and Friday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 102 posts sampled, 35% carry an image or video and 97% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 613 interactions, about 123x its own typical post.

Measured over 102 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 31, 2026. Recurring tag: #makemaftowngreatagain.

Compared with accounts its own size

Mail & Guardian's engagement rate beats 6% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,791 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 9 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.

On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 9% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.

Where this sits in the catalog

At under 0.001%, Mail & Guardian sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,759 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.

p100.002%
p250.012%
p50 (median)0.08%
p750.434%
p902.10%
p99160.4%
Engagement rate as a share of followers, across the 36,759 accounts we have scanned enough to measure. The axis is logarithmic, because the top and bottom of this population are about 106,964 times apart and a linear axis would flatten everything below the median into a single point.
Show the percentile table
Engagement rate percentiles
PercentileEngagement rate
10th percentile0.002%
25th percentile0.012%
50th percentile0.08%
75th percentile0.434%
90th percentile2.10%
99th percentile160.4%

This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built

Posting timing

This account posts most often around 11:00 UTC, and Friday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.

Engagement by hour posted, UTCTwenty-four bars, one per UTC hour. Each bar shows how posts published in that hour compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest hour: 11:00 UTC.
0003060912151821
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 6%Busiest hour: 11:00 UTC
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
Engagement by hour posted, UTC
Hour (UTC)Vs author medianPosts
00:00 UTC-1%51K
01:00 UTC-2%52K
02:00 UTC-3%50K
03:00 UTC-4%54K
04:00 UTC-6%43K
05:00 UTC-4%42K
06:00 UTC-4%48K
07:00 UTC-5%52K
08:00 UTC-4%61K
09:00 UTC-3%70K
10:00 UTC-2%72K
11:00 UTC-3%79K
12:00 UTC-2%87K
13:00 UTC-3%95K
14:00 UTC-4%98K
15:00 UTC-2%101K
16:00 UTC-4%99K
17:00 UTC-2%91K
18:00 UTC-1%85K
19:00 UTC-1%80K
20:00 UTC-1%75K
21:00 UTC-1%66K
22:00 UTC-2%58K
23:00 UTC-2%52K
Engagement by day of weekSeven bars, one per weekday, Sunday first. Each bar shows how posts published on that day compare with their own authors' median engagement. Bars above the centre line ran higher than the median, bars below ran lower. A marker flags Busiest day: Friday.
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
Above the authors' own mediansBelowScale: plus or minus 5%Busiest day: Friday
Show engagement by day of week as a table
Engagement by day of week
DayVs author medianPosts
Sunday+4%232K
Monday0%290K
Tuesday-2%281K
Wednesday-1%252K
Thursday-2%245K
Friday-3%254K
Saturday+3%228K
See what moves engagement across the whole catalogWhat counts as a good engagement rate at this size

Best tweets

  • Aug 29, 2026123x their median

    UN committee urges South Africa to dismantle racist vigilante groups https://t.co/yOfCGHdKYw

    175792867362K viewsView on X
  • Aug 24, 202675x their median

    OPINION | We Will Read Professor Jason Arday’s work Into Eternity: Remembering a Scholar Who Refused the Limits of Empire https://t.co/ec1JA5AQqG

    95272203153K viewsView on X
  • Aug 27, 202674x their median

    Salif Keita cancels SA performance in response to xenophobic violence https://t.co/NGVKeEIEFw

    127341713990K viewsView on X
  • Aug 25, 202659x their median

    WATCH | ANC SG Fikile Mbalula has threatened to report the DA to the IEC after two members of Helen Zille's media team attended the party's rally on Sunday as undercover agents to gather content. Mbalula said this shows fear and desperation on the DA's part. | @lunga_mzangwe For more visit https://t.co/fknaqFyNfg

    812016725121K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 202658x their median

    In this week's Mail & Guardian: Jacob Zuma's plans to collapse the ANC. Read story here: https://t.co/w3uu4iaKwM https://t.co/BphtYzd44V

    87311323929K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 202645x their median

    MK Party takes aim at ANC stronghold: A leadership dispute in the party has created an opening for the MK Party in the Eastern Cape. https://t.co/8Z9KXZ95eP

    1654711212K viewsView on X
  • Aug 20, 202628x their median

    ⚪️ Jacob Zuma's plan to collapse the ANC: Former president eyes divided Eastern Cape to weaken his erstwhile party and grow MK ahead of crunch local government elections. ⚪️ How Madlanga nailed Fadiel Adams. ⚪️ Paul O'Sullivan: I was never a double agent'. ⚪️ Zambia polls: How Hichilema bagged second term. ⚪️ Masingita Masunga's enduring legacy. Get your copy of this week's M&G and subscribe at https://t.co/fknaqFyNfg for more!

    654521919K viewsView on X
  • Aug 27, 202624x their median

    EDITORIAL | The press hounded Professor Jason Arday to his death: The British press should hang its collective head in shame for hounding a man to his early grave. https://t.co/wtjOZ1F900

    32875414K viewsView on X
  • Aug 31, 202622x their median

    The landlord has arrived’: MK Party’s Baloyi vows to shake up Joburg election https://t.co/Pw4SMHVsZz

    80209310K viewsView on X
  • Aug 21, 202612x their median

    ‘Paul O’Sullivan was a double agent’: Forensic examiner denies being a British spy who wanted to work as a double agent for the Hawks and accuses former spy boss Mokotedi of being a criminal. https://t.co/C5oZKt1B1x

    3024435.2K viewsView on X

Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.

Recurring topics

#makemaftowngreatagain

The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.

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Reading these numbers

A typical post picks up 5 interactions against 1.1M followers, an engagement rate of 0%. Measured over 102 original posts, its engagement rate beats 6% of 3,791 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 4.2K times each, and 0.12% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.367% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 3.4 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 37% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 11:00 UTC, and Friday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 102 posts sampled, 35% carry an image or video and 97% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 613 interactions, about 123x its own typical post.

What is Mail & Guardian's engagement rate on X?
Mail & Guardian (@mailandguardian) has an engagement rate of 0%, based on the median interactions across 102 original posts from the last 30 days against 1,132,060 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
Is that a good engagement rate?
At under 0.001%, Mail & Guardian sits below the 10th percentile of the 36,759 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
Does @mailandguardian have real engagement?
Its engagement rate beats 6% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,791 accounts), which puts it in the bottom 10% for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
When does @mailandguardian post?
Most posts go out around 11:00 UTC, and Friday is its busiest day, at roughly 3.4 posts per day across the measured window.

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