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
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%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.012% |
| 50th percentile | 0.08% |
| 75th percentile | 0.434% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 160.4% |
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.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +4% | 232K |
| Monday | 0% | 290K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 281K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 252K |
| Thursday | -2% | 245K |
| Friday | -3% | 254K |
| Saturday | +3% | 228K |
Best tweets
- Aug 29, 2026123x their median
UN committee urges South Africa to dismantle racist vigilante groups https://t.co/yOfCGHdKYw
- 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
- Aug 27, 202674x their median
Salif Keita cancels SA performance in response to xenophobic violence https://t.co/NGVKeEIEFw
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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!
- 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
- Aug 31, 202622x their median
The landlord has arrived’: MK Party’s Baloyi vows to shake up Joburg election https://t.co/Pw4SMHVsZz
- 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
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
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.