Social Media Impressions vs. Reach: What's More Important?

et's talk about social media metrics.


When counting engagement, there are two terms you should know: reach and impressions.


Reach is used to define who sees content. It's the total number of people who see a tweet you make, an Instagram story you post, or a Facebook event page.


Let's say you have an ad that was displayed 500 times on social media pages. If 200 people clicked on your ad, your reach would be 200.


Impressions are the total number of times social media browsers have been showed your content. Impressions are different than reach because it doesn't count people who click or engage with your content, just those who are exposed to it.


If your ad was displayed 500 times on social media, your impressions would be 500.


Download Now: Free Social Media Calendar

Impressions vs. reach

Impressions are defined by the total number of people your content is visible to. Reach, on the other hand, refers to the number of people who choose to see your content and engage with it through likes, comments, or shares.


While both metrics are pretty similar, there are a few key patterns to note. In most cases, impressions will be higher than reach. This is because impressions count exposure, and reach counts interaction. Impressions, then, can oftentimes be close to the number of followers your accounts have.


Easy enough to understand, right? Impressions count exposure, reach counts clicks. Even though these two terms are pretty cut and dry, different social media sites have their own rules for how they count impressions and reach, and if you want to measure one over the other, it's important to know what you're looking at.


For an overview on how impressions and reach can fit into your larger social media strategy, check out our video on how to set social media goals:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 20 Small Business Marketing Blogs to Follow to Boost Your Marketing Smarts

 Top 20 Marketing Blogs to Follow   There’s a wealth of information online, but when it comes to marketing your small business, you want to separate the fluff from the actionable advice you can really use to grow your business. We’ve compiled your short list.  Check out these 20 small business marketing blogs.  Follow them on Twitter. Add them to your RSS feed.  Bookmark them in your browser.  Or just keep this list handy so you know just where to go to stay up to date on marketing trends, tactics and strategies. 1. StoryNeedle Those who find themselves alienated by dry marketing lingo may wish to check out StoryNeedle and its narrative-focused approach to marketing. This blog from Michael Andrews, an independent content strategist currently based in Rome, Italy provides content strategy for a “post-device era.” 2. MarketingProfs Run by a network of marketing professionals (it lives up to its name), MarketingProfs is the go-to source for comprehensive infor...
Read more

13 best marketing blogs to follow

 Editor’s note: Updated September 2020. Unfortunately, you can’t just get a degree in content marketing and stop learning about it for the rest of your career. But you likely figured that out as soon as you got your first job. The field changes much too quickly, from what grabs audiences’ attention, to the words your customers use, and how you need to reach them. This is only compounded when you’re forced to deal with new technologies like augmented reality or voice assistants popping up, or social networks continuously changing their algorithms. It takes a conscious and consistent effort to stay up-to-date on digital marketing strategy. Not only do you need to be aware of the latest trends, but you need to understand them well enough to evaluate them for your brand. For example, when a new social network, search engine, content format or app starts trending, it wouldn’t be strategic to just jump on the bandwagon. You’ll need to understand the trend itself, whether your target cust...
Read more

The Complicated Relationship Between Social Media and SEO

Inbound marketing is in the middle of an interesting evolution. Historically, search has been a major source of traffic and leads for businesses leveraging online marketing. But, with the growth of social networks, social media marketing is even more heavily embraced today.  But, you might ask, which is more important? The answer? Both can be key to your strategy. Download Now: Free Social Media Calendar Social Media vs. SEO Social media management relates to posting and optimizing your content on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. SEO strategy relates to making your website or content more searchable so that people looking up phrases or questions about products or topics related to your industry will find your site in the results. Search is a huge source of customers, but slowly, social media is gradually increasing in importance as a marketing platform. The important distinction to make is that search and social are not competitive forces. Instead, these ...
Read more