Unpacking the confusion around social media metrics!
What’s the difference between Reach and Impressions on Instagram and Facebook?
When it comes to working with social media for our business – it is important to take stock of our content – and to measure it. Its important to understand how our posts and ads are performing. This will tell us if we are building brand, creating the right sort of content and directing it to the right people.
Many of us understand the term Social Media Engagement – but may not quite understand what it is, why it is important or how to really comprehend the numbers. Engagement is the key to Social Media and as such the platforms offer us ways to measure it.
Engagement refers to the interaction our audiences have with our content.
It mainly incorporates things like “ Shares ”, “ Comments ”, “ Likes ” and “ Saves ”. If we have a good strategy in place, we will get a number of likes, shares and comments on our content. This is easy to measure because it is quite obvious. If 100 people like our post, we can see those numbers easily. If we receive 30 comments on post, they are easy to spot – BUT there are bigger numbers to measure – that leave many of us confused!
Facebook and Instagram also measure the “Reach” and the “Impressions” of our content which also give us a more in depth understanding of what is working and what is not.
BUT – What’s the difference?!
REACH vs IMPRESSIONS: Why You Need to Know the Difference
R E A C H
Reach is the unique number of people who may have seen your content. If 100 people have seen your content, your reach is 100! These people may see your content several times, but they are only counted as a single reach. Simply put – Reach equals People!
I M P R E S S I O N S
Impressions are the total number of times your content has been displayed on a screen. If your post was displayed 200 times – your impression would be 200. From that, if 100 people stopped the scroll, clicked on your post, or made a comment, your Reach would be 100!
Reach numbers will always be lower than your Impressions – and the main reason for this is because your audience could see it more than once. It could be displayed in a news feed, shared by your friends, or come through via “stories”.
Reach your People and Impress them!
Reach and impressions are interconnected metrics. You can’t have one without the other – but when measuring your small business activities, reaching your people is key first, to then impressing them second!
Reach out if you would like to discuss this topic more!
