Reactions, reach, clicks and flim-flams, what the h*ck are they and should you care about them all?
Impressions, reactions, clicks, reach, engagement and flim-flams so many ways to measure online popularity but what does it all mean? Well, we made up flim-flams, but in the ever changing digital landscape, it can start to feel like that.
What matters the most? Sure, likes seem to be the most important online currency, but there are other important aspects of creating a larger online presences that carry more weight. Here is a guide to what all these words mean, which are more important for you to pay attention to, and how you can watch those numbers skyrocket.
Reach is the number of people who received impressions of a post from your page, or how many people have seen your post, not how many views it has received, someone may LOVE your post and continue going back to it, but it will only count as one “reach” count, if they share it with a friend, and the friend views it, then that counts as another person reached.
The views, whether it is one person or multiple are all counted and those are called Impressions, if someone sees your original posts and then later sees the same post but shared by one of their friends, those count are 2 impressions, but it would only count as 1 person reached. Reach is important to have when you want to bring in new interest and viewers of your content. There are three basic categories of reach:
- Organic – this is the reach you are getting without paying, it’s completely free! This happens when people see your content in their newsfeeds after you post, and also when others share it on their own pages. Organic is just based on your posts own merit, it will be shared outside of your followers if the people it reaches share it to other pools of people.
- Paid – this is the reach you have with the help of paid promotion/sponsored posts; this means you spend to get exposure to people that wouldn’t usually see your posts in their feeds. You can get paid promotion exposure on all popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat Linked In and even Reddit. This exposure means that you don’t have to rely on followers sharing your content, however paid promotion can be seen as unpopular with some users who aren’t interested in your post, therefore it won’t get as much interaction as a popular organic post would. This can be lessened by accurately targeting your paid promotions.
- Viral - this is the reach you get to people who have seen your post because other users have liked, shared, commented, retweeted etc. Viral reach can be gained through either organic or paid posts, but it requires your post have some serious shareability and be attached to some form of internet trend or hashtag. Say you have some amazing commentary of the latest MAFS episode, if you use the hashtag related to the show on twitter, more people are going to retweet/like and your viral reach is going to be a lot larger.
Engagement measures how many clicks, views, comments and reactions you are getting on your posts. This is important to watch if you are wanting to build stronger relationships with customers and increase brand loyalty, it helps gage the intent and needs of customers, what are they interested in? What is going to make them want to purchase your product or work with your service? It is important to note that engagement and reach are NOT the same, if you have wide and high reach that doesn’t mean that your engagement will skyrocket. You might have a lot of people see your post, but if your post isn’t engaging and interactive it’s going to fall flat.
How can you improve engagement you may ask? There are so many simple tips and tricks to make your target audience interact with your posts.
·What have they responded to well last time? Use that information to craft posts that will entice them to share and react to your new posts.
·Be Visual - Using photos and videos within posts automatically draw the attention of those living the fast-paced social media lifestyle, no one wants to just read text, including a photo in your post will make people want to read to see what the context of the photo is.
Start a conversation- Make polls, ask your followers questions, pay attention to them and what interests them so you can also become a part of those conversations, what were there thoughts on your latest product/service? What are they doing for the long weekend? Even something as trivial as do they prefer The Bachelor or MAFS?
Find out the interests of your target audience and use those to increase interaction between your audience and you. After all they are the most important thing to focus on when running any sort of business!
Likes are the simplest form of reactions you posts can receive, they are quick way of your followers saying “Hey! I liked this, keep doing what you’re doing!”. Comments are a better form of interaction because they allow you to see what they are responding to in your content, and whether it is a positive or negative response. It helps you gain an understanding of what to change and what to keep the same when coming up with new ideas for you social media platforms.
Although comments are very helpful as a creator, they are not the most valuable engagement metric. More important than comments, is shares. Shares mean that your post was deemed so relatable or important to the user that they personally wanted to share your content with all their followers/friends. This applies for sites such as Twitter, likes and replies are great, but retweets mean they want your content on their account for others to view. To garner shareability, like trying to gain viral reach, posting about trending topics and when your followers are the most active will allow you to have a much larger response to the content you post.
What is most important? Well that depends on what you are wanting to improve, if you just want new faces to see your content, focusing on reach is what you want to be doing, maybe investing in paid promotion could help gain more followers to your page. If you want to create stronger bonds with those who already follow you, focus on engagement, and what type of engagement you are getting, what are the reactions to the posts you are already creating? By focusing on your target audience, your posts will thrive as your relationships grow! By showing a fresh, happy and active online presence you will go far!
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