In a perfect world, everyone you wanted to reach with your online content would see your posts or ads.
In reality, not all of your followers will see every post you make, and you will likely only reach a fraction of your total potential audience size. Reach is a measure of this concept.
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What is Reach?
Reach is the number of unique people who are exposed to an advertisement or social media post. In simpler terms, it’s the number of people that saw your content.
Reach is often confused with impressions, which is the total number of times an advertisement or social media has been viewed, including repeat views by the same people.
Why You Should Care About Reach
Reach is used as a measure of brand awareness or how popular your content is. It’s a better brand awareness measure than followers or impressions, as it counts the actual number of people you were able to impact.
Reach can be used both in the planning and reporting phase of a marketing campaign.
Before planning any marketing campaign, you need to know the potential size of your audience. This allows you to estimate the possible impact of your campaign.
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Calculating reach also allows you to assess a campaign while it’s happening or assess its performance after the fact. You may need to pivot your content strategy to a different platform or format in order to achieve your desired audience size.
For example, if your posts in the morning receive more reach than posts you make in the afternoon, you may consider shifting more of your content to earlier in the day.
Tracking reach allows you to assess the viewership of your:
- Hashtags
- Posts
- Ads
- Events
- Social media profiles
How to Measure Reach
Calculating reach is challenging, as you only want to factor in every individual once. Otherwise, you’re measuring impressions.
To measure your reach, you can use a social media analytics tool like Keyhole.
Keyhole will not only allow you to track the total reach of your content, it will also allow you to estimate the potential reach of a piece of content before you post it.
This can help you pick strategies that are more likely to result in increased viewership.
Related Articles:
Reach vs Impression: What’s The Difference and Why Is It Important?
5 Under Analyzed Social Media Metrics that Matter [+ Tools to Measure Them!]
To start measuring your reach, start a free Keyhole trial today.