What is the difference between Impressions or Reach ? Which one should you be paying more attention to? And how do you track them on different platforms?
All social media marketers share an important goal — to get our content seen by as many people as possible. That’s what we measure our success with metrics like reach and impressions.
Both of these important social media metrics track how much your content has been viewed, so you can understand your social media growth — but they don’t do it in exactly the same way.
Reach and impressions both reveal how much your social media content is being seen. The difference between them is subtle, but important — and not every platform defines them in exactly the same way.
- Reach measures how many users saw your content
- Impressions measure how many times your content was viewed
Confused? That’s okay. Let’s get some clarity.
What is reach?
On social media, reach refers to the number of users that saw your content, i.e. how many different people it reached. Many platforms allow you to track both the overall reach of all your content, and how many people saw your individual posts, like a Reel or Story.
For example, maybe 5,278 different accounts saw your last Instagram Story, or 14,674 total users saw your TikToks this month.
What is an impression?
On social media, impressions are the number of times your content was seen, including multiple views from individual users. Impressions are calculated by tracking the total number of times your content was displayed across a platform, like in the user’s feed or search results. Just like reach, you can calculate overall impressions for all your content, or see how many you got on a single post.
If you’re getting way more impressions than reach, it likely means people are looking at your post over and over. That’s a good thing! It shows that your target audience finds your content memorable.
The strategic meaning of reach and impressions
In general, reach and impressions are top-of-funnel metrics.
When focusing on these metrics, you’re trying to get as many eyes on your content as possible rather than persuading viewers to take an action (like making a purchase). This means that reach and impressions are both closely related to goals like brand awareness and audience-building.
If your goal is to build strong customer relationships, you might want to emphasise impressions over reach. When users are viewing your content multiple times, it shows that you made a lasting impression.
On the flip side, reach might be more important if ongoing relationships and repeat purchases aren’t as integral to your business model as casting a wide net and scaling your following.
Reach and impressions always matter, but they might be even more important at the start of your social media journey. Once plenty of people are seeing your content, you might choose to focus on more mid- to bottom-funnel metrics. Those include engagement, clicks, or conversions.
How to track reach and impressions
All social media platforms offer basic in-app analytics tools for performance tracking. You’ll usually be able to view both overall reach and impressions for all your content, and for each specific post.
Whether you’re focused on reach, impressions, conversions, or you don’t even know any of these metrics , Forex Ads will help you crush your social media goals.
