Facebook reach vs impressions vs engagement

These terms are all used frequently when referring to social analytics and are essential to forming an idea of how your Facebook page is performing. To help clear up any misunderstanding when it comes to these terms we will first define all three, and then break down how they relate to each other and why they are important to reporting on your Facebook performance. So let’s dive right in!

Impressions

Impressions are the number of times a post from your page is displayed. For example, if someone sees a page update in their Facebook newsfeed and then sees that same update when a friend shares it, that would count as 2 impressions.

Reach

Reach is the number of people who received impressions of a Page post. If we continue with the previous example, there was only one “reach” recorded for that post, even though it was seen twice by that same person. That is because it was only one person who saw it.

While this is the most basic definition of “reach” there are all also three different categories reach can fall into on Facebook.

1. Organic Reach: this represents the number of unique people who saw a piece of content for free, or without any advertising dollars spent, in their newsfeed after it was shared on your page.
2. Paid Reach: This is the number of people who saw your post as a result of a promotion. Paid reach is influenced by your ad spend, so the more you spend the more people will see that content or ad.
3. Viral Reach: This is the number of unique people who saw your post as a result of another Facebook user liking, reacting, commenting, or sharing that piece of content. This can be a result of organic posting and/or paid posting.

Now that we understand the difference between impressions and reach, we can dive into engagement!

Engagement and Engagement Rate  

Engagement on Facebook is when people perform actions on your content. They may like a post, click on a link or comment on an image. The number reported by Facebook as engagement is defined as the number of clicks, likes, shares and comments on a post.

Engagement rate is the number of people who’ve engaged with the Facebook post by liking, reacting, commenting, clicking on or sharing the post divided by the number of people who were reached. For example, if you had 10 likes on a post that reached 100 people your engagement rate would be 10%. The average engagement rate for our industry is right around 2%.

Why Should I Care About Engagement?

Past post engagement plays a huge role in determining who is going to see your posts. Engagement is a major factor in Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm that determines who gets to see your posts, or in other words what your reach is going to be. The algorithm is meant to enhance the user’s experience so it takes into consideration if a user has engaged with your posts before when determining who to show your post to. This is why engaging content should be the overall goal for your Facebook posts. The more your content is liked, replied to or shared, the more unique users you will be able to reach!

The relationship between engagement and reach is therefore co-dependent. You need reach to build engagement, and high engagement to keep increasing your reach. This means you need to focus on creating high quality content designed to engage with users while at the same time thinking of new ways to attract new Facebook followers to increase your reach.

The world of Facebook Insights can get confusing, especially considering the increasingly specific metrics available, like total reach, post reach, page likes, visits, and engagement. When you first start to dig into the data, picking apart which numbers mean might feel both overwhelming and pointless, but there are valuable insights available. The key is understanding what the implications of each metric are. Let’s look at two of the most prominent ones, “reach” and “engagement,” and figure out how to use these metrics insightfully. Then we’ll share some tips on how to increase your reach and engagement!

Reach

Reach measures how many people have seen your post – how many people it has reached.

This is a great number to consider if you are trying to increase the number of fans your business has, or really want a certain post to be seen by your followers. Reach will show you how well you are making your product known and how successfully you are getting your posts into people’s newsfeeds. Gaining organic reach has been significantly harder in recent years due to algorithm changes with Facebook’s news feed, so if you want to grow reach, it’s worth exploring paid campaigns.

Engagement

Engagement measures the number of interactions made with your post – how many views, clicks, comments, likes, and shares your post gets.

Engagement metrics are important to consider if you are trying to build a relationship with your customers, increase their loyalty to your business, or measure your customers’ intent to take an action, like purchasing your product. 

However, reach and engagement does not go hand in hand. High reach doesn’t necessarily mean that your engagement is high as well – it’s possible to have high reach with low engagement and vice versa. Measuring engagement is primarily based on how compelling your post is to your target audience. And with higher engagement comes higher visibility (aka higher reach) for your posts.

6 Tips to Increasing Reach & Engagement

Are you hoping to increase your posts’ reach and/or engagement? Here are our top 6 tips to take into consideration:

1. Craft your posts with your customers in mind, as opposed to your business. Think about what your customers find most important and post information they’d be likely to share.
2. Engage with your followers. Start a conversation – ask questions and interact with them!
3. Be visual – include pictures in your posts that relate to what your followers like to see. Be sure to follow the best guidelines for optimizing your images.
4. Look at the demographics of people who “like” your page to see if you’re reaching your target audience.
5. With recent algorithm changes, Facebook has made it harder to be discovered organically without adding exclusive Facebook content (such as creating a Facebook event page), so use those features whenever possible.
6. Like all other digital platforms, Facebook uses algorithms to keep its platforms relevant, which means it’s important for you to stay up-to-date on the platform so your business can get the most out of Facebook business tools.

Analyzing metrics is important for every business – reach and engagement are both important numbers to consider. Depending on what stage your business is in, whether it is new and growing or has been established for a while, reach, engagement, or both might be more important to you.

Are you using Facebook Insights? How is it working for you? Developing a social media strategy and looking at your numbers weekly will contribute to your business’ success. Wondering where to begin? Pyxl can help! Send us a message and we’ll work with you to improve your social media strategy. Or read our guide to a digital strategy.

Which is better engagement or reach?

Which is better Facebook reach or engagement?

Is reach the same as engagement?

Is it better to measure reach or impressions?