Monday, March 3, 2014

Week 5 Post Reach vs. Post Engagement


Post reach is the breadth of the audience a post is potentially seen by.  In more traditional media terms, they call this type of reach “impressions.”   The reach is influenced by the number of followers the poster has because each of those followers will get the post in their news feed.  It’s also influenced by the sharing action that happens with the post.  If it’s shared, then the post has the potential to be seen by all the friends of the sharers in addition to the poster.

Post engagement is the discussion and interaction that goes along with a post, including comments and likes and click-throughs.  This is an important element of measurement because the more people engage with the post, the more likely it is to show up higher in Facebook users’ news feeds.  This is true on a global level – like if a post is trending generally it will show up higher in news feeds – and it’s also true on an individual level.  The more an individual engages with an organization’s or a person’s posts, the more that organization or person will show up prominently in their news feed.  As Facebook becomes more ubiquitous and the market becomes crowded with voices, getting to the top of peoples’ news feeds will be the only way to be seen on Facebook.

Insights is a great analytics tool available in Facebook because it allows you to see how people are reacting to your posts.  You can determine what types of posts seem to get the most engagement, what times of day your audience seems to be paying most attention, and more.  Combining this data with demographics information can also help you understand who in your audience is more excited about which types of content.  You can also gauge the potency of any significant communications efforts you undertake.

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