The Difference Between Reach and Impressions: A Clear Guide

Written by Lucy Bishop

The terms “Reach” and “Impressions” are thrown around commonly and the meaning and difference between the two is often confused. We’re here to distinguish the two and answer the question “how are they different?”

At Mezzo Creative we know that having a clear understanding of what reach and impressions means is imperative for you to be able to execute your social media strategy and achieve your goals. The way you achieve your engagement goals on social media is by clearly understanding your analytics. Analytics, after all tell us where we can optimize our strategies or where we may need to pivot.

What’s the Difference between Reach and Impressions?

Sprout Social defines reach as ‘the total number of people who see your content’ and impressions as ‘the number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not.’

You want to think of reach as the number of unique people who will see the content you post. The ideal would be that when you post all of your followers would see your content, but with ever changing algorithms that’s not how it works on social media any more! For example Kim Kardashian has 363 million followers on Instagram but her engagement rate is 0.72% because only a fraction of her audience will see her posts. 

An impression means that the content was delivered to someone’s feed. The audience doesn’t need to see or engage with the content for it to count as an impression, which is how we see a higher number of impressions on posts vs reach and even followers. 

Let’s Dig Deeper.

What does this mean for your social media strategy? 

Increased reach = increased audience.

High impressions means your content is filtering into people’s social media feeds.

BUT all this means nothing if your social media and content strategy doesn’t support it. It’s important to ensure that your content and copy is always designed with your ideal audience in mind. You want to consider the messages you are creating for your current audience and what messages can be crafted to pull in your potential audience.

Reach and impressions are two of the key engagement metrics you need to consider when building up brand awareness. If you need help understanding how you can optimize your brand’s reach and impressions, Mezzo Creative is here to help you.