Reach, Impressions & Engagement — these terms once foreign outside of marketing departments are now commonly used when talking about everything from internal emails to training videos.
I hope you find this quick guide helpful in better understanding exactly what these important measurements mean and how to start thinking of them for your own communications and measuring your own employee engagement.
Reach
The size of your entire audience that you will be sending your message out to (and in a perfect world everyone that might hear you!).
Think of your reach as your highest potential opportunity to get your message out and in front of folks!
Tip: Selecting a smaller reach can a lot of times yield a better outcome as you’re being more selective as to who will most likely pay attention.
Impressions
This is how many times your message has actually been seen, letting you know that someone has taken notice versus ignored what you’re trying to say.
Sometimes referred to as views or opens; impressions are a great indicator that some group is taking notice!
Tip: Look at the story that your impressions are telling; is your audience viewing your message an average of 2 to 3 times? Use this information to audit your reach to maximize your impressions ÷ reach!
Engagements
With every message you send there should almost always be a clear and highlighted “Call to Action” or outcome that you desire.
Engagements are a record that this call to action has actually taken place.
This could be that someone clicked a button or link, answered a survey question, or even sent a reply.
Tip: Before you start writing try and think about what engagement you’d like from your message and be sure to select an appropriate reach to maximize the highest engagement possible!
When discussing analytics around content, typically you’ll hear about the “Total” vs “Unique” for impressions & engagement.
Unique = How many individual people saw (or engaged) with your message.
Total = How many times those individuals as a whole saw (or engaged) with your message.
Example: You had 100 unique people that viewed a message 300 total times means that on average each individual looked at our message 3 times.
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This was originally developed for “The Content Corner”; my private newsletter for Internal Communications & HR Leaders. Sign-up here
