How to Measure Social Media Reach in 2024?

The 2024 Met Gala officially ended, but this event has so much buzz! Only in one day  (when it took place) generated a social media reach of more than 700 MILLION! You need to measure this social media metric. How? I’ll show you!

Social media reach tells how many social media users have seen content containing a specific keyword. It’s important to measure it because it shows how effective your marketing activities are and if they are performing as planned.

In this article, you will learn everything about social media reach – one of the most important metrics that will deliver you many insights.

Here is an agenda of what we will be looking into:

• Social media reach: definition
• Non-social reach: definition
• Social media reach as a key performance indicator
• How to calculate reach?
• Conclusion & other social media metrics

Social media reach: definition

At Brand24, we’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing our social media reach calculator and algorithm. Here’s what our social media reach is made of:

Social media reach is the estimated number of social media users that could have contact with a social media post. It’s based on the number of followers, fans, subscribers, connections, and visibility percentage. Visibility percentage is an estimation of what part of an audience usually sees a social media post on a particular social media platform.

Here’s our short video in which Chia explains social media reach and impressions, and the difference between them:

When it comes to the sources of social media reach, media monitoring tools (at least Brand24) analyze content from:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Quora
• Twitch
• Telegram

Social media reach is one of the most important social media metrics. It helps you track your social media efforts, measure performance, and learn about your social media brand awareness.

Non-social reach

On the other hand, there’s non-social reach.

Non-social reach can be really helpful in estimating the overall reach of a topic, brand name, product name, campaign name, hashtag, or any other keyword on the web.

Non-social reach is an estimated number of contacts with a piece of content beyond social media. Non-social reach is based on the number of domains mentioning a piece of content, the average monthly visits number on a given domain, and the Visibility Ratio, which describes how big the exposition of a piece of content was.

In practice, the sources of non-social reach include:

• News sites
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Review sites
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Other websites with public content

Reach as a key performance indicator

Social media KPIs are not that obvious.

Social media managers often find it problematic to measure the effectiveness of their social media work and this is where reach can be helpful.

There are also brand managers and PR managers who can use non-social reach to measure the reach of content connected to their brand.

If you’re a marketer, the reach can become one of the key performance indicators – metrics you can keep track of to see if the reach of your content increases.

Social media reach is a useful metric that can be used to track:

• Hashtag reach: branded hashtags, hashtag campaigns
• Reach of social media marketing campaigns
• Reach in online media: industry media, blogs, discussion forums, etc.
• Reach of competitors
• Reach of events
• Reach of social media profiles
• Reach of influencers

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are the metrics you can keep track of over time and assess the changes in the performance of your marketing actions. It can be done in a simple spreadsheet.

You can similarly track your competitors.

Social media analytics can help you discover insights and draw conclusions from your strategy.

Social media reach may also be used as one of the indicators that will help you better understand your brand awareness.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a simple yet powerful tool in the hands of marketers.

They can do much more than categorize social media conversations, connect people, and look cool.

First, however, you need to know how to use them.

If your company is keen on building a solid social media presence, using branded hashtags is necessary.

Just like Shimano has its #rideshimano hashtag:

Such a branded hashtag not only boosts brand awareness and connects Shimano users and customers but also gives Shimano an easy way to measure:

• How many social media users use the hashtag
• Who these users are
• What they talk about
• What social media reach the hashtag generates

The social media reach of your branded hashtags can become your social media KPI. You can track on a monthly basis whether the social media reach of your hashtag increases or decreases.

You also need to set a goal. You might want to increase your company’s social media reach by creating a social media strategy focused on driving engagement and sharing your hashtag posts – more people will get to see it.

Marketing campaigns

Social media and non-social reach can be KPIs not only when it comes to social media performance but also while tracking the performance of marketing campaigns.

By measuring reach, you can see how your marketing campaign spreads on social media and beyond and how many users it reaches. The more people it reaches, the better, of course.

#MeToo is one of the most famous campaigns that went viral in 2017; the hashtag is still used.

Whether it’s a marketing campaign or an awareness campaign, the goal is to reach as many users on the web as possible.

If you launch marketing campaigns often enough, your KPI here should be to increase the social media reach of the next campaign.

But how to do it is another story.

Events

If you do social media marketing for events, social and non-social reach should be some of the top KPIs in relation to your event marketing.

What’s worth saying here is that the social media reach of your event can be tracked before, during, and after the event.

Measuring the social media reach of an event tells you what buzz your event generates and how many people it reaches. The more people stumble upon your event on social media, the bigger the likelihood that the number of attendees increases.

Creating an event hashtag is a must. Also, it’s good to encourage participants to use it in their social media posts about the event.

Above, you can see that Inbound uses the #INBOUND17 hashtag. If you’re planning an event, think about your event hashtag. It will then let you measure the social media reach of your event.

How to calculate social media reach

One of the ways to calculate social media reach is to use a social media monitoring tool, such as Brand24.

Brand24 finds any content containing keywords of your choice in real-time. It tracks mentions across the whole Internet:

• The major social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, X, and much more)
• Different websites
• Blogs
• Forums and review sites
• And other places!

This way, you can find content containing, for example:

• Your brand, product, or event name and hashtags
• The name of the marketing campaign
• Social media profile

Brand24 shows you both the number of detected mentions and their reach.

Take a look at the bottom. This graph shows the number of mentions, including the name of the Challengers movie and their social media reach over time.

Brand24 has some other useful features that can help you build and monitor the performance of your social media presence.

AI features, in particular, are worth mentioning! Brand24 offers many advanced AI features.

One of these functions is the Anomaly Detector. It will tell you why the volume and mentions or reach have increased.

Let’s check out this feature using Ardell (a fake lash brand) as an example. Where did the spike come from? Tap the exclamation mark on the chart.

This tool also analyzes all the data for you and presents it in a very user-friendly way (Metrics Analysis feature).

Among other things, you can see which source generates the highest reach and which is the most efficient.

As you can see, the Challengers movie has the best reach results on TikTok.

If you feel like that’s what you need, try Brand24 out. It’s free, and no credit card is required.

Reach calculator, conclusion, and other social media metrics

I’m sure your marketing team puts a lot of marketing efforts into running engaging campaigns and increasing the average engagement rate. Yet, as social media platforms constantly cut reach, it’s not easy nowadays.

If you’re curious about how far your posts reach and whether your social media efforts are worth the time and energy, Brand24 is a great tool to help you measure this.

By using a reach calculator, you can get an idea of how many people saw your post, as well as what percentage of that target audience was reached.

Armed with this information, you can make more informed decisions about which social platforms to focus your energies on, what type of content to share, and even where to allocate your advertising budget. Furthermore, you can evaluate what’s working and increase the social media engagement rate.

Want to measure social media reach? Try Brand24 for free right now!

FAQ

What does social media reach mean?

“Social media reach” refers to the total number of unique users who have seen specific content on a social media platform. Unlike impressions, which may count multiple views by the same user, reach measures the size of the potential audience for that content. It’s a metric used to gauge the visibility and potential influence of a post, account, or campaign.

What is an example of a social media reach?

An example of social media reach would be if you post a photo on Instagram, and 500 unique users see that photo. In this case, the social media reach of that specific post would be 500. This number indicates the size of the audience exposed to your content.

How is social media reach measured?

Social media reach is measured using analytics tools provided by the social media platforms or third-party analytics software. These tools track the number of unique users who have seen or been exposed to a particular piece of content, be it a post, story, or an entire campaign.

What is a good social reach?

A “good” social media reach varies based on factors like industry, audience size, and campaign goals. Having a reach that is a significant portion of your total followers is often beneficial. Comparing your reach to industry standards or competitors can also be helpful. Ultimately, the value of reach is best judged alongside other metrics like engagement and conversion rates. Trends over time and the quality of engagement are also important considerations.