Social media campaign reach

Tracking reach for a social media advocacy campaign will measure the potential audience size of a campaign. It indicates the level of public’s interest in the advocacy messages the project developed. Monitoring the social media reach for increases and decreases also helps in understanding if public interest is being maintained or not. Having good reach evidences that the social media campaign was well designed and executed.

Calculation method:

• Number of Unique Views = Total Number of Followers + Views Through Shares.

Data Collection:

Reach is normally calculated by counting the number of unique views, this can be done by counting the number of followers you already have (e.g. every friend on Facebook, every follower on Twitter) plus the account that shared the post’s number of followers. For example – Your project’s Facebook page posts an advocacy campaign slogan and hashtag. Your project has 100 followers. OF your 100 Followers, 4 decide to share the post. Each follower has 100 followers of their own. This mean the reach of your post is 500. That is 100 of your followers and each 100 of the 4 followers.

Calculating this number without a social media measuring tool can be very difficult. It is best to find a social media measuring tool within the budget of the project or find out if the communications team at your organization is already using something and they can help you.

There are other ways to measure engagement and some resources are listed below.

• Platform
• Geographical Location

Definition:

Reach is (of a social media campaign) the total number of unique people who see a post on social media. This indicator is essentially the count of the total number of people who see the published content/post; this counts people who already follow your accounts (Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc.) and those reached through shares.

To Consider:

This indicator is specifically for use with online campaigns as engagement can be easily measured. This indicator would not be useful for billboards, commercials, or other types of media.