LinkedIn is a professional, business-focused social media platform. The impressions and reach of each post help companies understand how visible their content is and how much engagement it generates.
By working to increase post impressions and reach, you are improving brand awareness and building credibility and authority in your niche.
While it’s very easy to group metrics like reach and impressions together, they do have their own definitions. This article is a guide to help businesses on LinkedIn accurately measure these metrics.
What is the difference between impressions and reach on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn impressions are the number of times your post has been visible for at least 0.3 seconds by another user, so the same account can see your content several times. While reach, also known as unique views, is the number of accounts that have seen your post.
For example, if your LinkedIn post is seen by 200 users, but 60 of them have seen it twice, your reach is 200, and your impressions are 260.
By default, your post impressions should be higher than your reach because one user has seen your content multiple times. If the metrics are similar, your content might not perform that well because viewers are less likely to engage with content they’ve seen just once.
The number of both impressions and reach can come from your followers and their networks or paid advertising campaigns.
Impressions vs Reach: Which is better for your business?
After launching your business on LinkedIn, you will begin to monitor the key metrics of each post. So, it’s important to know which is better for your business based on your campaign’s goals.
A high number of impressions shows that your content is being viewed by a large audience, whether it is clicked or not. While, a high reach indicates that your content is being interacted with rather than scrolled past.
Impressions can quickly inform you whether or not your content is effective. However, to avoid targeting the same people with your post, you should focus on increasing your reach because it reflects the size of your potential audience and the potential for engagement.
How do you calculate impressions and reach metrics on LinkedIn?
Fortunately, both impressions and reach (labeled ‘unique views’) are key metrics within LinkedIn, so no formula is needed to calculate the value. Instead, you can check the built-in analytics tool to see the visibility of your content.
The number of impressions is displayed on each post in the bottom left corner. For more metrics, you can click the blue ‘view analytics’ button in the bottom right corner to see the number of unique views, reactions, comments, and reposts.
Once you have viewed all these metrics, you can calculate your post’s engagement rate, which is the total engagement (clicks + reports + likes + comments + follows) divided by the number of impressions.
A 2% LinkedIn engagement rate is considered good, so anything above this means you are doing great.
In addition to LinkedIn’s built-in analytics tool, you can access a plethora of third-party social media analytic tools that report on impressions, clicks, reactions, comments, reposts, engagement rate, and video views.
How to boost post reach on LinkedIn
- Personal connections: LinkedIn will share your post with people you have previously connected with by liking, commenting, or reposting their content.
- Content relevance: The LinkedIn algorithm uses the keywords and hashtags in your content to determine how relevant it is to your target audience, so do your research.
- Probability of engagement: LinkedIn judges how likely your post is to get engagement by seeing how many views, likes, and comments you get in the first hour. If LinkedIn thinks your post is something that users will engage with, it will reach more news feeds.
- Readability: Make it easy for people to read your content by spacing out sentences and using bullet points or emojis.
- Third-party links: The LinkedIn algorithm doesn’t reward third-party links in posts. Instead, put them in the comments section and write “click the links in the comments to see more” in the post.
- Post frequency: The LinkedIn algorithm only favors one post from the same account within a four-hour timespan, so it’s important to leave at least four hours between them.
Why do impressions and reach matter for social selling?
LinkedIn is not just a business and employment-focused but also a popular and competitive social selling tool.
Reach and impressions are not the end goal of social selling, but they are important metrics because they help you understand how well you attract and retain your target audience’s attention.
A high reach means that you are reaching a large and diverse audience, while a high impression means that you are creating multiple touchpoints and opportunities for engagement.
By comparing these metrics, you can assess how effective your content is at generating interest and awareness among your potential customers.
Ainhoa Gomez, a LinkedIn business consultant, said:
“By analyzing which content is most liked, we can balance the more technical or sales-related content with those that are more likely to be liked to keep your audience engaged and maintain their attention.”
You can also use impressions and reach data to identify and segment your audience and tailor your content to target their needs and preferences.
In addition, you can use your reach and impressions data to measure and improve your social selling ROI by comparing it with other metrics, such as clicks, leads, conversions, and sales.
Key Takeaways
Whether you’ve recently launched your LinkedIn business account or you’re trying to improve your brand exposure, this article ensures you know the difference between impressions and reach, which is better for your business, how to boost these metrics, and why they matter for social selling.
Try analyzing your impressions and reach alongside other metrics such as engagement, conversions, and ROI to create content that performs well and reaches your target audience’s news feed.