If you are using social media to try and get more sales and alert more people about your Orange County business, then you should know some of the jargon, and what it means. In this article, we’re going to be talking about engagement, reach, and impressions, and what each of them amounts to for your company. We’ll also talk about what kind of strategy you can implement so that you’re truly getting the most from each of your social media platforms.

Engagement

When we talk about engagement with social media, Orange County businesses, what we mean is the number of interactions that people have with your content. That’s going to encompass retweets, shares, likes, comments, and more. If you were to ask the question of how useful engagement is for the sake of your sales and getting you noticed via your various social media platforms, the answer is that it’s very important indeed, vital, in fact.

When we’re talking about engagement, you need to understand that a person who is encountering your content is taking the step of actively interacting with it. They’re not just glancing at it and then scrolling down to the next tweet or Facebook post in their feed. They’re finding your content compelling enough that they’re indicating their approval of it, or they’re passing it on to others.

Engagement amounts to free exposure for your brand, and the more someone comments on one of your posts, retweets it, or whatever else, the more other people are likely to do the same. It starts a chain reaction that is always to your benefit.

Reach

Reach also makes a difference, but not as much of one. Reach can be thought of as the amount of people who see your content. It could be argued that 100 people interacting with your content via engagement is more valuable than a reach of 1,000 people merely viewing it. After all, someone seeing an ad for jeans is one thing, but someone indicating that they might buy those jeans by retweeting or liking the ad is always going to be better for your Orange County business.

Impressions

As for impressions, this has to do not with how many times your content is seen on social media, but rather how many times it’s displayed. You can try to get a certain number of impressions by posting duplicate content across multiple social media channels, and sometimes it’s worth it to do so. An example might be if you’re getting ready to launch a new product and you’re showing variations of the same ads for it across every social media channel on which you are active.

How Can You Keep Track of These?

As far as how you can keep track of your social media reach, impressions, and engagement, there are going to be analytical systems set up for each of the platforms that are out there, and there are also tools available now where you can keep track of it all at once rather than doing so piecemeal. If you are about to launch a major sales initiative for your Orange County business, you should certainly be keeping track of all the metrics that you deem to be the most important.

Be Realistic

As you monitor what kind of numbers your content is getting on social media, Orange County, be sure that you haven’t set yourself up for failure by setting the bar too high. For instance, if you have a minimal budget for social media or no budget at all, then it’s not realistic to expect 1,000 engagements across your combined feeds in one week. Be aware of what possible competitors are doing, and look at what can be expected for your niche and your company’s size. You shouldn’t get discouraged if you don’t see the numbers that you want if the projections mean that you were doomed to fail from the beginning.  

Your Content Strategy

Your content strategy is going to be informed by how many people are reacting to different kinds of posts that you put out in the world. The ones that get the most engagement are going to be the most valuable to you, so try to keep track of the ones that seem to be getting a positive reception in your niche.

Is it visual content like videos? Is it pictures? Is it lists of things? If one kind of post consistently gets you more likes, retweets, and shares, then that’s what you should be focused on in the future, up to a point, of course. You still need some variety with your content.

The best kind of content should produce organic growth in all three areas that we mentioned, engagement, reach, and impressions. You can always do things like PPC ad campaigns to try and move the process along, and in some cases, it is justified to do it.

However, remember that you’re paying for PPC ads, and that’s not sustainable forever. At some point, your social media followers must be impressed by the strength of your content. That’s the way that you’re going to convince them to not just follow you but to buy from you regularly.  

In summation, impressions and reach are nice to have, but it’s engagements that are going to be your bread and butter as a business in Orange County. You need to try and come up with as many creative ways as possible to get people to interact with your social media feeds so that your impressions are boosted.

Come up with quizzes and trivia games for people to play. Get them to sign up for a new mailing list for a chance to win a prize. Ask them to come up with a name for a debuting product so they can get a coupon that’s valid for a limited time.

The more ways you present to people for them to engage with your social media, the more likely you are to hit your sales goals and get more individuals to visit your website.