Social Media's King Pair: Reach and Engagement

Cole and Yorke, Serena and Venus, Warne and McGrath – it’s amazing how important a dynamic duo can be in achieving success in the world of sport and entertainment. Together they are an unstoppable force capable of untold excellence but how do they fare when separated from the half which makes them whole? Is one more important than the other? Does one need the other? It’s a debate which can run and run. 

The relationship between reach and engagement on social media is not dissimilar. Together they are a powerful tool for talent and brands alike, but they also have great worth in their own right. However, what’s changed since the birth and growth of social media is that reach is no longer anywhere near as valuable without engagement. Just aiming for reach is the equivalent of busking in a city centre - lots of people hear your music but no-one downloads your tracks, whereas a smaller, engaged audience in an intimate venue is more likely to produce better results for all concerned. An engaged user will share, spread the word, become a fan and ultimately, via one path or another, that leads to revenue.

Enough of the cultural references. Into the nitty gritty. It’s harder than ever for advertisers to capture and maintain attention. Sky+ means you can fast forward adverts or avoid them altogether via Catch Up. YouTube adverts can be bypassed after five seconds and Facebook’s recent study highlighted that use of their platform increased significantly during every ad break of the season premiere of a popular TV show. Engagement is harder to achieve but more valuable when you do. 

It is surely only a matter of time before companies like Nielsen Sports can document the reach brands obtain via social media posts and how valuable that reach is depending on engagement levels. What we will have then is an industry-wide, accepted valuation from which to work.

Huffington Post claim that Selena Gomez, with an audience of 122 million on Instagram, receives ï¿¡424,000 per sponsored or partner branded post on the platform. Cristiano Ronaldo (104 million followers) scoops ï¿¡308,000 per Instagram post and LeBron James’ 30 million fans earn him ï¿¡92,457 per Insta post. The wealth isn’t just reserved for the best in the world of sport and entertainment with beauty influencer Huda Kattan reported to earn ï¿¡13,800 per post. Instagram declined to comment on the third party study which produced the results but surely the recent roll-out of ‘branded content’ posts on Instagram is a nod in the direction of the value the platform represents. 

Perhaps even more telling is the new introduction of the polling feature in Instagram stories. Having driven users to the ‘stories’ product and gained the ‘reach’ they are looking for from that offering, Instagram have stepped it up a gear as they seek to drive engagements too. Users will not only be viewing Instagram stories and moving on, they will actually stay there longer and engage with the content too – creating even more valuable users and metrics. Don’t be surprised if this is just the start of making engagement easier to generate and track on the platform. 

It goes without saying that it’s not just Instagram which is part of this discussion. Facebook’s algorithm change to reward ‘minutes watched’ over just ‘views’ also suggests that engaging content which retains the user’s interest is king over very short, yet still shareable, content. 

You can’t fake engagement (yet!) although buying reach shortens the odds of achieving it depending on how good your content is. Reach is available by the bucket load of impressions (CPM, if you prefer) to anyone with a budget which almost automatically devalues it in comparison to engagement. 

Engagement might rule the roost but that isn’t to say that reach doesn’t still have a place and value. Combining the two will win any social media match but reach appears to have had its day – engagement is pulling away and becoming, if it isn’t already, the poster boy of social media.