Comments on: Reach isn’t influence. Keep your umbrella handy.

By: What is reach and why does it matter? at TweetReach Blog

What is reach and why does it matter? at TweetReach Blog — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:53:22 +0000

[...] this is something we think about a lot. If you’d like to hear more, we have a few ideas about how you should use reach to contextualize and interpret your campaign’s success. We’ve also written about the [...]

By: This Week in Social Analytics #1 at TweetReach Blog

This Week in Social Analytics #1 at TweetReach Blog — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:51:03 +0000

[...] efforts to use Twitter lists as a way to highlight regarded sources on a particular topic. We’ve written about influence before – messages from “influencers” don’t guarantee results. Can understanding the [...]

By: Jenn

Jenn — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:35:13 +0000

Erin, that’s a great analogy! Reach on Twitter is very much like newspaper/magazine circulation. Another good comparison is TV audience estimates. Even if someone has the TV on, we can’t say if they were actually watching at the moment something happened.

Thanks for your comment!

By: Erin Boudreau

Erin Boudreau — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:24:06 +0000

Love your site & this blog post. When delivering reach numbers to clients, I get asked all the time what it all means. Wouldn’t you say that reach is much like the circulation of a newspaper or magazine? With circulation, that number represents the potential number of people who might see your ad, but that does not mean each and every one of those people will actually see the ad. And like a tweet, even if someone sees it appear in their timeline and is logged on at the time, does that mean they actually absorb the message? I think determining reach is really presenting us with the same type of stat in a new medium.

By: Tim Wilson

Tim Wilson — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:09:42 +0000

Nice thoughts! I’d add, though, that Reach is SUPER-critical in one way that you didn’t reference: if it’s zero, you’re wasting your energy. The same thing goes for Facebook fans, really. We get, “What’s the value of a fan?” all the time. The right answer is, “Well, it depends on what you do with them.” But, if you don’t have *any* fans, you have no one to do anything *with*.

Now, there’s the argument: “Well, what if I’m super, super targeted and I’m only *trying* to reach a very small number of people who fit a very tight, unique profile? THEN I might be totally fine with a small reach.” Um. Yeah. You’re being argumentative. If you’re going for such a small number of people…Twitter might not be the right medium to try to engage those folk. And, I’m going to demand a specific example where that is the case.

Like all marketing measurement, there is no single number — EVER — that will effectively measure performance of an initiative.