Engagements Vs Views What's More Important?
As a marketer, you must be bombarded with information about how to attract visitors online. You need to create great content, make sure it is optimized, and promote it properly.
Should you go after views or engagement? Whether your content is on Facebook, Instagram, or elsewhere, this is a question that often comes up.
To clarify: views, or reach, measure the number of people who have seen your post. And engagement refers to not just views, but the clicks, comments, likes, and shares your post gets.
Clearly, you want your content to be seen. But you also want to make sure people find it valuable and interact with it.
There is no simple answer that works across all conditions. The way out is to look at the context of the content.
The aim of your content
Before posting content, you should have a good idea of the goals you want to achieve. This will help you in choosing the right metrics to track it. These could be in terms of social media management, social listening tools, hashtag analytics, and more.
For example, if there is a launch or a preview of something new, you may want as many people as possible to see it. In this case, it’s page views that should be given priority.
On the other hand, your content may be intended to convert a casual visitor into a returning consumer. In this case, it’s engagement that you should be looking for.
There’s a helpful way to break it down. Your content can fall into one or more of these areas:
- It can entertain
- It can inspire
- It can educate
- It can convince
Further, the tone of the content can be rational or emotional, with the aim of creating awareness or driving a purchase.
It’s only after you’ve decided on the above that you should choose metrics that show you if your content is working. Many times, engagement will be important. At other times, it’s views that you should go for.
The platform matters too
Studies show that engagement is highly context-specific. As the researchers put it: “it comprises various types of experiences on each social media platform such that each is experienced in a unique way.”
This shows that when you’re measuring for views or engagement, a broad statistic may not reveal the entire picture. Facebook and Instagram, for example, could be designed for more engagement, whereas Twitter could be better for views.
A recent social media industry benchmark report showed that the average engagement rate on Facebook was 0.09 percent. For Instagram, it was 1.6 percent. Twitter’s engagement was 0.048 percent.
Even within this, Instagram Stories can be designed to make viewers feel a sense of kinship. And small businesses can use social media to generate leads.
As before, it all depends on the type of content and what you want to achieve with it.
The metrics make a difference
Nowadays, analytics platforms can track audience metrics in sophisticated ways. For a start, users can be classified by demographics, location, and more. Other examples:
- Which site do visitors come from, and does this influence how long they stay?
- If a visitor arrives via a search platform, do they interact more with content?
- Are some areas of your website more sticky than others?
- What are the virality rate, amplification rate, and conversion rate?
These data analytics platforms offer fine-tuned and granular ways of judging views and engagement. They are meant to help marketers fine-tune their content and optimization strategies.
For example, the Locobuzz new-generation digital customer experience management platform. It helps brands acutely measure brand insights, customer behavior, competitor insights, and performance analytics. You get social media marketing dashboards, ROI measurement, trackers, and more.
With these levers in your hands, you can truly make a difference and rise above the simple question of views or engagement.