How to increase impressions on social media

When we talk about impressions online, what exactly are we talking about? In today’s article we’re going to break down exactly what impressions are, why they’re useful to track and how to increase impressions with clever content techniques.

What are impressions

The amount of impressions you have is the total amount of times your content has been viewed. This differs from reach because it can include multiple views from the same account, whereas reach only calculates views from unique profiles. Impressions are an interesting metric to track, especially when viewed alongside reach to provide more context. If a piece of content has a similar amount of impressions and reach, you can conclude that most viewers are only looking at the content once. On the other hand, if a piece of content is viewed multiple times by the same people, this is evident by a much higher amount of impressions than the total amount of reach. This could suggest that this piece of content is more valuable because it has the ability to make your audience return to your brand.

When you’re seeking to create valuable pieces of content that your audience will return to, tracking impressions is vital. Make sure that you view impressions alongside reach to ensure you have all the important data to hand. You can view both these metrics and so much more for multiple social media platforms using Minter.io.

How to increase impressions

You can increase impressions purely by increasing reach. We’ve written an entire article on the tactics you’ll need to effectively do this. More reach equals more impressions because the more reach you have, the more profiles are viewing your content. However, we’re going to look at how to get return views on your content. This increases the impressions without necessarily increasing the reach. By focusing on this, you’ll be looking to raise the value of each piece of content, calling for eyes to return to see your posts again and again.

Make content worth seeing more than once

I’ll start by stating the obvious - if you want people to view your content more than once, you have to make content that’s worth seeing again.

This could mean sharing something that’s:

• Incredibly relatable which humanises your brand and connects with your audience
• Extremely hilarious to the point that your audience will return to your content when they need a giggle or a pick-me-up
• An exceptionally high quality piece of content including: cinematic video, beautiful audio, a work of art or a think piece
• Deserving of a second glance such as: something out of the ordinary, a shock piece or anything that makes you do a double-take
• Compelling enough that a viewer will want to show it to their friends, which they may do by returning to the content and viewing it again with other people

Don’t these Facebook posts by @redbullracing and @redbull make you want to have another look?

What’s great about creating quality content worth returning to is that it’s often worth sharing as well. This double-pronged approach should see a snowball of impressions, reach and engagement if done correctly.

Share content that makes sense to return to

Alongside creating quality content, there are types of content that lend themselves well to boosting impressions by requiring a return visit.

These include:

• Recipes
• How-to guides
• Important info such as opening times or event details
• Games such as knock-out tournaments
• Polls designed to peak the viewer interest to see the end result
• Competitions begging to be returned to incase you’re the lucky winner

On TikTok @morrisons successfully shares a tasty recipe that its audience will want to trace their tastebuds back to.

Create content that will be shown more than once

There are some hacks built into some social media apps that make impressions easier to obtain. Instagram highlights are easy to locate and are designed to be looked at more than once over a long period of time, unlike regular Instagram stories posts. Combine highlights with any of the content ideas listed in the previous example and you can hope for higher levels of impressions.

On Instagram, @hbomax features a collection of stories in the highlight ‘This Or That’ which includes polls and makes for great discussion among friends and fans. If a viewer managed to see these polls while the stories posts were in their first 24 hours, they would have been able to interact with them too, making these posts even more appealing to return to for the final poll results.

Similarly, Instagram carousel posts often show up more than once on viewer feeds because of the multiple pieces of content in one post available to be displayed. Initially the first slide in the carousel will be shown, but it’s not uncommon for the second slide to show up in the same person’s feed after refreshing.

Encourage saves

You can encourage your audience to save your content as an easy way for them to view it again in the future.

Your audience can save your content like this…

To save a video on TikTok all you have to do is press and hold on the video to reveal the options to save the video or add it to your favourites.

Bookmark tweets by selecting the share icon underneath a tweet and hitting ‘Bookmark’. You can find your bookmarked content by tapping your profile picture icon at the top of the screen on mobile, or in the panel on the left-hand side on desktop.

On Instagram, select the save icon on the right-hand side, directly under the content. You can choose to save the post to a collection after selecting this icon, if desired.

On Facebook, select the three dots in the top right-hand side of the content and select ‘Save post’ (or link, music, event etc. depending on the particular piece of content).

Direct your viewers to save content as a call to action on appropriate content to inspire more impressions on a piece of content.

Impressions data is often overlooked but it’s incredibly valuable. If you can create content that people will return to, this can have a knock-on effect on so many other metrics.