What Is “Reach” and How Is It Calculated?

Reach is a core metric in BrandMentions that estimates the potential number of people who have seen your brand’s mentions.

Unlike Mentions, which simply count how often your brand appears online, Reach measures the potential audience size exposed to those mentions.

This metric helps you understand how far your brand’s message travels across different platforms and sources. A single mention from a top-tier media outlet or a highly influential social account can generate significantly more visibility than hundreds of smaller mentions.

BrandMentions uses a proprietary algorithm to estimate Reach based on the source of each mention. While the exact formula may vary by platform, the following principles apply.
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For social media platforms, Reach is calculated primarily based on the number of followers or subscribers of the account that mentioned your brand.
In some cases, the algorithm also considers engagement potential, such as retweets, shares, or the audience size of accounts that amplify the original post.
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Example:
If an account with 50,000 followers mentions your brand and the post is shared by another account with 100,000 followers, the combined potential Reach increases accordingly.
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For online publications, blogs, or news sites, Reach is estimated using the site’s average monthly traffic or unique visitor data. Mentions on large, high-traffic sites such as Forbes or The New York Times will have a higher Reach than mentions on smaller niche blogs.

Note: Reach represents an estimated potential audience, not the exact number of people who viewed the mention.
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It provides a reliable way to compare visibility between mentions and assess the overall scale of brand exposure.

You can view Reach throughout each mention or within your Analytics dashboard, where it appears in charts such as Volume of Mentions & Reach and in mention-level data.

Use Reach in combination with metrics like Sentiment, Interactions, and Share of Voice to get a complete understanding of your brand performance.

Regularly monitoring Reach helps you track growth, identify new visibility opportunities, and ensure that your brand continues to gain attention across the right channels.