Hot take: "reach" is a useless metric for creators. What actually tells you a post was worth it?
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Been chewing on this and want to hear how others think about it.
(Disclosure: I'm building a scheduling tool, so I'm biased — but this is a
genuine question, not a pitch.)
Every scheduler I've used solves the same half of the problem: getting a
post out on time. That was never the hard part. The hard part is knowing
whether the thing you posted was actually worth making.
Two things I keep coming back to:
1) "Reach" is basically noise. 10,000 views tells me nothing. What I
actually want to know is which post started a real conversation — a comment
from the right person, a DM that went somewhere, an actual connection.
Almost nothing measures that.
2) Cross-posting reads as cross-posting. Most tools take one post and just
resize it per platform. But platforms don't differ in aspect ratio — they
differ in what that audience will tolerate. Same content, different crop,
still feels generic.
So, genuine questions for the creators/marketers here:
- Beyond "scheduled" and "published," what would you actually want a tool to
measure?
- How would you even define a post that was "worth it"? Conversations? The
right people engaging? Something else?
- Do you adapt content per platform, or cross-post and hope for the best?
Curious how you all think about this.
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Replies
lets me know what u guys think
Three answers, and the third is the unpopular one.
What to measure: reciprocated exchanges. Not replies received, not replies sent. The ones where they said something, you answered, and they came back. One reply is politeness. A round trip is a relationship, and it is the only part of "who mattered" that a tool can honestly observe.
What makes a post worth it: what it changed, not what it got. Something exists now that did not exist before. A conversation, an intro, a correction to your own thinking. Most posts change nothing and still perform fine, and that is the whole problem.
Adapt or cross-post: neither, mostly. I decide a post belongs on one platform and skip the rest. Adapting properly costs nearly as much as writing it again, so the honest answer is usually fewer places done properly.
And the uncomfortable version of your own hot take. If reach is noise, then most posting volume is noise too. A tool that measures conversations will eventually tell people to post less. I think that is correct, and I think it is a very hard thing to sell.
I’d measure what happened after the impression. Did someone save it, reply with a real question, visit the profile, send a DM, join the waitlist, or come back later? Reach only tells you the post was distributed; it doesn’t tell you whether it moved anyone.
I’d also separate metrics by intent. An educational post should create saves and follow-up questions, while a launch post should create qualified profile visits or signups. And yes, I’d adapt per platform rather than simply resize — the core idea can stay the same, but the hook, length, and conversation style should fit the audience.
Agree hard on point 1. The post that gets one reply from the right person beats 10k views that go nowhere, but almost nothing measures that because it's hard to count. If I had to pick a signal: replies and saves over views, and specifically who is replying, not how many. One thoughtful comment from someone in your space is worth more than a hundred likes from nobody. On "worth it" — I'd define it as did it start a conversation you could follow up on. Are you thinking of tracking who engages, or just that someone did?