Understanding Facebook Reach is a key part of knowing how to make the most of your Facebook page. Facebook is the world’s most used social media platform, and also one of the platforms that allows a wider range of content to be posted and consumed. While there are a lot of options of social media platforms out there to choose from, Facebook is the primary platform of choice for most users.
While other platforms like Instagram and Twitter may be popular, they tend to be used specifically to post certain kinds of content, and will likely need a more deliberate volume of content to make the most of the channels.
Facebook stands apart in a couple of ways: partly it has familiarity with a lot of users in a lot of different places, but it also allows for an ever-increasing range of types of content to be posted in a variety of ways. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its issues – but we’d still consider that, as far as social media channels go, Facebook is the safe middle ground for most users and should normally be the primary choice of channel to adopt.
One of the main ways in which Facebook has changed over the years is how people have adapted to using it, both for sharing content, but also in our consumption habits.
When Facebook was first launched, the sign of success for most users was linked to how many ‘likes, comments and shares’ a post could gather. While that’s still a partial indication of how your post is performing, there are more important metrics to look at to gather a clearer idea – such as your Facebook reach.
One of the biggest reasons for this change is the way in which consumption habits of social media users has changed. While Facebook was still a novelty, we were more likely to make a deliberate choice to interact with posts more intentionally. Now, as users have become more desensitised to content, and as we adapt to more of a ‘scroll’ mentality through social media, we physically interact much less than we ever did before.
For content creators and page owners, this can be seen as discouraging feedback on how our content is being consumed. Thankfully, Facebook offers a range of different metrics to analyse, which provide a clearer indication of how content is performing.
Additionally the organic reach of many Facebook posts is now incredibly low, mainly in part due to the increase in content on the site, and also because Facebook is increasingly a ‘pay to play’ outlet – prioritising content from paid advertising.
While ‘likes, comments and shares’ are still an integral part of how social media works, the metric to look out for on Facebook is the ‘reach’ of a post. Your Facebook reach indicates not just how many people are physically pressing the like button on FB, but rather how many unique people the post is actually reaching. While your physical interactions may be low on a post, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t seeing and consuming your content in some other way.
What you will likely encounter if you speak to followers of your social media channels is that they can recall some of your content, even if they didn’t physically interact with it on the first time. That’s a good sign that although your post isn’t gaining as much obvious interaction as you may previously have enjoyed, your content is still being seen!
It’s also a sign that in order to maximise the potential of your social channels, you’ll likely have to adapt some of your practices to be more deliberate in your social media in order to see your Facebook reach increase.
There are a range of ways in which you can extend your Facebook reach (and other socials) – one of the key first steps is to think about developing a social media content calendar and a library of content.
If you’d like to talk through some of the ways in which we can help you, please get in touch.
