Are you trying to up your Facebook reach? Read about what it is and the different types of reach, and get 10 stellar techniques to increase yours.
If you’re concerned about how many people see your content, Facebook reach is a metric you must understand and monitor.
In this article, I’ll explain Facebook reach so you have all the info you need when poring over your Facebook analytics.
First, let’s go over what Facebook reach means.
What is Facebook reach?
Facebook reach is an engagement metric that measures the number of users who encounter your brand on Facebook.
In Meta’s terms, Facebook reach means the number of unique Accounts Centre accounts (people) that saw any content from or about your Page in their news feed. This content may include posts, stories, ads, social information from other people’s interactions with your Page, and more.
It’s important to know that this metric is an estimate and will always apply to a specific timeframe, either 1 day, 7 days, or 28 days.
What’s an Accounts Centre account? Meta defines this as either an individual Facebook or Instagram account that has not been added to the same Accounts Centre as another account or two or more Facebook and Instagram accounts added to the same Accounts Centre account.
The difference between Facebook reach, impressions, and engagement
Things start getting a little complicated here but stay with me while I break down Meta’s other engagement metrics.
Reach is an estimated metric of the number of times unique accounts (repeats don’t count as with impressions) saw any content from your Page or about your Page over a specific period.
Impressions are the number of times any content from or about your Page entered a person’s screen, any number of times. Impressions are charged by the thousand, which is called cost per Mille or CPM.
Engagement refers to the number of actions taken on your Page or a post. These include post reactions, shares, comments, photo views, video views, follows, post saves, page views, or link and button clicks.
What are the different types of Facebook reach?
First of all, we can split Facebook reach into two main types:
- Page reach - the number of unique users who have seen any content from your Page over the specified timeframe
- Post reach - the number of unique users who have seen a particular post on your Page over the chosen date range
We can further divide these two reach types into organic, viral, and paid reach.
Let’s take a look.
Facebook organic reach
Organic reach on Facebook is the number of people who see unpaid content from your Page entering their screen.
This content could be your Page information, your posts, and any activity that occurs on your page without being driven by ads. It’s important to know that organic reach is very difficult to earn.
In a nutshell, your organic reach is tied to the engagement on your Page.
Facebook viral reach
Facebook viral reach is the number of people who see content from or about your Page on their screen because a friend likes or follows your Page, engages with your content, checks into, or shares a photo of your Page.
On the flip side, non-viral reach is the number of people who saw content from your Page enter their screen but not because a friend took the actions above: likes or follows your Page, engages with your content, checks into, or shares a photo of your Page.
Facebook paid reach
The definition of paid reach is slightly different from organic reach. It’s the estimated number of Accounts Centre accounts that saw your ads at least once. In comparison, impressions may include multiple views of your ads by the same Account Centre accounts.
Since organic reach has significantly decreased for Facebook Pages (1.2% when writing this article), growth is slow going, so running ads is necessary to promote your business on Facebook. This decline is because of algorithm changes, so more friends and family posts appear in users' news feeds.
You can run reach ad campaigns on Facebook by choosing the Awareness campaign objective. If you want more control over your ads, you can create them in the Meta Ads Manager.
I’d be doing you a disservice by not highlighting how using Madgicx to run your ads makes your life infinitely easier. Try it out for yourself - for free.
Note: If your content reaches someone through both paid and organic distribution, they count towards both. The sum of organic and paid reach won’t always equal the post reach. If someone sees your post through paid and organic, it will apply one towards organic reach and one towards paid reach.
How can I increase my Facebook reach?
- 🌱 Make people aware of your Page
Now that you know how reach works, you’ll understand the importance of sharing your Page in your personal feed, inviting your friends to like it, asking them to share it, and inviting the people who react to your posts to like it too.
Sharing your Page in local groups or groups relating to your industry also helps expand your reach and find more people who are interested in what you offer. Driving brand awareness and engagement is the easiest way to grow your reach organically.
Being more active on your Page is a must if you want to grow your organic reach. This means commenting on other people’s posts, responding to comments, and posting content frequently and consistently. A great tactic is to get your co-workers involved and encourage them to share or comment about your Page - it adds an extra layer of credibility and authenticity.
- 🌱 💵 Analyze your insights and act accordingly
Analyzing your Page Insights will help you to determine which content gets better results and discover your audience’s interests, demographics, and behaviors.
Having this information makes content creation much easier. You have a clearer idea of what matters to your audience and can position your content messaging to support this.
Your Page Insights will also show you the best times to post for your specific audience, allowing you to establish a posting schedule.
If you go to your Professional Dashboard, head to “Content.” You can choose the time frame you want to analyze and select “Engagement” or “Post Reach” (both are relevant here) to see a list of your best-performing posts in descending order. Here, you can see that the post with the highest engagement was published on a Friday.
You can check the time it was posted in Meta’s Planner, which is located in the Meta Business Suite side menu.
Then, you can use Planner to schedule your content in advance. Meta will even give you tips on when to post like in the image below.
Now, if you advertise on Facebook, Madgicx offers this information in a much more accessible way. In our tool, Auction Insights, we have a handy widget called Days & Hours that updates as you change the KPI you want to reach with your ads. Here, I’ve used the metric Post Engagement.
- 🌱 💵 Give people the content they want
If you usually post images or carousels, go outside your norm and post different types of content, such as videos, memes, polls, links, and questions. Try posting how-tos, infographics, listicles, and reviews to see what sparks your target audience’s interest.
Meta has many different post types you can create, as well as different ad types to appeal to your audience in different ways.
People love stories and reels, and if you really want to boost your reach, go live on your Page! Lives could be Q & A’s or a behind-the-scenes look at what you do or could be used to announce winners if you host a competition - you can get creative with your reasons to do Lives.
- 🌱 Embrace the hashtag
While hashtags work best on Instagram, if your Facebook Page and Instagram account are connected in your Accounts Centre, you can expand your reach by using hashtags in your posts.
Instagram allows users to follow hashtags they’re interested in, making it a great way to expand your reach across your brand pages if you use the right hashtags - be sure to do your research.
- 🌱 Repurpose your evergreen content into different formats
When you discover a post that performs well, repurpose it into different post types and formats to appeal to more people.
For example, you may notice that an image post receives a lot of engagement on your Page. To get more reach, consider repurposing the post subject and style into a story, reel, or video. You could also turn it into a more detailed blog post and share it on your Page to get people to visit your website. You want to capitalize on what worked in the post to drive the engagement in the first place and try to replicate it.
- 🌱 Run contests on social media
Everyone loves a contest. They generate excitement on your Page, sparking engagement which increases your Facebook reach as a result. Whether it’s a giveaway, competition, or inviting followers to share videos or images of your product for a prize, a contest is a great way to create hype about your brand.
Opening the lines of communication between you and your audience is extremely effective in increasing reach. From getting input from your fans on what to call your latest product or a contest for the best caption for a photo, you can let your creativity go wild with what you can ask of them… as long as you stay within Facebook’s rules about competitions.
- 🌱 💵 Adopt UGC into your content strategy
User-generated content is where it’s at. Users love it as it gives an unadulterated and authentic view of the product or service from the eyes of a customer. Brands love it because it helps to sell their product without having to pay for the content creation.
Think of ways to set up a content harvesting system where you encourage your customers and fans to create and share content about your product.
Reviews and testimonials fall under this category, and you should gather and share these regularly on your Page and even turn them into ads.
- 💵 Advertise on Facebook
Considering that organic reach for Facebook Business Pages sits at only 1.2%, and Facebook ads offer the most bang for your buck, running ads across Meta’s platforms makes sense to boost your reach quickly and consistently - and it’s much less hard work to get results.
To run ads on Meta, you must set up a Meta Business Manager account for your business and an ad account. Our articles give you a step-by-step guide on how to set these up.
- 💵 A/B test your ads
Unless you run split tests on your ads, you won’t know what content performs best. No one can predict this, which is why good advertisers conduct A/B testing.
It is important to test multiple ad variations using different color combinations, layouts, images, and other visual elements in your ad design. You should also try different ad copy, headlines, and wording to see which resonates more with your audience. Creative testing is crucial to your success as an advertiser.
In addition, you should test different ad types and placements, as I mentioned before, to see how these variations perform across Meta’s platforms.
While testing ads means you are increasing your ad spend, you will save money in the long run because your winners will become clear by their performance which translates into your return on ad spend, called ROAS.
- 💵 Use Madgicx to manage your Facebook ads
Using Madgicx to run your ads is like dousing gasoline on a flame.
Madgicx helps you launch ads quickly, analyze your audiences, and discover new ones to grow your reach strategically. You can automate many repetitive tasks, and the AI Marketer tells you what to do next to optimize your ads for best performance.
Best of all, it lets you analyze the creative elements in your ads and easily test creatives to see what performs best for your audience. Having Madgicx in your back pocket is a dangerous combination for your competitors. Give it a try.
How do I see my Facebook reach?
You can see your organic Facebook reach from the back end of your Page in the Professional Dashboard, and it also shows in your Page insights under “Your Page.”
You can also see this info in Meta Business Suite under Insights.
You can also find this info in your Meta Business Manager account. Head to “Insights,” then “Content”, and select “Posts” in the first drop-down menu.
Then scroll right until you find the “Reach” column. Click the arrow to sort the posts by reach; they’ll appear in descending order.
To monitor your paid reach, you can use Meta Ads Manager.
However, navigating it can be a steep learning curve for some.
Or, you can use a first-class Facebook ad reporting tool like Madgicx’s One-Click Report. It’s much easier to use.
One-Click Report offers advertisers a centralized real-time dashboard to monitor their advertising efforts across multiple channels. You can customize your report to show your Facebook reach. Plus, you can connect your other ad platforms; Google Ads, Shopify, TikTok, and Google Analytics, to see your reach across all your accounts.
Conclusion
While the concept of Facebook reach is simple, leveraging your reach in your organic social media or paid advertising strategy requires a little more finesse. A staunch yet malleable Facebook analytics reporting tool helps extract relevant insights from your preferred KPIs. Don’t take my word for it. Try One-Click Report for free and see for yourself.
Use Madgicx to discover more about your target audience so you know how to tickle their fancy. Launch ads faster and gather detailed insights about the creative elements in your ads.
I use my 18 years of experience in digital marketing and paid advertising to help business owners and advertisers navigate the tech landscape.