Raising your influence on Facebook can be a difficult and time-consuming task. In many ways it's both Facebook marketing's starting point and end target.
Facebook reach for your brand is the cornerstone from which many of your other Facebook metrics— such as reviews, shares, and impressions — are focused. Without scope, your content will be present on Facebook with no intent or visibility.
If that storm of paradoxes makes you turn your head, you are not alone. Facebook reach is an odd but strong beast: it's difficult to tame and get under control, but it can be a powerful companion.
Here, we'll try to make sense of reaching Facebook, and how it can help the company grow.
What is Facebook reach?
It's fairly easy to understand the idea of achieving itself but it's quite complex. In short, the Facebook reach is simply the number of unique users that see your post or account, regardless of whether they are engaged. Therefore, if you're making a post and looking at it at 100 people, your scope is 100.
Facebook scope is always measured in a given time frame. Which means that you just can't get a measure for your total distance. Then you need to look at your scope every day, weekly or monthly.
Clearly, Facebook does not have a way to track how many actual eyes your posts see while scrolling through their news feed. And Facebook only monitors how many separate displays your post shows on.
In the past, the scope of a post was dependent on how many unique users loaded the post in their newsfeed, even though it was never shown on their phone. This changed in February 2021, though, and marketers who are familiar with the old method of measuring scope should now be re-adjusted to the new system.
Reach vs. impressions
Now, drawing a distinction between reach and impressions is significant. Unlike reach, which measures how many unique viewers your post has, impressions measure how many times it shows your content. It does not assess single audience. So if your post has been served up to the same person three times, it will raise your impression count by three. You could have a post with a combination between 1 and 100 impressions, in principle.
With the definition of impressions in hand, we can now review Facebook's definition of reach with more precision as the number of unique users viewing your post over the total number of views (including repeat views) within a specified time period.
Reach vs. engagement
Anyone who market their company on Facebook must be mindful that reaching out is not a form of commitment. Reaching is instead a precursor to engagement: as your scope grows, so does the probability of engagement, simply because your content appears in front of more users. More interaction will actually boost your reach thanks to the Facebook algorithm, and while they are linked in some ways, they're two different metrics.
Types of Reach
Page reach vs. post reach
There are two main categories of Facebook divisions: page reach and post reach.
- Post reach is a measure of the specific experiences of any single post within a specified period of time.
- Page reach is a calculation of how many unique users saw certain posts on a page within a specified time period.
A high page reach and low post reach can be obtained, or vice versa. You may have a high page reach and a low post reach if you post very often, but if you post less often you might have a low page reach and a high post reach.
You'll need to take into account your overall brand strategy to decide if you should focus on increasing your post or page reach. If brand awareness is your aim, the better target is generally to increase your page reach.
The state of organic vs. paid reach on Facebook
The organic scope of advertised Facebook posts declined by around 90 per cent from 2012 to 2014.
The explanation is twofold for that downtrend. Second, since the platform's birth, the sheer amount of branded content that shows up on Facebook has increased dramatically. Further products fighting for attention means more competition and there's just so much organic-reach pie to go around.
Second, in 2021, Facebook started implementing changes to its News Feed algorithm that prioritized content from friends and family, especially by favoring content that promoted engagement. Clearly this could be an immediate drawback for branded content.
More broadly, Facebook is endeavoring to foster content that promotes user-to-user contact, especially with other nearby users.
According to Lauren Scissors, Facebook's Head of News Feed Research, the guiding theory behind the changes is that "interacting with others, like chatting or remembering things you've shared, is correlated with a greater sense of well-being, and the benefits are even stronger when you're close to the person and when the interaction requires some effort."
How to boost Facebook reach in 2022
While it may seem that the cards are certainly stacked against Facebook pages, there are still ways to organically boost your Facebook reach — it just takes a little imagination.
Create engaging content
Facebook users tend to lean to image-based content, rather than text-only content. Build visually appealing posts that catch your attention and draw visitors in. Remember also that Facebook's video content is on the rise, and curating pleasurable videos is a good way to get fans to engage with your posts.
Know when your audience is most active
Regardless of what type of content you publish, it is important that you post it at the proper time. When is your Facebook audience most engaged and engaging with the content? You should check this yourself and plan it based on the results. And, with a feature such as the ViralPost from Sprout Social, you can find the best time to post your content to the widest scope.
Conclusion
Understanding how Facebook determines scope on its site is important for gaging the success of your page or posts. When you understand how you calculate Facebook impact, you can prepare your marketing strategy with clearer goals in mind.
