What Is Reach on Facebook?

When it comes to monitoring the growth of a Facebook page or creator profile, there are certain stats and insights that you need to understand and be aware of.

One of those is Reach – but what exactly does the reach of a Facebook page or profile refer to, and how does it differ from other analytics tools?

Defining Reach

The Reach of your Facebook page, post, or profile means how many unique accounts it has been shown to.

Users do not have to do anything at all to be considered a part of your Facebook Reach. This stat simply tells you how visible your page or content is – not how many people have actively engaged with it.

As such, Reach is the stat that’s used when tracking visibility.

For example, if your page appears on the feed of 100 users, or your post is seen by 100 different people, then the Reach is 100 – as measured within a set time period for ease of tracking and comparison.

Different Types of Reach on Facebook

Before we look at the different types of reach in terms of Organic vs Ad vs Viral, it’s important to understand how page reach and post reach are tracked.

We referred to page reach and post reach as one in the above section – however, they are monitored and measured differently.

Post reach is specific to a single post, letting you know how many Facebook users saw that exact post in their feed.

Page reach can refer to any post that a user sees in their feed – meaning that this reach count is often higher, as it encompasses any reference to your page as seen by a user. It’s broader, so the overall count is subsequently higher.

Now that we’ve covered these specifics, let’s look at the different types of reach with regards to how you maximise your visibility.

Organic Reach

Organic reach is the reach that you get from simply sharing content and building a valuable profile or page on Facebook.

While difficult to bolster and grow, organic reach is the stat that gives you insight into how visible both your content and your page is without funding behind it.

Ad Reach

Ad reach uses targeted advertising and budgeting to make your content and/or page more visible.

It provides some insight into how well your individual ads perform, and also gives you some idea as to how good your audience targeting and segmentation is, by tracking visibility and then conversion as a result of your ads.

Viral Reach

Viral reach looks at how many users see your content or page as a result of likes and shares.

When a user likes a post that you have shared, that content becomes visible to their friends. The number of accounts reached via these second hand interactions is the viral reach of your post.

How to Boost Your Facebook Reach

If you want your content and your page or creator profile to be more visible and to reach more accounts, then you need to focus on sharing great content and building a valuable community.

The higher your reach, the more engagement you will see on each post and update, and the more engaged your community will become.

We hope this helps and inspires you to spend time on both the quality and the visibility of your content across Facebook.