Facebook Changes Reach Metric

reaching target audience on social media

Facebook Changes Reach Metric

August 24, 2021

Have you noticed a change in reach for your Facebook page? You may have noticed the number was a little crazy on the positive side for most people. IMEG would like to take a moment to explain why these numbers may have changed for you! Find out more about Facebook reach and how you can increase your page’s reach.

What is Facebook Reach?

Facebook Like

Facebook recently changed the definition of its “reach” metric, but before we get to that, we’re going to explain what Facebook reach is. Reach is basically the number of Facebook users who have seen your postings in a 28 day period. Reach is counted when a post is loaded in a user’s newsfeed. Be careful not to get reach confused with impressions, however. Impressions are how many times your content is displayed, whereas reach is how many people actually saw your post. For example, you could have a post that has a reach of 100, but 250 impressions. Reach is the foundation for the engagement your posts will receive, like how many comments, likes and shares. It’s important to understand that reach is not a form of engagement, but it leads to more engagement. This is because your content is appearing in front of more users, which means it’s more likely to have more interactions.

How is Facebook Reach Calculated?

It seems before, Facebook only counted desktop views in the feed but now Facebook claims they will now include mobile views. Due to the large number of mobile users, we will now have a more precise figure of how many people we are reaching with posts. One thing we would like to note that did disappoint us a little is that they will not segment in any reports how much reach comes from desktop users vs. mobile devices. The data will be a combined aggregate number.

Types of Facebook Reach

post getting engagement on social media

There are two different types of Facebook reach: page reach vs. post reach. Post reach calculates an individual post’s unique impressions. Page reach calculates how many uses saw any of the posts on your page. If you post often, you may have a higher page reach and low post reach, and if you post less often, you may have a low page reach but high post reach.

More Facebook Changes

One more change that seemed to happen at the this time is that fewer stories will be loaded in the Feeds at a one time. The good news is that now the actual number of impressions should be more accurate due to the fact that reach and impressions are counted upon load. The reach metric previously included impressions that users might not have seen due to the high volume of stories posted at one given time.

In closing, the addition of mobile to the reach metric may make reach number higher, but the News Feed change could make it lower. Whether or not the two will balance each other out is unclear.

Have more questions?

Are you interested in learning more about Facebook reach or social media marketing as a whole? IMEG can help. Contact Us: https://imegonline.com/contact-us/