Let’s assume your Facebook business page has 324 fans (people who have Liked you page). You make a post on your page, so you assume that all 324 fans will see your post. You are wrong. Less than 6% of your current fans will have the content you post actually show up in their Facebook profile news feed. Does this shock you?
Facebook reach is the number of unique people who see the content you post. Obviously, you want your content to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible! Understanding reach is critical to administrating an effective and efficient Facebook presence. Reach affects every other metric you can track: engagement, Likes, Comments, Shares, clicks, and negative feedback.
There are 5 basic kinds of reach: post, page, organic, viral and paid. Each is briefly defined below:
- Post reach is the total number of people who saw a specific post in their newsfeed.
- Page reach is the number of people who saw any of your post content during a given period of time (daily, weekly or monthly).
- Organic reach is the reach Facebook gives you for free. It happens in the newsfeed when your fans see your updates. This is the type of reach that is seen, on average, by less than 6% of your fans. Organic reach is dramatically increased with high engagement.
- Viral reach consists of the people who see your content because someone else created a story about it. For example, if a fan Likes, Comments or Shares your post, their friends will see your post even if they aren’t fans of your page. The same is true if you’ve paid to reach larger audiences who may or may not already be your fans (see below). If one of those targeted people creates a story, their friends will see it as well.
- Paid reach is the reach you get because you either boosted content or because you created and paid for a Facebook ad. Paid reach is a subset of post reach and is pretty easy to track and report. You paid for it, so you know where it came from. Obviously, if you are putting money behind content, Facebook will make sure your content is seen by far more people than just your fans. The great thing about paid reach is that you can target zip codes and demographic groups. The more money you spend, the more people see your content!
Does Paying for Facebook Reach Give a Good Return on Investment?
When you promote the right things, yes. Some content doesn’t deserve to be paid for and some does. Paying to promote the right content in order to reach more people in your target audience (fans or not), can lead to a lot of conversions and a lot of good exposure for your funeral business. So, when paying for reach you should make a distinction between casual content and business-worthy content. Choose posts that impact your bottom line.
Tactics to Sustain Facebook Reach:
Post when your fans are on Facebook. You can determine this by doing some simple analysis using Facebook Insights.
Post consistently. This affects the priority the Facebook algorithms places on your content.
Have the right tools in place to find high quality content that people actually want to see.
Post a fun fact or an expert opinion or questions about the latest news in the funeral world that impacts your customers.
Frequently use paid ads and boost the right content to build your fan base and increase your exposure.
These are just a few ideas you can easily implement to improve reach and to draw more attention to your Facebook business page.
Thogmartin, Ryan. “5 Simple Ways to Increase Facebook Reach.” Funeral Social. http://funeralsocial.com/how-to-improve-facebook-reach/