Facebook Insights: Distinguishing Reach vs. Engagement

The world of Facebook Insights can get confusing, especially considering the increasingly specific metrics available, like total reach, post reach, page likes, visits, and engagement. When you first start to dig into the data, picking apart which numbers mean might feel both overwhelming and pointless, but there are valuable insights available. The key is understanding what the implications of each metric are. Let’s look at two of the most prominent ones, “reach” and “engagement,” and figure out how to use these metrics insightfully. Then we’ll share some tips on how to increase your reach and engagement!

Reach

Reach measures how many people have seen your post – how many people it has reached.

This is a great number to consider if you are trying to increase the number of fans your business has, or really want a certain post to be seen by your followers. Reach will show you how well you are making your product known and how successfully you are getting your posts into people’s newsfeeds. Gaining organic reach has been significantly harder in recent years due to algorithm changes with Facebook’s news feed, so if you want to grow reach, it’s worth exploring paid campaigns.

Engagement

Engagement measures the number of interactions made with your post – how many views, clicks, comments, likes, and shares your post gets.

Engagement metrics are important to consider if you are trying to build a relationship with your customers, increase their loyalty to your business, or measure your customers’ intent to take an action, like purchasing your product. 

However, reach and engagement does not go hand in hand. High reach doesn’t necessarily mean that your engagement is high as well – it’s possible to have high reach with low engagement and vice versa. Measuring engagement is primarily based on how compelling your post is to your target audience. And with higher engagement comes higher visibility (aka higher reach) for your posts.

6 Tips to Increasing Reach & Engagement

Are you hoping to increase your posts’ reach and/or engagement? Here are our top 6 tips to take into consideration:

1. Craft your posts with your customers in mind, as opposed to your business. Think about what your customers find most important and post information they’d be likely to share.
2. Engage with your followers. Start a conversation – ask questions and interact with them!
3. Be visual – include pictures in your posts that relate to what your followers like to see.
4. Look at the demographics of people who “like” your page to see if you’re reaching your target audience.
5. With recent algorithm changes, Facebook has made it harder to be discovered organically without adding exclusive Facebook content (such as creating a Facebook event page), so use those features whenever possible.
6. Like all other digital platforms, Facebook uses algorithms to keep its platforms relevant, which means it’s important for you to stay up-to-date on the platform so your business can get the most out of Facebook business tools.

Analyzing metrics is important for every business – reach and engagement are both important numbers to consider. Depending on what stage your business is in, whether it is new and growing or has been established for a while, reach, engagement, or both might be more important to you.

Are you using Facebook Insights? How is it working for you? Developing a social media strategy and looking at your numbers weekly will contribute to your business’ success. Wondering where to begin? Pyxl can help! Send us a message and we’ll work with you to improve your social media strategy. Or read our guide to a digital strategy.

Updated: Jul 18, 2024