How to Determine if Your Facebook Reach is Decreasing

Have you heard about Facebook’s most recent algorithm change and wonder what to do about it? Are you trying to leverage Facebook for your business but are wondering if organic reach even exists anymore?

On June 29th Facebook announced their latest change to the news feed and said they would be focusing the priority on posts from friends and family. Which is nothing that new.

But I know some business owners and marketers are feeling like it may be time to leave Facebook for good. And I admit to feeling a little that way myself out of sheer frustration. BUT then I came to my senses and dug into what REALLY was happening on my Facebook Pages.

Here’s how to determine if your Facebook Reach is going down, and what to do about it.

#1 Look at your recent Facebook Insights

Some people hear the news about the decrease in Facebook Reach, look at a couple of posts that didn’t do very well, and determine that their Reach has tanked. But you need to take a look at what is true in your Facebook Insights.

Here is how you check your recent Facebook Reach:

Navigate to your Insights at the top of your Facebook Page.
Select Reach on the left sidebar.
Choose the date range you want to examine in the upper right corner.
Select “Organic” under the Benchmark section on the right to compare that Reach to the previous period.

Now you will know if your average Reach has gone up or down compared to the previous date range. I looked at a couple of Pages and chose the date range from the time of the Facebook announcement on June 29th.

This is the Reach on Grandma Mary’s Facebook Page

And this is the Reach on my Andrea Vahl Inc Page:

You can see that my Reach increased and you also have to take into consideration the frequency and types of posts you have had. There have been times when I’ve had a post that’s done really well in Reach.

I also like to look at some of the Reactions, Comments, and Shares to see how the engagement is doing compared to the previous period.

#2 Dive into the bigger picture

Don’t just look at a small date range – look at the bigger picture to see how your Page is doing during a longer period. I looked at a couple Pages from the beginning and still found that my organic Reach was improving.

I recommend taking a look all of your Facebook stats in a Facebook Insights Deep Dive about once or twice a year.

Remember that Reach isn’t everything. In fact, I rarely watch my Facebook Reach other than to see what types of posts seem to get more visibility in the News Feed.

#3 Watch the Facebook stats that matter

Determine what your Facebook “success metrics” are and watch them closely so that you know you are getting the return on your investment of time on your Facebook Page.

For example, I am mostly focused on how much traffic I’m getting to my website from social media because that is what is more important to me.

And then I also want to make sure I’m getting conversions to my e-mail list from Facebook. The way I measure that is with Google Analytics.

So I compared the traffic from Facebook between the two periods and did see there was a decrease of 8.3%. But I was also on vacation and not quite as active on social media.

I also looked at a longer period from the beginning of the year and saw that my traffic from Facebook has increased 111% compared to the previous period. So that’s great.

Then I also track how many people are doing things like opting into my webinars, my ebooks, and my email newsletter from Facebook. And that stat is going up for the first 7 months of the year compared to the previous time period so that’s also good news.

You can use Google Goals to track these stats on your website.

#4 Adjust your strategy if your Facebook Reach is going down

So what if you DO want more Reach? Reach can still be an important metric to get in front of new people or current customers. How can you get more Reach if Facebook seems to be limiting it?

Well here are a few ideas!

Watch which types of posts ARE doing well. Go into the Posts area of your Insights and see if you can find commonalities.
Use Video – both Facebook Live and video that is uploaded directly to Facebook (not YouTube videos) are getting more Reach and visibility in the News Feed.
Be entertaining. Have a little fun and post some humor on your Facebook Page. Focus on things that are directly related to your business to remain topical.
Use Facebook Ads. If your Reach is down to nothing, try Boosting a few Posts to your Fans only. That will help increase your visibility and by Boosting to your Fans only, you decrease your costs.

And Grandma Mary has a few words of wisdom about the state of Facebook’s Reach, too. She’s a little cranky about it.