Facebook: What does reach mean?
This month’s subject is Reach:
Facebook recently removed “active users” and “stream views” so I want to make sure everyone is up to speed with the new terminology. (Reach and what it actually means)
Why is there even a new language? How does it compare to what I was measuring before?
Facebook saw the need to clarify how people were seeing your Page’s content. Previously, the most similar measurement we had to Reach was Active Users. The problem with Active Users was that the majority of them weren’t actually “active” as you’d normally think. In fact, over 90% of Active Users were just people who only saw a piece of content from your Page, not actually engaged with it in any way. That doesn’t sound too active to me.
By separating out the terms Reach and Impressions, there is a clear distinction between how many unique people saw something about my Page versus how many total times something was seen about my Page.
Why are there now multiple types of Reach? How does it fit into the Viral Lifecycle of my Page?
The switch to Reach is the breakdown of what types of impressions everyone is seeing. There are three options: Organic, Viral and Paid.
Organic Impressions: These come from people seeing your content in their Newsfeed or the Ticker. When you publish a new photo or status update to your Page’s wall and someone sees it, this number goes up. This is by far the most common way you’ll reach your Fans and their friends.
Viral Impressions: Viral Impressions are impressions on “stories” that get created when someone engages with your Page somehow. Viral Stories might look like “David Turner liked Lionel Phillip’s comment”. There are 4 types of Viral Impressions: Fan, User Post, Page Post and Mention.
Paid Impressions: Sponsored stories and other ad units are counted in here.
The tricky one to understand is the Viral Impressions. In order for someone to see something about your Page “virally”, there is a two-step process. First, someone must see something about your Page (could be organically or virally) and then take an action that creates a story.
Fan Story: Someone became a fan / liked your Page
User Post: Someone wrote on your Page’s Wall
Page Post: Someone commented, liked or shared one of your Page’s posts
Mention: Someone @mentioned your Page or tagged it in a photo
Checkins: Someone checked in at the place your Page represents
The second step is that someone must see that story that was created in order for it to count as a Viral Impression. The Viral Stories that are seen most often are the Fan stories that are seen by the friends of the person who became a fan, which will hopefully drive the friends to become fans as well. If you’re not confused after that you’re not human!
