You post a special, check back that evening, and a handful of people have seen it. A post with an ad behind it reaches far more, and the month after, the page seems to fall off a cliff.
We run ten pages in Nelson Mandela Bay, most of them shopping centres, supermarkets and hardware stores in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). This is what those pages have taught us about reach and posting.
Why is my Facebook page reach so low?
Because a Page post does not go to all of your followers. It goes into a contest for space in each follower's Feed.
Meta explains how this works on its own transparency pages. When someone opens Facebook, the system gathers the posts that could appear for them: from friends, Pages they follow and groups they have joined. It narrows those to about 500, scores each one for relevance and shows them in that order. The signals can include who made the post and how the person has interacted with them before, whether it is a photo, video or link, and how many of their friends liked it. It also predicts how likely someone is to scroll past a post.
Read that from behind the counter and three things follow.
- Your post is up against the customer's own family, friends and groups. A cousin's photos can win over a special on cooking oil. That is not a fault in your page.
- Meta names each person's past interaction with your page as one of its signals, so following it is only the start.
- A post that looks like every other flyer is easy to scroll past.
So low reach is the normal state of a business page, not a punishment. The useful question is whether the people near your door see your posts and act on them.
Why is my Facebook reach going down?
When an owner tells us their reach has crashed, it is usually one of four things.
A boost or an ad stopped
Meta's Page insights count organic and paid reach together, including boosted posts, and someone reached both ways counts once. When the ad stops, the paid part goes with it, and the total falls even though your posts did not change.
You are comparing different windows
Page insights show the last 7, 14 or 28 days. On a retail page, grant pay dates, month-end and public holidays decide when people shop, so a window with the pay dates in it and one without look very different. Compare like with like: read the 28-day figure on the same date each month, so every window holds the same pay dates and month-end.
You are reading a different number
In October 2024 Meta started adding a Views metric to the insights in Meta Business Suite and the Professional dashboard. Views count every time your content is played or displayed, so one person who sees a post twice counts twice. Reach counts each account once. Keep the two apart. The view figures we quote on this site are content views, not reach.
The page went quiet, or every post looks the same
A gap in posting leaves Facebook nothing of yours to show, and a run of near-identical flyers gives people little reason to stop. Meta says it tries to give each Feed a balanced mix of post types, so vary the format: a photo of the store, a short video, a plain question.
How do I tell organic reach from paid?
The reach figure in Page insights mixes both, so you have to split it yourself. Ads Manager shows each ad's own reach, the number of accounts that saw it at least once. From there it is bookkeeping.
- Take one full month of posts from your page, not the last 7 days.
- List every post that had a boost or an ad behind it that month, and set those aside.
- Look at the reactions, comments, shares and messages on the posts with nothing behind them. That is your organic baseline.
- Note what those unpaid posts were about, and which ones people commented on.
- Compare the same week of the month: month-end with month-end, pay dates with pay dates.
- Count the comments and messages that asked a real question about price, stock, hours or directions.
How many times a week should a business post on Facebook?
Three times a week, every week. That is what we do on every page we run.
Why three:
- It keeps the page current. Meta's advice to business Pages is that visitors should see a post that is recent and meaningful, and that old or expired posts can suggest a business is not active.
- It can be kept up. The pattern we see most on local pages is a burst early in the month, then silence. Three a week is a pace a page can hold month after month.
- Each post gets room. Spread across the week, each one gets its own day on the page.
Why not every day?
More posts only help if each is worth stopping for. A daily post that could belong to any shop gets scrolled past. Ours are made for one page: that store, its customers, its part of town. If you cannot make seven good posts a week, make three.
What if I can only manage one a week?
Then post one a week, every week, on the same day. Pin the post customers need most, such as trading hours or the current special, to the top of the page. Meta's help page on Page posts says anyone who visits will see a pinned post first.
Does the time of day matter?
Less than what the post says and when in the month it lands. Pay-date posts go up before the pay dates, holiday trading hours before the holiday, and a pamphlet special in the week the price holds.
An example month on a supermarket page:
| Week | Post one | Post two | Post three |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-date week | Grant pay dates, day by day | This week's pamphlet specials | Trading hours, if a public holiday falls |
| Week two | Store news or a new product on the shelf | The place: the neighbourhood, the school run | A customer question, answered |
| Week three | The competition or draw | Specials that still hold | Stock that has just arrived |
| Month-end | The month-end list | Specials that still hold | The draw winner or community news |
How to get more followers on a Facebook page without paying
Since August 2025, people can only follow a Page on Facebook, not like it, though they can still like its posts. So the number to grow is followers.
These cost nothing and work on local pages:
- Invite your own friends. From your personal profile, go to your Page, open Options and choose Invite friends. Meta says you can invite up to 200 friends, and its steps for inviting friends to follow your Page show where each button is.
- Put the page where customers already stand. The till, the door, the pamphlet, your WhatsApp status. Say what it is for, such as specials and trading hours.
- Post what people come back to check. On a centre page: trading hours on a public holiday, a store opening, the school holidays, the draw. On a hardware page: stock, because “do you have it in stock?” arrives as a message before people drive out.
- Answer every comment and message. Past interaction with a page is one of the signals Meta names, and answering is good service anyway.
- Share posts with the businesses next to you. When a store in a centre has a special, we post it once as a collaboration post from the centre and the store together, so it shows on both pages.
- Get the basics right. The right category, a profile picture and cover photo, your details, and your address if you have a shop. Meta lists all four in its advice for growing a Page audience.
When is it worth putting money behind a post?
An ad is not cheating, and it does not fix a weak post. We put one behind a post customers already want: the pay dates, a big special, the draw. It is aimed at the suburbs your customers come from, not the whole province, tested small, and scaled only when it brings enquiries or visits.
The budget is set in Meta's Ads Manager as a daily budget, an average per day and not a hard cap, or a lifetime budget, the total for the whole run and a hard cap. Meta's help page on daily and lifetime budgets sets out both.
Then keep the paid numbers apart from the organic ones, so next month's plan rests on what the page does on its own.
Which numbers should I actually watch?
Meta's Page insights give you, among others:
- Views: how many times your content was played or displayed.
- Reach: how many accounts saw it, organic and paid together, each counted once.
- Engagement: reactions, comments, shares and clicks.
- Net followers: new followers minus unfollows.
Meta's help page on Page insights defines each one. Watch net followers and messages more closely than reach. Views from across the country do less for a shop in Kariega than a handful from people down the road.
That is how we run social media management in Gqeberha: three posts a week, every comment and message answered, and a monthly performance summary with views, follower growth and how many people messaged. We count enquiries, not only reach.