Quick definition
Reach is the number of unique accounts that saw your content at least once — each person counts one time, no matter how often the post appeared on screen.
Reach counts unique viewers. If the same person sees your post in their feed on Monday and again via a friend’s share on Tuesday, reach records one account — impressions would record two displays. Platforms often slice reach further into organic (unpaid distribution), paid (ads), and viral or non-follower reach (people who found the post through shares, hashtags, or recommendations), though the exact labels and definitions differ from network to network.
No platform shows your content to all of your followers — every post reaches a fraction, and the algorithm decides how far it travels based partly on how the first viewers respond. Publishing when your audience is actually online enlarges that first wave, which is why timing moves reach more than almost any other lever you control. Reach beyond your follower count is the second story worth watching: it means the platform is distributing your content to new people.
An account with 10,000 followers posts at a quiet hour and reaches 2,800 accounts — 28% of its audience, including 400 non-followers who arrived through shares. The same account posts comparable content into a high-activity window the next week and reaches 4,100. Nothing about the content changed; the size of the first wave did, and the algorithm amplified it.
Every major platform reports reach (or a close equivalent) per post and per period in its native insights. Two ratios make the raw number useful: reach as a percentage of followers, which tracks how well you penetrate your own audience, and engagement relative to reach, which tells you whether the people you reached actually cared. Rising reach with flat engagement usually means the content is being distributed but not landing — a content problem, not a timing one.
Where SocialKit fits
Reach starts with publishing when people are actually scrolling — SocialKit’s best-time auto-posting schedules each post into high-activity windows on every network you’ve connected.
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FAQ
Quick answers to the questions people ask most about this term.
SocialKit posts to all 11 platforms from one calendar and tracks how every post performs, so the numbers explain themselves. Try it free for 7 days.
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