Every post can reach people in two ways. One is paid reach, when you show it as an ad to a chosen audience, and the other is organic, when the platform puts it in front of your followers or other interested people by itself. You do not pay for organic reach, while the platform decides how large it is.
Organic reach develops differently on each platform. On LinkedIn professional posts in a personal tone reach the most people, while on Instagram it is the visually strong content and the posts worth saving.
Platform algorithms first show every post to a smaller group and watch how people respond. If people stop on it, read it, save it or share it, the system shows it to more and more people. If they scroll past, the reach soon stops.
What makes it grow
- Showing up regularly, so followers get used to your brand
- Content worth saving or sharing, for example a useful summary
- An image or headline that grabs attention in the first seconds, especially in videos
- Replying to comments, because conversation is a signal to the platform too
The time of posting matters too, though less than you might think. What counts is showing up when your audience is active, and this can be read from the account's statistics. A well-performing organic post is also worth running on as an ad, because it has already proved that the audience likes it.
On most platforms a brand's posts now reach fewer followers on their own than they did a few years ago, so paid and organic presence usually work best together. Ads bring new people, and organic content keeps them and builds trust.
It is worth looking at organic reach post by post and format by format as well. In the monthly report we show which topic and which format reached the most people, and we adjust the next month's content plan based on that.
The number of followers on its own says little about reach. A smaller, active audience often reaches more people than a large, passive following, because the reactions carry the posts further. That is why we watch shares and saves as well.
