Platforms report reach for posts, Stories, Reels and ads, and many split it into followers and non-followers. That split is often the most useful part: reach among non-followers shows whether content is travelling beyond the existing audience, which is how accounts grow. On Instagram and Facebook, views, which count repeat viewing, have become the headline metric, with reach still shown in the detail.
Reach on its own says little about results. A post seen by many of the wrong people does less than one seen by fewer of the right ones, and reach rises and falls with the algorithm in ways no one fully controls. It is best read next to saves, shares, comments and profile visits, which show whether the people reached cared.
