What is organic reach vs paid reach?

Organic reach is the number of people who see a post for free, shown mainly to a page’s existing followers because platform algorithms deliberately limit how far unpaid content travels; paid reach is the number of people who see a post because a business paid to have it shown to a targeted audience beyond that follower base. This algorithmic limitation on organic reach (sometimes called ‘reach throttling’) exists partly because platforms need to reserve ad inventory to generate revenue, and partly because feeds would be unusable if every business’s every post reached 100% of its followers.

As a result, organic reach varies widely by platform, account, audience, and content, so there is no reliable universal percentage for any given post, meaning a page with 10,000 followers might only see a few hundred people view an unpaid post. Paid reach can extend distribution beyond an account’s existing organic audience: an ad budget lets a business define exactly which audience segment (by interest, location, behaviour, or lookalike modeling based on existing customers) should see the content, independent of who follows the page.

Most effective social strategies use organic content to build brand voice and community, and paid promotion to guarantee reach for the specific posts (launches, offers, key messages) that need guaranteed visibility.