After consulting Facebook and several blogs, I think I have a basic understanding of reach and engagement. In the simplest terms, reach is the number of people who receive a post in their newsfeed. If they receive the same post multiple times (for example when someone comments on the post and it shows up in the news feed a second time) it still counts as one reach. Engagement is the number of times people have taken an action with a post. The action can be clicks, comments, likes, shares etc.
Knowing the difference is important because just because a post has reached a large number of people, it doesn't mean that a "conversation" has started. People get a lot of material in their newsfeed, if they don't engage with a post, it might mean they are tuning it out. Looking at the number of engagements is important because it gives you an idea of how people are interacting with the material you send out.
In Facebook Insights, a variety of results can occur. For example, it is important to understand that a post can have a low reach, but a high engagement. This means that not many people received a particular post, but the people that did receive it engaged with it. That might tell a company that a certain type of post stimulates people to action. If a post has high reach, but low engagement, that might tell a company that their post was in many people's news feeds, but not many people liked, shared or commented on the post. By studying which posts generate engagement, a company can get an idea of what content gets their potential customers to respond. The company can use that information to craft new posts.
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