What’s Wrong With Facebook Cover Photo Reach?

October 4th, 2013 by Search Influence Alumni

Facebook announced a new version of News Feed way back in March 2013 and emphasized that decreasing clutter and increasing images were the company’s top priorities. Months later, some of the highly touted features have still not rolled out to all site users. However, one change was made almost immediately: allowing Business Page cover photos to appear in both ads and stories in the News Feed.Facebook Cover Photo News Feed

This new feature was poised to make businesses’ cover photos more important than ever, especially after Facebook removed the 20% text rule from cover photos in July. These site improvements were welcome changes for most brands, as they allowed companies to improve their branding and use calls to action directly on their Facebook page. Unfortunately, business pages are unable to see just how many people are seeing their cover photos due to a bug in the new system.Facebook Cover Photo Reach

We noticed back in July that a new cover photo we posted for Audubon Zoo had more “shares” and “likes” than it had organic reach. I assumed that it was a temporary issue, or a fluke, but we have seen it time and time again over the last few months whenever we change our clients’ cover photos. We updated the Center for Restorative Breast Surgery’s Facebook cover photo on Tuesday in conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The new cover photo post received 225 likes, 71 shares, and 12 comments, but for some reason Facebook is reporting that the new image was only seen by 33 people total.

It certainly doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize that number cannot be correct, but there seems to be virtually no information out there as to why we’re seeing underreported reach totals for cover photos. If this truly is just a bug, why has Facebook not yet identified the issue and fixed it? Have you encountered this problem on your Facebook Business Page? Let us know in the comments!