Reach falls, and the first instinct is to look for an algorithm change. Sometimes there is one. More often the cause is smaller and closer to home. Go through these in order; they are ranked by how often they turn out to be the answer.
1. Did the posts actually go out?
Check the calendar, not the feed. A post that failed — an expired connection, a rejected file — does not show up as a bad post; it shows up as no post. If you posted half as much, reach will be about half. Check the status of every post in the period, and the state of each connected account.
2. Are you comparing like with like?
- The same length of period, not seven days against thirty.
- The same kind of post: a Reel is not a photo.
- A quiet week set against a launch week is not a drop.
3. What did you change?
The time you post, the format, the topic, how often, how you write the first line. A change you made two weeks ago is a likelier cause than anything the platform did. If you changed three things at once you will not know which, so change one at a time.
4. Is it the season?
Holidays, exams, summer and the end of the year move attention everywhere. If your numbers fell when everyone’s did, they tend to come back when everyone’s do.
5. Is anything wrong with the account?
Look in the account’s own status or support pages for a warning, a restriction or a removed post. If there is one, it comes first; nothing else matters until it is resolved.
6. Only then: the platform
Networks do change what they show, and they rarely announce it. If nothing above explains the drop and other accounts like yours report the same, wait. A one-week dip is noise; a three-month trend is real.
Keep a note of what each drop turned out to be. After a year you will have your own checklist, in the order that is true for your account.