What April Fools can teach you about reach

April Fool's Day. For as long as I've been using the internet, it feels like it's been an important day for brands to have a little fun with their audiences. Indeed, the tradition of fake news stories goes back much further to traditional media, but seemed to hit a somewhat critical mass in the digital age. 

Especially when it came to social media channels - a direct feed into brand's customer base. And it's been a good ride of fake products, unlikely casting announcements, changes of entire brands and more.

But this year I noticed something different. And it was something indicative of the change in social media algorithms and organisations' ablility to reach their users directly. Because there were plenty of April Fools posts on Facebook and Instagram that I didn't see for a day (or two, or three) after they were posted. And it proved to be a microcosm of a pattern that's been stirring up for a while.

But why does this matter? 

Because controlling the message we send out to our audiences matters. Because arts, culture and heritage are very much a date-driven sector, from the dates of the events themselves to the date and time you want to announce new events, tickets going on sale, and more. And thanks to the shuffled-to-keep-you-scrolling algorithms that Meta (and, to an extent, X) platforms default to, we are no longer in control of when our followers see our posts.

It used to be that it was easy enough to establish the best time to post based on when your audience was most active, albeit with a bit of trial and error. Commuting times, lunchtimes, early evening for some people, later evening (once parents have put kids to bed) for others. But increasingly this is no longer the case. And ultimately, this means there's a risk in having a date-centric approach to posts on these platforms. A shout out about an event  "tonight", "tomorrow", "this weekend" is as likely to be seen by your followers a day or more later than planned as it is on the day you post it - if they see it at all. And it may well suggest that immediacy in posts is no longer the best option.

That's not to say that we need to make wholesale changes to social media policies. But longer-tail approaches to posts, ensuring a clear date rather than one relative to the date that we post, should perhaps be the prominent way forward. And it's not to say that "immediate" posts aren't still important, especially for things like "on-sale now" posts or updates for things like if your site is experiencing technical difficulties, where people will naturally - and directly - navigate to your social pages to look for updates. And better engagement can also help ensure your posts are seen more immediately too - suitable tagging of associated artists/performers/partners and sensible use of hashtags can lead to more eyes on your content more quickly, and likes, shares and comments on that content can lead to it being seen by even more people more quickly, because the platforms see it as "good" content.

(It's also worth noting at this point that Bluesky offers a purely un-curated experience for users, so the time you post is the time it appears in your followers' feeds.)

Ultimately, this was just an observation, based on years of observing April Fool's content on social media sites. And who knows what might change by 1 April 2026. But if your social media policy is primarily based around your followers seeing your content when you post it with little margin for it being delayed showing up in their feeds, it might be time to have a rethink.

Damien Passmore - Web Editor/Marketing Officer, What's On Reading