Why Is My Facebook Text Getting More Reach Than My Videos?
A few weeks ago I ran a real test on my insurance agency's Facebook page.
I posted every format available to me — graphic images, short Reels, long form video, company culture posts, and plain text posts. Then I watched what the data said.
Text posts averaged 149 views per post. Reels averaged 51.
Facebook's own professional dashboard surfaced a tip confirming it: text posts were getting 193% more views on this account than Reels.
Nearly three times the reach. From a text post. While every marketing agency in the country is telling professional service firms to go all in on video.
Why Is Facebook Boosting Text Posts in 2026?
This is not an accident. Since late 2024, Facebook has been deliberately boosting organic reach on text-based posts for business pages.
The platform is competing with LinkedIn for professional and business engagement. Text posts keep people in the feed longer than Reels do. A Reel gets watched and scrolled past in seconds. A text post requires reading. That dwell time is valuable to the algorithm — and they are rewarding it.
That is reason one. Reason two is audience-specific.
The people who follow a local insurance agency on Facebook are local professionals and contractors. They are a text-comfortable demographic. They grew up on Facebook when it was primarily text and links. They are not TikTok natives scrolling for entertainment. They scroll to check in on their community and stay informed.
When I post a well-written text update about something that matters to their business or their coverage, it lands. When I post a Reel, it plays and they move on.
Platform rewards text. Audience prefers text. That is a compounding advantage most professional service firms are leaving on the table.
Does Culture Content Actually Perform? Or Is That Just Feel-Good Marketing?
The culture content finding surprised me as much as the text data.
When my team pranked me during a staff meeting and we posted it, it performed. Birthday posts performed. Company event documentation performed.
Not because people love insurance agents or want to follow a team around. Because those posts showed real people doing real things in a real business environment.
Culture content does something a product graphic cannot do. It answers the question every prospect is asking before they decide to call.
Who are these people. Can I trust them. Do they seem like the kind of business I want to work with.
A graphic about liability coverage does not answer that question. A real moment from inside the business does.
Culture content is not fluff. It is trust infrastructure.
What Should Professional Service Firms Do With This Information?
Four practical steps.
First — pull up your Facebook professional dashboard and look at the post type breakdown. See what format is actually performing for your specific account. Not what the industry says should work. What is actually working for you.
Second — if text is outperforming video on your account, give yourself permission to lean into it. A well-written text post that speaks directly to your audience's situation will outperform a mediocre Reel every time.
Third — do not abandon video entirely. Long form video on YouTube builds a different kind of authority than Facebook text posts. The formats serve different purposes. The point is not that video is wrong. The point is that format decisions should be driven by platform-audience fit, not platform trends.
Fourth — start treating culture content as strategy. The real moments from inside your business are building trust in a way that a product graphic never will.
The diagnostic question is not what format is winning right now on social media. The diagnostic question is what format is winning with your specific audience on your specific platform.
Those are different questions. And only your own data can answer the second one.
If you want someone to look at your Facebook data and tell you what it means for your specific content strategy, that is exactly what I do in a free audit. Go to https://ironcladcreative.studio/onboarding and fill out the form. I will tell you what your platform-audience reality actually is, what format you should be prioritizing, and what you might be producing that is costing you reach. No pitch. Just a straight read of your actual situation.