Is engagement on FB overrated when it comes to post visibility?

So, one argument for maintaining a high PTAT is that FB's algo then rewards you and shows more of your page's posts in your fan's feeds.

Ok, fair enough. I decided to test for real world results by placing an eye-catching post with an affiliate link on three pages I manage. The products are almost identical since the pages are in the same category.

The first page in general maintains a very high PTAT of over 200% the fanbase.

The other two pages are ones that I've essentially stopped caring about a month ago, as I decided they were not worth my time anymore. They have a PTAT of less than 5% of their fanbases.

So, how many clicks did each affiliate link get, adjusted for the pages' fanbase size?

Almost all three pages were the same. They all got a healthy amount of clicks each on the affiliate links.

And the organic reach was not much different either for all three posts, which is surprising since we would assume the first page would destroy the other two.

So, while engagement remains important for other reasons (virality to get new fans, branding, etc.), it doesn't seem to have a huge impact on reach based on my little experiment.

I'm not making any huge conclusions yet. I am going to test further in the coming days and weeks. If it turns out PTAT isn't that big of a deal for organic reach and clicks on my affiliate links then my posting frequency on my pages will likely go down.