Even if it feels as though you’ll never quite understand Facebook, or perhaps you’re not overly active on social media, we all recognise that Facebook and social media platforms in general, are powerful marketing and communication tools, allowing you to connect with your target audience and deliver content that they enjoy.
But what makes Facebook in particular so powerful?
Although there isn’t really one particular thing that stands alone as the key ingredient making Facebook so powerful, you do have to give a lot of the credit to the Insights it offers and the information we can gather from those Insights.
What are Insights?
Facebook Insights are one of two free analytics tools that Facebook provide which allows you to understand the performance of your business’s Facebook page. Facebook Insights allows you to track things such as your reach, engagement, page views and more. So, whether your goal for using Facebook is to better communicate with your customers, encourage people to take an action or build your brand’s awareness, your page Insights will help you to understand who your audience is and how they engage with your page.
The Facebook algorithm is updated constantly. Earlier this year we saw one of the biggest changes to the algorithm to date and this change prioritised posts from friends and family over posts from businesses, meaning that it is now even harder for a business to get the attention of it’s target audience.
And so now more than ever you need to understand how your page posts are performing and the best way to do this is through Facebook page Insights. By understanding the metrics that can be measured on your page you can take away information which will help you to ensure that the content you are posting is getting in front of the right audience at the right time and that they enjoy it and are actually engaging with it.
So how do you use Facebook Insights?
How to use insights
Firstly, you need locate your page Insights. Go to your page and click “Insights”.
From here you will see your dashboard which is split into sections and gives you an overview of your pages performance over the last seven days.
In addition to the overview, specific metrics are measured as well and these are represented by the tabs on the left.
Whilst all of these tabs and metrics are important, there really are a few keys ones which actually provide you with the information you want and should be the focus of your attention.
Let’s break down the key aspects you need to consider.
Overview
As we just explained, the overview section provides us with a snapshot of the last seven days of activity on your page. Whilst this snapshot gives you data on 9 core areas, there are really only 3 specific areas you need to look at:
- Page Views – the number of times your page has been viewed
- Reach – the number of people who had any posts from your page enter their screen
- Post Engagements – the number of times people have engaged with your page through likes, comments, shares and more
At the top of this section, you have the ability to change the period of time for which you see data. One week, one month or one quarter. Have a look at all of these and see if you can identify any trends in your posts.
Page Views
The Page Views section shows us exactly how many people viewed your page during a specific time period and is broken down into three main sections:
- Total Views: Tells us how many times your page was viewed. This can be broken down by page section as well which is handy to know as you can then identify the sections of your page which are of interest to your followers
- Total People Who Viewed: This builds upon the total views section and tells us how many individual people viewed your page. This can be broken down by page section, age & gender, country, city and by device.
- Top Sources: Tells us where exactly all this traffic to your Facebook page is coming from.
Reach
Facebook explains reach as “the number of people who had any posts from your page enter their screen.” In simple terms, this is the number of people who had the post appear in their newsfeed and this is broken down into who the post reached organically and who you paid for it to reach.
The Reach section also tells us about the Likes, Comments and Shares on each post as well as who has Hidden the post, Reported it as Spam or Unliked your page.
Within the reach section, Facebook also measures ‘Recommendations’. The recommendations chart “shows the number of times people recommended your Page in posts and comments”.
Knowing how many people your posts reach and how they (the posts) got to your followers (organically or paid) will help you to assess which posts are working and which are not. If you see a spike in activity over a particular period go and have a look at the types of posts you were making during that period and see if there is a trend as to why they may have performed so well.
Posts
The posts section is a ‘go to’ for many marketers because of the valuable insights it provides. These insights are divided into three metrics:
- When Your Fans are Online: This tells us when the people who like your page are on Facebook and viewing content.
- Post Type: Tells us how successful different types of posts were based on the average reach and audience engagement.
- Top Posts from Pages You Watch: Gives you stats on the engagement of posts from the Pages you’re watching (Think of what you could do with this information on your competitor’s pages and the posts they are making.)
In addition to the above, the Posts section also tells us how many of our followers are using Facebook each day of the week and at what times they are using it.
Final Facebook Insights Tips
The various sections of the Facebook Insights tool provide us with powerful metrics that allow us to analyse and respond to the type of content which resonates most with our audience.
The next step from here is for you to go and check your page Insights. Click on all the different tabs and sections, read and understand the information you are being presented with and use that information to your advantage.
Create more posts which are similar to ones you have done previously which had high reach and engagement, schedule for posts for times when the majority of your followers are online and therefore more likely to see and engage with the post. And finally, make a schedule for when you will check these Insights and identify what metrics you need to monitor so that you have a systematic approach to the way you collect and use the data Facebook provides you with.
About the Author:
Jessica is a digital marketer specializing in social media marketing and helping businesses navigate the social media landscape to achieve their marketing and communication objectives.
Working in various marketing roles for seven years before deciding to specialise in digital and social media marketing, Jessica started her own company Catalyst Marketing Solutions in 2015. Catalyst Marketing Solutions’ purpose is to help businesses achieve their marketing and communication objectives through the effective use of social media platforms.
Jessica is excited to now be working with Max My Profit as their Digital Excelerator to provide tailored social media marketing services to their clients.