So you appreciate the largest social network in world can have an impact on business, brand and sales. You’ve also created your Facebook strategy and scheduled updates, right??
But after doing all of this, which Facebook insights should you be monitoring? How long should you spend doing this, an hour? Two? A week?. Well below we have highlighted some key insights we feel you must make time to track, this will not only ensure that your S.M.A.R.T. objectives are met but can also save a bundle of time and money!
1. Which pages ‘like’ you
If you have been ‘social’ enough and have a good online brand, chances are other businesses, brands or bloggers may endorse your page. In this case you should almost always reciprocate the favour assuming the endorser is relevant, but this may also foster cross promotion opportunities. It goes without saying that following relevant businesses or brands will also lead to an increase in your audience.
2. Posts Insights
A great way to measure/benchmark your content strategy, Facebook insights measures:
-
The number of people ‘talking about this’ i.e. the number of unique users who engaged with the post in some way which subsequently, led to a story to appear in their friends’ ‘Facebook ticker’.
- How many unique impressions the post received – an important point to remember here is that Facebook only tracks this data for 28 days.
- The percentage of users who have engaged with the post out of the total number of unique impressions (talking about this divided by the reach)
- Actively Engaged Users – the most important!! As this will tell us who engaged the post, in what way, sentiment and shares.
3. Freq
uency of Independent Users
- This metric, displays the number of unique users who viewed content produced by the page within the specified time period.
- Whilst this doesn’t show us specific posts engaged by unique visitors, it does show us the return users and their engagement with your brand.
- In using the metrics correctly, it is imperative to monitor the number of users who viewed content more than 5 times a month and to aim to better that the following month by analysing the type of content that created the most engagement.
4. Fluctuations (Peaks/Troughs) in page views
- Similarto how you measure Google Analytics for traffic, Facebook should be monitored in a similar fashion
- You should monitor what other marketing activities/initiatives you were undertaking at the time of the spikes. Were you:
- Runningan sms campaign linked to your Facebook page
- Running a TV ad have a Facebook call to action
- Running a newspaper ad with a secondary action linked to Facebook
- Remember Facebook also tracks, in most cases, the source ofthe page visit.
5. Audience Demographics & Geographical Data
- Whilst Facebook gives a running total of the specific countries and cities your audience comes from, we suggest you keep a spread sheet total, with dates of data analysed. This will enable a long term running total, aid to analyse types of content for specific demographics etc.
Now that y
ou have an idea of Facebook Insights and have started measuring correctly, you can now look to employ tactics to mix things up if you need to, benchmark higher and ensure you reach your goal and S.M.A.R.T objectives.
The next step is to start tracking against your competitors! But that’s a blog post for another day…
