Most business owners understand the benefits of a Facebook business page. However, many aren’t aware that a company Facebook page comes with a free, analytics tool – Facebook Insights – that helps you understand more about how your fans are responding to your content and what posts are working best for your business.
By using Facebook Insights you’ll not only be able to track your active users, it also allows you to build a stronger content strategy, and get access to huge amounts of useful demographic and behavioural data about your audience.
For those new to Facebook Insights, here’s the scoop to help get you started:
To use Facebook Insights you’ll first need to create a Company Page on Facebook and your page needs 30 likes for the dashboard to show any results.
How to access Facebook Insights
To access your Page Insights, click Insights at the top of your Page. This is the main Insights dashboard where you can see the total number of likes, how many people are actively talking about your page, as well as your total weekly reach.
Popularity of posts
Below the graph you’ll be able to see how popular your posts have been, and see how many people your posts have reached. You can also sort by the type of content you share (i.e. videos, photos, posts, links etc.) to see what content is working best.
By default you can view the performance of posts based on two groups of data 1) Post Clicks; and 2) Likes, Comments and Shares.
By understanding which posts are most popular you can ascertain which content works best for your brand and audience.
Facebook Likes
This is where you can drill down to see who has liked your page and where those likes originated from.
Total Page Likes – View the growth or decline of your ‘likes’ over a weekly basis.
Net Likes – This shows you the likes that were organic (unpaid) and those that were paid, through Facebook ads. You’ll also see if anyone has ‘unliked’ your page.
Where Your Page Likes Happen – The majority of likes will probably happen when people visit your Facebook Page but they could happen from other online sources, such as your own website, or third party advertising.
You’ll also be able to see the demographics of those likes which will allow you to build personas of your target audience and check whether you are reaching the people you really want to target.
When your fans are online
What I like about this feature is you are able to tell the average number of people who saw your posts during each hour of the day, covering a 7-day period. I’m sure over time Facebook will allow you to see this data in real-time, but for now, it’s a great start.
Exporting data
You can export your data into Excel for further analysis or produce your own customised reports. The export feature is pretty clunky as it exports the entire data set, so you will have to sift through Excel to analyse the data you want.
To get valuable insight into your Facebook page and find out whether it’s reaching the people you really want to target, take a closer look at your Facebook Insights.
For more information on harnessing the power of social media analytics, drop me a line.