Understanding Facebook Page Insights

Dec 6, 2011

Understanding Facebook Page Insights

Right around Thanksgiving, Facebook Pages rolled out changes regarding their data-tracking system called “Insights.” If you have a Facebook business page, you can find the Insights link in the left sidebar underneath the business profile picture – the example below is the Verticalwerks business page.

Purpose of Reading Facebook Insights

No matter what social media outlet you decide to use, it’s important to be able to track your audience. For Facebook, these elements include:

1. Powerful Content – see what posts and content resonates with your audience (for example, on one of my business pages, it’s the photo of Bacon Roses that I posted for fun – seriously, you just never know what people will like 🙂 ). The metrics include the following –

  • Reach – number of people who saw the post
  • Engaged Users – number of people who interacted with the post, including a click on it, a Like or a comment
  • Talking About This – people who have spread news about your post, including Liking, commenting on or sharing your post
  • Virality – graph representing percentage of interaction with content

2. Your Fans – the age, gender and location of the people who have Liked your page and interact with your business through Facebook. This demographic information provides information on who’s looking at your posts and how to tailor posts and ads to that audience.

3. What People are Saying – keep track of what people are saying about your business, including

  • Likes
  • Comments
  • Sharing page posts
  • RSVPing to events

When friends like your content and talk about it, the potential for reaching more people increases dramatically.

Elements of Facebook Insights

The tracking data regarding your audience used by Facebook Insights is in graph form, like the from Verticalwerks Insights below. In the graph at the top of the photo, the dots at the bottom indicate the number of Facebook posts you’ve made over time on your business page. The line above that indicates the number of people talking about your page based on those posts, and the top line is the weekly total reach, which increases the more people talk about your page.

As you can literally see, the general rule is that the more you post, the more your Facebook Fans will be engaged.

At the top of the graph, there are the following categories:

  • Total Likes – number of people who Like your page
  • Friends of Fans – number of people you have the potential to reach by using your FB page through this kind of word-of-mouth marketing, since people interacting with your page or sharing your content/photos shows up on their newsfeeds
  • People Talking About This – number of people who have interacted with your business page, including posted about your page, liked your page, mentioned your page, checking in or recommending your place
  • Weekly Total Reach – number of people who have seen content from your page in the last seven days, including ads

A chart appears below the graph that represents the same data, just in a different format.

Let Insights Inform Business Direction

In other words, why should you care about Facebook Insights when it comes to your business page? For these simple and related reasons:

  • the more you post, the more potential customers engage
  • the more engagement, the greater the potential for reaching more people
  • the more people see you, the more trust you build
  • the more you see what content people engage with, the more you can post

If I was at all creative when it comes to graphic design, I would have created a nifty infographic with that bullet list (but I’m not). Instead, just imagine it as a circle of the “circle of life” variety for your business. If you use social media – and here’s a strong case regarding why you should use social media regardless of your business – get the most out of it by informing the direction to take in order to engage more fans and their friends.

Remember the business page I mentioned above where the fans loved the Bacon Roses I posted about? Looks like I’ll be posting more about bacon!

 

 

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