Facebook can be one of the most effective platforms for communicating with your audience. Yet it's becoming harder to earn an audience's attention on Facebook. In order to engage your audience you must do certain things to set yourself apart. One of the actions that's essential for success is to pay close attention to Facebook metrics. This allows you to find out what is and isn't working so that you can optimize your page. Let's look at some of the data you should watch when it comes to Facebook marketing.
Using Page Insights
"Page Insights" is the name for the Facebook analytics tools. If you've been using Facebook for a while, you may have noticed that the look of this page has changed recently. The main difference is that Facebook has separated metrics into several distinct tabs, such as "Page Likes," "Engagement" and "People." All of these comprise what is called PTAT or "People Talking About This." In order to fully understand the impact of your page, you should be aware of how each of these metrics is important.
Page Likes
This is the most straightforward piece of data regarding your page. While page likes are important, they are sometimes overemphasized by social media novices. If likes were the only thing that mattered, you could become a Facebook marketing wizard simply by buying likes. You can, in fact, buy likes at very low prices on many sites. This, however, will not do you much good. Such likes are either completely fake and created by bots or they are from people who were offered some kind of incentive to like your page. Either way, what you really want are people who are genuinely engaged with your page.
That said, likes are still important, provided they are authentic. "On Page Insights" you can find out how many likes you get in certain time periods. This allows you to test certain types of content and find out what produces the best results. You can also find out where your likes are coming from. This tells you which of your Facebook marketing efforts are the most effective.
Reach and Engagement
Reach and engagement are broader metrics than likes, and thus more informative. It includes not only likes but also comments and sharing. As with likes, you can look at the graph and find out what kind of response your posts have received over a certain time period. This is a good way to measure the influence your content has.
Posts and Post Types
The "Posts" tab is another way to measure how your content has been performing. You can not only see how posts are doing in certain time periods but you can also use the "When Your Fans Are Online" tab that lets you know when your fans are most likely to be on Facebook. This can provide you with an important piece of information -when it's most effective for you to be posting. The "Post Types" tab tells you what kind of posts are reaching the most people -whether people are engaging most with your status updates, links or images.
People
The "People" tab is a way for you to analyze the demographics of your audience. This is one of the most useful things about Facebook. With typical website analytics, it's hard to know exactly who is clicking on your site. With Facebook, you can find out things like the age and gender of your audience.
Interpreting Facebook Metrics
Facebook makes it easy to track your results on a daily basis. Of course, it's still up to you to pay close attention to this data and make good use of it. It takes a little time and experimentation to find out what works best on your page. If you have the know-how, you can combine your Facebook metrics with your SEO analytics to make powerful decisions that will help your site rank even higher.
You may find that your audience prefers visual content over text based content. You might find that posting at a certain time of day or day of the week provides you with a greater level of engagement. When you do find something that works well, you should duplicate that as much as possible. If you find your audience responds well to articles on a certain topic, you should give them more articles of this type. The more closely you monitor your Facebook metrics, the more you can use it to your advantage.