The Small Business' Guide to Facebook Insights and Analyzing Data

By: Anna Thursday February 20, 2020 comments Tags: facebook marketing, marketing strategy, social media marketing

As any good social media marketer knows, analyzing data goes hand-in-hand with creating awesome content - the more you know about your content, the more you can improve it. Because of the importance of analytics, it's in your best interest to know Facebook Insights inside and out. Here's your small business guide:

Overview

In the overview section of Facebook Insights, you can access features like:

• Page Summary

 

• Recent Promotions

 

• Most Recent Posts

 

• Pages to Watch

This section is your snapshot of your page's recent performance. The Pages to Watch tab is especially helpful. Get this: you can type in "pages liked by people who like [your page]" to see pages your followers have liked. Then you can add them to your Pages to Watch list so you can you learn from their successes.

Likes

Of course, Likes are one of the main ways to determine your page's effectiveness. In the Likes section of Facebook Insights, you can see:

• how many likes you have

 

• how that number has grown over the past month

 

• where the likes came from

When you click "Total Page Likes," you can compare the number of likes for this week with last week's number. Net Likes shows you the actual number of paid and organic likes gained by accounting for unlikes. You can also select a date range to tell when and where your likes or unlikes rose. And most powerful, the tab Where Your Page Likes Happened shows you what your customers were viewing when they liked your page.

Reach

The news feed algorithm change has hit organic reach hard, so now more than ever you need to know how your posts are performing. The Reach section gives you numbers for:

• organic reach

 

• paid reach

 

• recommendations

 

• likes

 

• comments

 

• shares

 

• hides

 

• reports as spam

 

• unlikes

You can look at each of these sections to tell how people are interacting with your page and to avoid negative interaction. The total reach section shows you the number of users who saw your page based on any action and helps you analyze what drives organic reach - engagement levels, time of posting, and type of content.

Page Views

Likes may be one good way to determine your page's effectiveness, but if people aren't viewing your page, then your page doesn't have much purpose. The end goal is to get people to your page, and the Page Likes section of Facebook Insights helps you do that better. It includes data on:

• total page views

 

• what type of content people viewed

 

• where people came from to view your page

 

• demographic breakdown of people who viewed your page

You can see the age, gender, and location of the people who viewed your page, as well as the device they viewed on. With this data, you can target your audience better with content and ads, and draw attention to your actual page more effectively.

Actions on Page

This Facebook Insights section tells you what people are doing on your page so you can know how to convert them better. The data shows how many actions on your page were

• phone number clicks

 

• directions clicks

 

• CTA clicks, or

 

• website clicks

Just like other sections, this section gives you the breakdown of actions according to demographics so you can see how well your targeting is working. A good way to analyze the data even more specifically is to select several date ranges and compare the results of the two time periods. Based on that data, try testing different CTAs to see which one converts your audience best.

Posts

Facebook Insights' Posts section helps you know how effective your content is. It shows you:

• reach and engagement of both organic and paid posts

 

• popular posts from pages you watch

 

• Days and times your audience is online

This info allows you to compare reach and engagement of organic/paid posts and see what type of content your audience interacts with most. You can then test memes, gifs, or videos to see if they get better results. Maybe the best part of this section is you can determine when your audience is most active online and target your post times accordingly.

People

The People section of Facebook Insights shows you just who you're reaching. It breaks down those people according to:

• Your fans

 

• Your followers

 

• People reached

Once you know this info, you can see if you're reaching the people you want to reach and adjust your strategy to get the attention of the people you want. Also, pay attention to the difference between your page likes and page followers. If you have significantly more likes than followers, that may mean people are unfollowing your page and you need to adjust your content strategy. Remember, you can also learn more about the people who interact with your page in the Audience Insights section of Ads Manager.

Messages

This section allows you to see info about the messages you've received on your page for the last 180 days, as well as how you've dealt with them. It's a good idea to display your response rate on your page so people know when to expect a response from you. You can do that in the Messages section of Settings.

We hope you've come away from this post with a better understanding of how to analyze data and get the most out of Facebook Insights. Have more questions or comments? You can send us a message on Facebook, join our Facebook group Social Insights Community, or check out our blogs on custom audiences and Facebook marketing mistakes. We're always ready to take your social marketing to the next level, so let us know how we can help you!

Source: Social Media Today