Take the next step with Facebook Insights.

In Part 2 of our 3 part Facebook Tactics for Small Business series, we dive into Facebook Insights and the powerful features it offers business owners and marketers. Check out Part 1 here. 

Once you have become more familiar with Facebook, it is time to take the next step and utilize Facebook Insights! The Facebook Insights feature is a double-edged sword. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the different subcategories and caught up in the lingo. But once you focus on what is important, it can be a powerful tool to become more aware of what drives successful engagement.

When starting out with Facebook insights you want to focus on page and audience analytics. These numbers tell you about the interaction with your content as well as useful information on who is watching. They can create more meaningful connections with your audience.

Your Page Summary

You can access your insights by clicking “Insights” on the top of your company’s Facebook page. It first brings you to an Overview Page that includes a Page Summary, Your 5 Most Recent Posts and Pages to Watch.

In the Page Summary you can view general numbers on actions, page views, likes, engagement, and videos. This means that you can see how many people click on your call to action (actions on page), the total number of page views and likes, the number of people your posts have reached, and the number of times people have engaged with your posts. Once you are using Facebook Insights regularly, these will be some of the most important numbers for you to look at.  

There has been disagreement within the social media-marketing community regarding what is and is not an important insight, but everyone agrees that engagement is key. This is because it gives you a more accurate picture of how many people are actively thinking about your company based on how many likes, comments, and shares a post gains. Many people used to focus on Facebook likes, but that is only an idea of passive users, whereas true engagement shows deeper audience connection.

It is important to look at the difference between your reach (the number of people your posts have reached, plus likes, comments and shares) versus your engagement (number of times people are commenting, liking and sharing). You can see which posts are falling short (low engagement) and replicate those that are getting a good response. You want people to be mentioning your company, commenting on your posts, and sharing your content so that you reach more people organically. If you are getting high engagement not only does that mean that your content has been dynamic, but it is essentially receiving a free form of advertising.

 Your 5 Most Recent Posts

Your 5 Most Recent Posts helps you to see a snapshot of current activity and basic stats on these posts. You can see the basic publishing information, type of media, reach, and engagement for each of the posts. It is helpful because they show you how much of your reach is organic and how much of it is paid so that you can have a clearer picture of the true numbers.

You can use this to compare which types of media have produced the most engaging posts, as well as paint a picture of the most engaging type of content. They also break down the engagement between post clicks and reactions, comments, and shares. You can see if your content is being read or leading to separate pages, or if it is engaging enough to inspire people to comment. Both are important numbers depending on what your marketing goals are for each post.

Pages to Watch

Pages to Watch is a helpful comparison tool that allows you to gauge how your activity measures up to similar pages. You can compare total page likes, engagement, and number of posts in order to stay up to date with what others in your industry are doing. This can be a powerful tool to help understand the general range that your own numbers should fall in.

Your Audience

Another helpful tool is to use the “People” tab on the left hand side of the insights page to view Audience statistics. This is where you can find the demographics of the people who liked your page, those who were reached with various posts, and those who engaged. You can see age, location, and gender. It is helpful to see the types of people your content is reaching so as to better understand how your content is circulating organically. In addition, you will have a better understanding of the types of people who are most likely to engage. This is important to determine if you are indeed reaching your target audience and if those are the people who have the most frequent engagements with your content.

All of these basic insights provide a comprehensive overview of your Facebook reach and engagement. It is important to understand how you compare to competitors, the reach of your posts, and the who, when and how behind audience engagement. Once you become familiar with these, you can check out classes and learning modules from Facebook itself to dive deeper and maximize your usage of the many tools they have to offer.

And look out for Part 3 of our 3 part Facebook Tactics for Small Business coming soon!

Sofia DeMay is the co-founder of Swifte, an app which aims to transform the way communities carpool by matching drivers with extra space in their cars with people looking for rides. She has extensive digital marketing experience including roles at Wells Fargo, GLIDE and Feldspar Studios. She is particularly interested in the intersection of marketing and technology, as well as exploring strategies for social entrepreneurship.