We all have a Facebook business page these days (& if you don’t, you should). And we try to post things we think are interesting to our clients, along with the requisite posts about promotions or sales we are having. But do you ever stop to think about whether your posts are really connecting with your clients? Or whether those same posts are helping to drive further engagement, not only with your clients but also with their extended circles? Facebook Insights can help you do all that and more.
Facebook Insights is a set of analytics that Facebook provides to business pages. It offers you a lot of powerful information that can help you analyze what is happening on your Facebook business page. It can help you understand what is working effectively on your page, as well as learn more about who is visiting your page, what they are doing, and when.
Let’s take a look at the 6 main sections of Facebook Insights. You can find the Insights information by going to your business page and clicking on “Insights” at the very top of the page (above your cover photo). Within Insights, you will see 6 different tabs: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts, & People. Here is what you will find on each of these tabs.
Overview
The Overview tab provides you with a snapshot of data for your page from the last 7 days. It also compares the data from this week with the data from last week. You will see it broken down into several sections:
- Page Likes – this shows you the overall number of likes as well as any new likes this week.
- Post Reach – This shows you the number of people shown your page and posts.
- Engagement – Engagement is the number of people who saw a post and then liked, shared, clicked or commented on it.
- 5 Most Recent Posts – Your 5 most recent posts are displayed at the bottom of the Overview page.
This page is a good one to visit on a regular basis as it gives you a snapshot of the most valuable information from each of the other tabs.
Likes
The Likes tab shows you information about the likes on your business page. This information is broken down in several different ways.
- Total Page Likes – This is the current total of likes on your page, as of today.
- Net Likes – This shows you the total number of likes minus unlikes on your page.
- Where Your Page Likes Came From – where any likes on your page in this period came from, whether they were referred from an external source like your website.
Knowing where your likes come from can be useful when trying to allocate resources.
Reach
The Reach tab shows you information on the reach of your posts, including who saw them and what sort of engagement each post had.
- Post Reach – This shows the number of people who saw your posts. It is broken down by both organic and paid.
- Likes, Comments, & Shares – This section shows you information on all the positive engagement your posts had. Increased numbers in this section shows an increase in your overall reach.
- Hide, Report as Spam, Unlike – This section shows you information on all the negative engagement your posts had. Increased numbers in this section shows a decrease in your overall reach.
- Total Reach – This shows you the total number of people who were shown any activity from your page.
The information on reach can be helpful in determining what sorts of posts have the most reach and positive engagement, as those are the sort of posts that can help grow your page.
Visits
The Visits tab shows you information about what people did when they visited your page.
- Page and Tab Visits – This shows the number of times people clicked on each of the tabs on your page, such as About, Hours, Info, or Likes.
- Other Page Activity – This shows the number of actions that people took that involved your page. This could be the mention of your page in a post or a post by one of your followers on your page.
- External Referrers – This shows the number of times people came to your Facebook page from an external website or link, such as the link to Facebook on your website.
This information can help you determine whether certain sections of your page need more attention. You can also see whether your reach is increasing based on people who already like your page sharing your posts and pages with people who haven’t liked your page yet.
Posts
The Posts tab shows information about both your followers and your posts. It provides you with information about your followers habits as well as how they have engaged with your posts. It shows two main sections of information:
- When Your Fans are Online – This shows when the people who like your page are on Facebook. You can track it based on the time of day by mousing over the graph to see how many of your followers are online at any given time of the day or week.
- Post Types – You can click the tab next to When Your Fans are Online to view this data. It shows the average performance (reach and engagement) of each post type (status, photo, link) on your page.
- Posts You’ve Published – This section shows all the posts you’ve published in chronological order. It provides a lot of powerful information about each post including:
- Type of Post – This shows what sort of post it is: status, photo, link to an external article
- Targeting Information – Who this post was shared with. Typically, your posts will tend to be shared globally with all your followers. But you may have subgroups that you share specific posts with
- Reach – How many people were reached by this post, usually broken down by organic and paid
- Engagement – Number of people who engaged with this post (liked it, clicked on it, shared it, or commented on it)
- Boost Post – this is a link that allows you to pay to boost this post and put it back at the top of people’s feeds
- You can also click on any individual post to view a detail page for each post
This can be useful information when you are trying to determine what sort of posts get the most reach and engagement. Or what day of the week or time of day is the best time to post on your Facebook page to get the greatest number of views.
People
The People tab shows you information about the people engaging with your page. There are three tabs on this page.
- Your Fans – shows you information about the people who like your page, broken down by age, gender, and geography. You can also mouse over each demographic to see how your engagement with that section compares to Facebook as a whole.
- People Reached – shows your demographic information about the people reached with your posts.
- People Engaged – shows you demographic information about the people who engaged with your posts.
This can be useful information if you are trying to target a certain demographic, such as women ages 35-50.
As you can see, Facebook Insights offers a lot of powerful metrics to help you better understand what is resonating with your followers and where you can make improvements or shift focus in your posts in order to engage an even larger audience.
Take some time today to check out your insights. By using all the valuable data that Facebook has already compiled for you, you can make better decisions about both your Facebook strategy and the content you post on your business page.