If you want Facebook Insights to really be useful, you have to use it effectively

If you are using a Facebook business page in your social media strategy to compliment your overall marketing strategy, are you measuring your business page on Facebook correctly? Everything regarding digital marketing should be measured so that you can analyse what is working and what is not, the ROI of your campaign, and if you are going to reach your business goals. Anything digitally can and should be measured, but data stays data until you know what to do with it.

As always, you need to be a page admin to see Facebook Insights. When you visit your business page on Facebook, you will see the admin console at the top of the page with some basic Insights regarding your page. If you want to see more in-depth analysis, click on “see more” which will then prompt you if you want to see the new page insights if you haven’t activated it already.

How many people like your page
Once you are viewing the insights of your business page, click on the “Likes” tab to see an overview of the likes of your page. The graph you will see will give you a clear view over a period of time of the amount of the total”likes” you receive. Below the overview graph you will see “Net likes” which is worked out by taking your total likes minus your “unlikes”. The result gives you “net likes”. This is an excellent metric as you can drill down what you are posting and sharing that results in “unlikes”.

When is your community online?
When you click on the “Posts” tab and then on the “When Your Fans Are Online”, you will see a graph showing the average number of your fans who saw your updates and posts on Facebook in an hour. If more people are interacting and viewing your posts in the morning, use this to your advantage and start updating and posting new content in the morning.

Best post types
While you are still viewing the “Posts” tab, click on “Best Post Types” to see the reach and engagement of each post type. This includes text, images, videos, and links. This metric can help you see which types of content is working the best for your page. Take note that when your business page is just full of self promotional content and links, you are missing out on quite a lot of reach that you could have gained.

Gender and demographics
Click on the “People” tab to see metrics of your audience on Facebook measured by gender and age. This shows you the percentages of males and females that liked your page in an age summary. If the audience you are targeting is for men between the ages of 30-40, if you only have kids between the ages of 13- 17 that liked your page, it maybe time to change your approach and strategy.

Aside from the few sets of data you can measure explained above, there is quite a lot of additional information you can measure, including a breakdown of status message updates and their statistics. With the measurement of your target audience’s demographic and which times of the day are the best to reach them, you can better optimize your posting schedule. Knowing what works the best and what type of content generates the most reach will enable you to post more of the same content.

Measuring the insights of your Facebook page and using the data to optimize your campaign better is the difference between just having a Facebook page for the sake of having one, and having one that gets results.