When trying to measure just how well your Facebook campaign
or daily posting efforts are doing, it can get really confusing listening to all the different acronyms and conflicting advice about what days and times to
post are best, and what not to do or do. Who should you listen to? The
answer is simple: Your online customer or page’s fan base.
Yes,
there are some great tips about Facebook and what works for businesses. Photo
posts are king, while plain-jane html links, or long videos are usually
shunned. But where’s the best place to get information as to what works? All
you need to look at are your page’s own Insights. Everything you need to see
about what’s really working on your page is available within your Admin tools.
All the advice in the world is useless without actively checking to see your
page’s “health.”
On the
basic screen shown below, you have a lot of information available to you.
You’ll be able to see how everything is going on your page, with the only drawback
being a two-day backlog with some of the data.
 |
| Facebook Insights Graph |
Here you can see just how many likes your page has, your potential reach of content, how many people are sharing or talking about your content, and even how many people actually saw content from your page. There are two ways you can get this information. Either use the basic view with the charts available (shown above), or you can download even more detailed information into an Excel spreadsheet so you can really drill into your page’s worth.
There
are a few things I like to look at. One of them is the information on each
individual post, which is shown below the graph that is depicted in the screen
above. This will show you the virality measurement along with the amount of
people who talked about the post. This is really what is connecting your
fanbase on a day to day basis. You may notice that photo posts work better than
video posts or vice-versa. Did that funny quote you posted to your status
really hit it off with your fans? Now you can actually see if it fell on deaf
ears or not, and make adjustments to your plans for future posts.
 | |
| Facebook Page Demographics |
Another
good pair of insights to work with are your Demographics and your Reach pages. These
insights will show you the age ranges and sex of your fans, as well as the
geographical locations, browser types used, and a whole host of other
information to use. That, my dear reader, is the whole point to all this
information: USE IT! If you find that your page is mostly being viewed by males
ages 18-25, it makes no sense to post something about tips for expectant
mothers, unless that’s what your page is about. If it is, then you’ll be able
to see that whatever you have been posting is attracting the wrong audience.
The
bottom line is, blindly posting random statuses and links, or constant spam
about your business won’t win you a huge fan base. Facebook is about building a
community for your page. You can’t do that if you aren’t speaking its language.
What works for your page that goes against conventional wisdom? Please comment
below if you’ve found some other information that has helped you hone in on
your fanbase, and visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/VSBrooksAdvertising
By: Stephen Kish - Social Media Coordinator/ VSBrooks Advertising
