How to Use Facebook Insights

So you have your business page set up on Facebook, and now you want to see just exactly how well that page is doing. How do you do that, and what is the best way to use that information? That tool is called Facebook insights. Let’s go over all the ins and outs right now!

Why Should You Check Facebook Stats?

This is a great question. Facebook does block a large number of posts from Google, meaning that you have to login to Facebook to see much of the content. If the post is public, however, Google indexes it. Google will notice the number of links you have coming from Facebook to your website.

So what you must remember is, when people talk about you or your page on social media, you (or your pages) need to be relevant for a certain topic. If your page gets a lot of links to it, Google can favorably read that page on your website. By knowing about this and really digging into your Facebook engagement with your followers by using Facebook Insights, you can drastically improve your reach online for your business.

Facebook Insights Requirements

Get 30 Likes - You will not be able to access Facebook Insights if your page has fewer than 30 likes on it. You could buy promotions from Facebook to get to those 30 likes, but it is often just as easy to promote your business page on your personal Facebook page, website, and/or actual store to reach 30 likes that way (and don't forget family and friends!) Within a couple of hours after getting to that 30th like, the Facebook Insights page will be available to access at the top of your Facebook page.

Historic Data - Facebook stores information about visitors for 180 days. If you want to keep track of the historic data past this cutoff, you need to be sure and export it now and then using the export function in the main Insights menu at the top of your stats.

Time Zone – Unless otherwise stated, Pacific Time Zone is what is used to calculate the data for Page Insights, so you want to make sure to translate that time to your own time zone if necessary.

Glossary - There is a glossary page on Facebook that will help you with all the terms it uses. Some of them can easily trip you up if you are new to all of the Facebook jargon that comes with a business page.

Facebook Page Insights

It is easiest when using the Insights page to open it up in a second tab, so you are able to check all of the stats on your own page. This Insights page will give you a lot of information about your visitors, and it may be more info than you are expecting. Most people voluntarily enter all kinds of details about themselves onto their social media sites. Facebook uses this info to target ads and lead users towards things they are interested in.

Having this information out there is a valuable thing for you and your Facebook page. The Insights page will tell you which posts had the most engagement from your followers and at what times of day most of your targeted audience is active on the social media platform.

Facebook Insights Dashboard

As you click on the Facebook Insights at the top of your page, you will see a set of graphs. These graphs tell you how effective your reach and engagement has been on your page. Just below these graphs, there should be a nice overview of your last five posts. If you are running a campaign, this overview will give you quick information This overview will include:

• The post type (whether it was a video, link, or an image).
• If you are targeting a specific audience.
• The post reach (how many people saw it).
• The engagement (how many click or likes it got).

If you want even more specifics than this, let's go section by section.

Likes

The Likes graph shows all your likes and will tell you if your fan base has grown or not. Here Facebook Insights will tell you not only the likes you have gained, but also the likes you have lost. Losses can be due to people not liking your page anymore, or Facebook could just be cleaning up their database.

Facebook does periodic purges because they want to make sure all the members of the network are human, not bots. It is suggested that you make a business page rather than using a profile, since this affects these cleanups. That way when they do a database clean up, you get the most accurate likes for your page.

This page will also tell you the number of paid likes you received. If you want to grow your target audience and the likes on your page, you can buy Facebook ads. These are worth the money, as they allow you to further target and promote to the audience of your choice and can be adjusted per promotion.

Reach

The Reach section is similar to the likes section but will tell you about the number of people who may have seen your post. This means it counts viewers who opened a page from your post rather than just scrolling past it.

Within this page there is a graph overview of Hide, Report Spam, and Unlike actions. This graph can tell you which posts triggered people to move away from your page. This allows you to see how you need to adjust your posts to your audience and if your promoted posts are working.

Visits

When you look at the Visits tab in Facebook Insights, it will tell you which tabs on your page have been visited the most. This can be on your timeline, info tab, or videos tab. Most of the time it will show the visits to your timeline, but it can be nice and helpful to see that other tabs on your page are visited as well. You will want to make sure that there is enough content or information on these tabs in case they receive visitors.

There is a second graph on this page that tells you the referrals to your Facebook page. This is nice to know if you want to see if your visitors are coming from your website or other places. Monitoring this from time to time is helpful, as it will start to show you if you are getting visitors from Google or other locations. This is a great way to see if your advertising campaign outside of Facebook is working.

Posts

The Posts section of the Facebook Insights page is all about your content. It is not only about what content you post, but also includes an overview of how many visits you get in an hour.

This page is also set in the Pacific Time Zone, so you will need to adjust accordingly for calculating peak times for visitors to know when to post based on your location. This Insight also gives you impression counts per post, which allows you to analyze what type of post works best for your audience.

With all of these options to look at on the backside of your Facebook business page, you can see what is working and what needs altering. It is also a great way to take the guessing game out of some of the inner workings of social media. Facebook Insights is like having a marketing person in your back pocket! Speaking of which, if you want more Facebook marketing tips from Virtual Market Advantage, check out this blog that goes over the best way to write and design Facebook ads!