Beyond "Vanity" Metrics: 8 Facebook Admin Insights You Need To Use

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Clik here to view.For many business owners using Facebook, the “Like” is still the king of metrics in their mind. This line of thought goes back to when social media sites were first becoming a popular mode of outreach for brands. The idea was that the more fans you had on Facebook, the better your page was – and in some circles, that misconception continues to thrive today.

The reality, though, is that focusing on new fans, and new fans alone, causes business owners and marketers to miss out on the metrics that they can use to better evaluate the effectiveness of their social content marketing strategies. And with events like “Facebook Zero” – a term that refers to the ongoing decline of organic reach on Facebook and the likely pending demise of brands’ organic post reach on Facebook – changing the Facebook landscape even more, it’s more important than ever to focus on metrics that will help your business survive on Facebook in the future.

If you’re ready to ditch the old “Likes” mindset (and even if you’re not) and to start mining more relevant page data, start focusing on these 8 useful Facebook page and ad campaign insights:

While many businesses dream of having thousands of fans on Facebook, the reality is that having the wrong fans on Facebook won’t do your business any good. For example, a small Pittsburgh business doesn’t want the majority of its fans to live in Texas. Fortunately, finding out if you’re reaching the right people is easy: just log into Facebook, go to the Insights panel on your business page, and click on “People.” Once there, you’ll find some basic statistical data on the gender, age, location and even language of your fans. Knowing who your fans are (and aren’t) will help you develop content that speaks directly to them.

If your posts aren’t getting any traction or engagement, you may want to re-consider the time of day that you post your content. An easy way to do this is to go into your business’ Insights panel and to click on the “Posts” tab. Here, you’ll be able to see the time of day your fans tend to go online. It just may turn out that posting at 11 p.m. instead of 3 p.m. is the better choice for your business. By optimizing the time at which you’re posting content, you may be able to get a little extra reach out of your posts.

If your business is on Facebook, you don’t just want people to see your content. Post interactions on Facebook are particularly important because they help to increase your page’s reach and viewability. The question, then, is what action do you want people to take when they see your content? The answer could be as simple as “comment on the post” or as complex as “visit my store for a sale.” While actions that take place off of Facebook will require additional tracking efforts, Facebook page analytics can at least tell you how many people are liking, commenting and sharing your content. If you can determine which posts are getting the most attention – particularly the attention and action you want to see – you can incorporate your findings into your overall strategy and use the results to develop better content in the future.

“Shares” can be seen as a subset of “Interactions,” but they deserve their own mention due to the important role they can have in boosting a page’s viewability. Social media, by nature, is about being social, and an important part of that is developing content that your audience is likely to share with the people in their network. Sharing also helps businesses and brands reach wider audiences, including non-fans. The Facebook data available on “Shares” will give you an idea of how “viral” – or shareable – your business’ content is.

In addition to tracking data associated with specific types of interactions, businesses should track their overall engagement rate on Facebook. The engagement rate metric refers to the percentage of fans that saw a post and liked, shared, clicked or commented on it. Tracking your engagement rate along with your interactions can help you determine how much of your content is reaching your audience, as well as the percentage of fans you’re reaching. This ultimately means that this metric will highlight just how strongly Facebook’s algorithm is affecting your page.

From text to photo to video to links, there’s a range of different types of posts you can make on Facebook. While the general rule is that video and photo posts make for the most engaging content, this isn’t the case for every brand page. To make sure that you’re posting content that your audience likes, you should use Facebook’s “Posts” tab in your business’ Insights panel. Here, you’ll find a list of posts made in the last few weeks, along with the type of post and basic engagement metrics. The types of posts that generate the most engagement are the types that your fans like, and so are the ones you want to capitalize on.

These first six metrics can all provide valuable insight for any business that uses Facebook. If, however, your business also uses paid advertising campaigns on Facebook, there are two more metrics you should track and use to your advantage:

While the number of total fans on your Facebook page isn’t the most important metric, it’s still important to keep a tab on where your fans are coming from. A business Facebook page can be liked by someone even if they don’t go to your page directly; they may also “Like” your page via a paid ad, a widget on your website, and so forth. To find out where your fans are coming from, head to the Likes tab and scroll down until you see the ‘Where Your Page Likes Happened’ graph. Here, you’ll be able to find out where people are finding and ‘Liking’ your page. Once you know where your new fans are coming from, you can optimize any ads you have running for your page or incorporate the findings into your demographic data to further complete your Facebook fan model.

Frequency data is important for any business owner looking to optimize their ad campaign. “Frequency” refers to the number of times a single person was reached by the same advertisement. While the ideal frequency will vary from page to page, if your ad is seen repeatedly (five to six times or more) by people who are taking no action on it, that’s wasted money on your business’ part. By studying frequency data, you can tell if your campaign needs to be altered or even stopped due to poor performance.

With organic Facebook marketing presenting more and more challenges as visibility in Facebook’s newsfeed continues to drop toward zero, it’s more important than ever for business owners to pay careful attention to their page and ad campaign analytics. These eight metrics and insights can all help you develop a stronger Facebook content marketing strategy based on proven past successes with your business’ existing fans.

Ultimately, looking deeper into these pieces of data will benefit your business and your marketing goals far more in the long run than simply focusing on the “vanity metric” of the number of fans on your page – which will help your page survive even after “Facebook Zero” becomes a complete reality.

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