How to use Facebook Insights to your advantage

Insights is one of the most under-utilised features of Facebook. Insights is Facebook’s reporting system which allows page owners to view important data about who their ‘fans’ are and how they interact.

For example, Insights helps page owners analyse trends within user growth, demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content. This information can then be used to make the page content and/or advertising more effective.

How do I access Facebook Insights?

Once your Facebook page has more than 30 fans and regular activity, Facebook will automatically engage Insights to start monitoring your page’s activity and growth. These analytics can only be accessed by page administrators. To get there, simply visit your page, expand the admin panel at the top, then click on ‘See All’ above the graph.

What type of data does Facebook Insights provide?

Before you dive into Facebook Insights, it’s important to understand that this information is divided into two groups: User Insights and Interaction Insights.

User Insights includes information such as total page Likes, daily active users, new Likes/Unlikes, Like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views, tab views, external referrers and media consumption.

Interaction Insights, on the other hand, includes daily story feedback (post Likes, post comments, per post impressions) and daily page activity (mentions, discussions, reviews, wall posts and video posts).

How can Facebook Insights be used?

While website statistics generally focus on the number of visitors and how long they spend on your site, Facebook is quite different. The important data revolves around audience statistics such as age, gender, and country of residence.

With so many tools available, you will need to take the time to explore all of your options and keep a close eye on daily and monthly trends. In a nutshell, if most stats are on an upward scale then it means you are probably on the right track.

Here is a snapshot of some of the most important tools and how you can use them to your advantage:

Active User Growth

This tool keeps track of the number of new fans on your page. If you are not using any paid advertising such as Facebook Ads, aim for around 5-10% growth each month. If you are looking for faster growth then Facebook Ads is definitely worth looking into.

In either case, make sure you monitor your growth rate regularly to help you figure out what may have caused any changes, such as particularly popular posts or a competition period.

Inline Insights

This tool helps you analyse basic performance for each of your posts. You can see this data below each post on your page so you can easily see which types of posts have proven the most effective. You can then add more posts like this in future.

Page Views

This tool shows the number of fans coming to check out your page. Subtracting the number of unique page views from the daily views can offer a clue as to how many existing fans regularly visit to your page.

Demographics

Perhaps the most important tool of all for your marketing strategy, Demographics provides information on your fans, including age, gender, and location.

For example, if you found that 90% of your fans are female, but your target market includes men, then you could start to add more content that men may find appealing, such as different products. You may also wish to run a Facebook Ads campaign targeting males.

The same tactic can be applied to your fan’s age bracket. For example, if you want to market to people aged 30+ but you find that most of your fans are younger, you could place more emphasis on products that 30+ people would prefer.

Unlikes

No matter what you do, there will always be some people who Unlike your page. This is generally a fairly low percentage, but if you find that many people have Unliked your page in a brief period then it may indicate posting too often, posting the wrong type of content, and so on. If you can figure out the possible reasons for the Unlikes, you can make better decisions to avoid it in future.

Ongoing performance monitoring

As with any marketing effort, you must continue to monitor your data to glean key insights into your audience and their habits. Facebook Insights can help visualise top level information on page growth and fan interaction, as well as specific metrics for individual posts and comments Liked on the page.

By keeping a close eye on your statistics and experimenting with different strategies, you will continue to grow your online customer base as quickly as possible.

We provide online training and advice on interpreting your statistics. Email us for help with Facebook Insights or phone (07) 33 33 2 WEB.