Blog: Marketing and Social Media

Guest Author: Benji Hyam

When it comes to social media marketing, measuring effectiveness is key. Ultimately, the true measure of success for any such campaign is an increase in sales; however, it’s not always easy to attribute sales to specific marketing efforts.

So, we’re often left with looking at secondary data in order to measure just how effective our business’ social media presence is. In the case of Facebook, the company has provided businesses with a tremendous tool in the form of Facebook Insight.

Facebook Insight gives you all sorts of data about the activity on your business’ Facebook page, as well as information about how your page and posts are being shared. It helps you get a feel for how your brand is being discussed on Facebook and more.

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Significant Metrics

Let’s take a look at some of the most significant metrics Facebook Insight offers to businesses:

1. Monthly fan size

The number of fans on your company’s Facebook page doesn’t tell the whole story, but it is an important number nevertheless. What you’re really looking for here is organic month-to-month growth. If you’re hitting between 10 and 15% each month, you’re doing extremely well. Watch out for large spikes so you can try to figure out what caused them, too.

2. Average likes and comments

This tells you how well your Facebook content is engaging your audience. If there’s a significant drop or spike in this number, it can help you modify and hone your content strategy going forward. This allows you to identify those posts that seem to track well with your fans, and create more like it.

3. Rate of attrition

How many fans you’re losing is also important. You’re always going to have some unlikes. Here again, look for large spikes and major trends. See if you those trends correspond to specific kinds of content or page activity.

4. Mentions

This number reflects how many times your page is being tagged in someone else’s post. Mentions are good for your Facebook page, as they make it easy and intuitive for friends of the fan who’s mentioning your page to click through and then follow your page themselves.

5. Tab views

If you’re using multiple Facebook page tabs, this will tell you whether or not those tabs are getting any traffic, and which ones are getting the most. Tabs are more or less falling out of fashion, but if you’re still relying on them on your page you’ll want to pay attention to this number.

6. Demographics

Age and gender of your fans, as well as their geographic origin, are important numbers, too. They let you know whether you’re connecting with your business’ target audience.

7. Impressions

Whenever someone views your post, it counts as an impression. This is useful in determining how often a given post is viewed, and when combined with average likes and comments from #2 above can help you identify what sorts of posts really connect with your fans.

8. Referrers

Knowing where your Facebook traffic comes from is important, as well. If there are specific websites that are sending a lot of viewers to your Facebook page, you’ll want to be able to measure that. If you’re integrating your Facebook marketing with your overall web strategy (and you definitely should be) this number becomes especially important.

9. Check-ins

If your business has a brick-and-mortar presence, this number lets you know how often fans are checking in to your business. This is an especially useful piece of data, as it reflects a real-world result of your social media efforts. Check-ins don’t always mean a sale, but there is often a strong correlation.

10. Viral reach

One of the newer aspects of Facebook insights has to do with the “reach” view. This tells you how many people are accessing a given post. That reach is divided into organic reach, paid reach, and viral reach. Viral reach refers to views that are spreading quickly across Facebook, beyond simple friend-to-friend exposure as occurs with tagging or sharing a post.

Facebook is constantly improving the Insights system, as well, in order to make it more user-friendly and intuitive while offering deeper data to users. If you’re not currently including Facebook Insights as part of your system for measuring the ROI of your social media marketing efforts, it’s time to give it some serious thought. The numbers it provides can help shape your social media marketing strategy going forward.

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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Author Bio:

Benji Hyam is Social Media Coordinator at Vistage International.  Vistage business coaching groups help CEOs build successful companies. This executive coaching organization is membership-based only and provides high-level executive development programs.