Have you been overwhelmed by the metrics and comparison tools coming out of the new Facebook insights? Are you wondering which metrics really matter?
This article will explain the three main Facebook metrics you need to be watching on a daily basis. I’ll define them, tell you why they’re important and give you concrete ways you can use them to maximize your Facebook marketing performance.
1. Post engagement metric
The post engagement metric tells you the number of people who have interacted with one of your posts. It also identifies post clicks, but your CTR (see below) covers this variable far more effectively.
Why you should watch it: Having a large amount of people see your content is meaningless if they don’t interact with it. Engagement is the only measurable sign of your audience responding.
To get the most out of your engagement metric, you need to compare it to the total reach of the post:
This number gives you a way to compare posts across the board. Without it, you won’t know if good engagement on a specific post is due to the quality of your content, or if it was simply seen by more people.
Concrete way you can use this metric data:
You can watch the type of posts which are getting the most engagement: Do your Facebook fans like question posts, to share vs. like posts, or links to your content? Adjust your future content accordingly.
You can also watch the type of engagement your posts are getting:
- In the screenshot above, we see that the “How to Use Social Media to Generate Leads” infographic had 14 likes, shares or comments. “How Social Media is Growing Around the World” received a higher percentage of clicks, but fewer social engagements.
- We can use these observations to optimize our content. If we are looking for social engagement (likes, shares and comments), we should create more content similar to “How to Use Social Media to Generate Leads.”
- If we are looking for clicks/traffic to an off-Facebook page, we should create content similar to “How Social Media is Growing Around the World.”
2. People engaged
The people-engaged graph tells you the age and gender of the Facebook users who engaged with your posts.
Why you should watch it: The people engaged metric is vital to ensure your content is valuable to your specific target audience.
Concrete example: Let’s say you represent a perfume company and your business has recently found a fantastic cologne you’re looking to sell. You’ve decided a great way to engage with men is to run a male-focused Facebook sweepstakes, with the new cologne as the prize.
So for a couple weeks before your contest begins, you write male-targeted Facebook posts. With the people engaged metric you can view if your engagement (as well as your overall fan base) is changing, and be exact about when you feel you’ve developed enough of an active male audience to begin your contest.
3. Post click-thru-rates
CTR is the number of Facebook users who clicked on your post or ad divided by reach (not including likes, shares or comments)
As you can see in the metric data below, Wishpond gets the largest number of clicks from our infographics (260 vs. 128 for blog posts). Because we are on Facebook for conversions (rather than social engagement) this data tells us we should be putting more resources towards this type of content than others.
Why you should watch it: If you’re on Facebook for conversions, your bottom line is knowing how many people were interested in your content enough to act on your calls-to-action. Whether that’s downloading an app, trafficking to your Landing Page or clicking a link is up to your company, but no matter what, the CTR metric is the bottom line of your Facebook content funnel.
Concrete example: Compare your Facebook clicks to your landing page conversions. Use tools like Google Analytics to track your traffic sources. Is your content well integrated with your landing page? A recent poll by SmartBrief on Social Media found that 50% of Facebook advertisers use the site to generate either click-thru or conversions. Optimize your posts to compete.
Hopefully you now have a better grasp of the important metrics coming out of Facebook Insights. Remember to act on the results. Is a certain kind of post or type of content getting you more engagement than another? Test things you think your Facebook fans will respond to and implement those changes that make sense.
Have you had successes with your Facebook posts due to the new Insights? Start the conversation below.
James Scherer is a social media expert and blogger for Wishpond. Wishpond makes it easy to run social contests and promotions on Facebook, Twitter, websites & mobile.