Facebook Insights
You don't have to guess about the general effectiveness of your posts. Facebook provides a number of tools that let you measure the reach and engagement of your posts. These are grouped under a tab on your author page called "Insights."
However, before we dig into that section, let's talk about a quick way to get an overview of what is happening with a single post.
To check the reach and engagement with an individual post, simply click on the number of views. You get a screen like this:
This is just a general content post. I shared it with a few groups that like Christian Memes. You will see that I reached 932 people, got 26 likes and three loves. There were three comments. The shares include both my shares and those of others. If you want to know who shared a post, under the "boost post" button is a link that tells the number of shares. If you click on it, you will get a list of people who shared your post. It won't include all of them because some will have privacy settings that don't allow you to check. I also see on person hid the post. But that's no biggie. I also had 42 post clicks. Eighteen of these were on the photo, but 26 were "Other Clicks." This is usually them clicking through to the page or clicking on a "more" link if your post is longer than the room available.
So, this is a quick snapshot of how a single post is doing.
Insights
Now, let's move on to the Insights section itself.
When you click on the Insights link you get this page. This opening page gives you a quick overview of all the analytics you have available.
There are five boxes on this page. Let's look at each of them.
Actions on Page. If you have added an "action button" to your page, this tracks how many people have used that button. I didn't have much of that type of action this week, so there is not much to report.
Page Views. This is how many people actually visited your page during the week. Usually this will be small because most people will be clicking through from something they saw in their newsfeeds. But if you have done some advertising off Facebook and left a link to your Facebook page, this can be a useful stat.
Page Likes. This is where you can track new subscribers to your page. I had seven last week. Not bad for doing no real page promotion.
Reach. This refers to the number of people your post has reached including likes, comments and shares. This number can be substantially more than the number of people who like your page, if your posts have been shared on other timelines and in various groups. For instance, the post I discussed earlier in this lesson had been shared 15 times and had 900 views.
"Engagements" refers to how many times a post was liked, shared, clicked or commented on. This is a particularly important metric because simply appearing in a newsfeed can mean someone scrolling by and just catching a glimpse of it. However, if they take the time to share, comment, like or click on the post, they actually read it. In this case, last week, I had 2835 views and 258 engagements. So, about ten percent of my views resulted in some action.
Videos. This gives you the number of views of any videos you might have posted. I have few videos that are recent, so this one is blank on mine.
Each of these overviews can be expanded to show more detailed information. We will only look at three of these in this lesson. You can play with the others on your own.
Reach
One of the most important things to know is how many people you are reaching with your posts and how many are engaging with you. This page helps you evaluate that over time. The default is for the month prior to the date you are checking. But you can set any date range you want by clicking on the little calendar link in the upper right corner of that page.
The basic post reach graph shows how many people saw at least one post during each 24 hour period. The lighter shade is "organic" reach. That means the number of newsfeed views you did NOT pay for. The darker shade is "paid" views. I had two boosted posts and you can see the results. If you hover your mouse over any individual day, you will see the number of views for that day.
On this page you also have the reactions, comments, and shares chart. You can click on any one of these to see just those numbers. It will also show your average for each period. The period by default is the current week. So, according to this, I had roughly double the average number of daily reactions this week as I did last week.
Posts
The second important section is where you can find out how both individual posts and your posts as a whole are doing.
One of the most useful tools here is the graph of the times of day your fans are online. Honestly, this confuses me. Not the chart, but why the great minds of Facebook put this here instead of under "People." But they didn't ask me. So, you just have to remember that it is under "Posts" and not "People."
You have a daily breakout of how many fans are online by day of the week. In my case, it's pretty even. But you might find your fans are mostly online on the weekends or on a certain day of the week. If so, you can focus your efforts on those days.
This also shows (based on your time zone) the times of day your fans are online. I notice that I have almost no one before 3 a.m. At three the numbers start to rise until they level off about 9 a.m. They stay fairly level until about 7 p.m. when they start to decline. So, that tells me I'm best to focus my efforts between 9 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Another useful tool is found by clicking the tab "Post Types." This gives the average reach of each type of post. If you read a lot of material about social media marketing, you will find that everyone has their ideas about whether one type of post is better than another. Some swear by photos others by plain text status. Still others say video or links. It really doesn't matter. What matters is what resonates best with your fans.
In my case, photos are way out in front, followed by links, status updates are third and shared video is down near the end. However, your list might be totally different. Experiment with different types of posts and track their effectiveness.
You can also check on the results of individual posts. By default, these are organized by date published beginning with the most recent, but by clicking on the title of each column you can organize by type, targeting, reach, or engagement.
It is good to take a look at this list from time to time. See if there is any type of trend you see. For instance, I see that things I shared from another page didn't do as well as those I posted directly on this page. I see that my memes get more reach than straight forward ads except when I boost them with paid advertising.
People
Knowing more about the demographics of the people you reach with your post can be an eye-opener and can affect how you plan your posts. Insights has a ton of information about the people you reach – even those who are not your fans.
First, you can look at data related to your fans. Mine are mostly 25+ with the largest segment 55-64. Also most of them are from the U.S. followed by Canada and the UK, India and Mexico.
But your posts get shared with others who are not fans. For a more comprehensive look of who is receiving your posts, click on People Reached.
The 18-24 age group which was a minor part of my fan base is now the largest. And the 50-64 group that dominated my fans is a minor part of the total reach of my posts. Also, I have more than double the views by people in Mexico as I do the US, and almost as many from South Africa and Lesoto. Hey, in case you didn't know already, the mission field isn't only out there, it's right on your computer.
But are these people engaging with my posts. Well, if I click on "People Engaged," I get this screen:
Guess what? Again they young adults and those from Mexico are my top engagers, followed by the U.S. and South Africa.
So, what does this tell me? First, I need to think young. That's not really hard for me. I've never been into the whole nostalgic our-generation-was-the-best type of thinking anyway. Half the time I'm teaching young people about technology instead of the other way around. I try to stay centered in the present. Secondly, I need to be wary of being Americentric in my posts. I can't assume that my Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Memorial and Veteran's day posts will have any actual meaning for 2/3 of my audience.
It also means that I should use global links to my Amazon pages. A global link is one that when the viewer clicks on it, takes them to the page closest to their region. There are a number of places to get global links. I use . It will also give you stats for each book broken down by region.