Measuring your Facebook Page with Facebook Insights

So, you've got a Facebook Page and have more than 1,000 likes. GREAT!!

But, what next? How do you measure whether your page is doing great or not? Furthermore, how do you compare your page's success with that of others? Thankfully, Facebook provides you with all the necessary metrics, as far as engagement and your post's reach is concerned.

These insights are all the more necessary if you possess a business oriented page and want to amplify your reach to customers. Just gathering 'likes' on your page does not guarantee a successful Facebook Page.

As a matter of fact, statistics show that most users (almost 70%) do not return to a page once they have 'liked' it. So brands have to ensure that once they have those users in their bucket, that they engage with them or else the 'like' numbers will be worth nothing other than ego boosting.

Facebook Insights for your page can be accessed here. So, what are the basic metrics to get you started?

Facebook 'Likes':

'Likes' are an integral part of knowing how popular your brand or page is. One of the prospects or success metric is the number of likes you will have. In terms of Brand Pages, below are some pages that have garnered a huge number of likes.

1. Facebook --> 84,292,691 likes
2. YouTube -->67,844,967 likes
3. Coca Cola --> 56,944,790 likes
4. Disney --> 40,492,051 likes
5. MTV -->40,944,609 likes

These brands seem to be more interactive than others and share user generated content on a regular basis. Facebook itself has a great following and the Coca Cola story is familiar to everyone. The formula is easy,

"More user interactions, More Fan conversions"

People Talking about this:

Simply put, this is the number of people that engage with your Page. The engagement can include the following kinds:

1. Users liking your page
2. Commenting on a post
3. Sharing your post
4. Answering a question you have asked on the page
5. RSVPing to an event you have created on your page

This gives you an overview of how many people find your content relevant and are taking an effort to interact with your page. Combine this metric with your Total Reach and you can get the Virality Rate. Virality can be explained as:

Virality =People Talking/ Total Reach

This will decide the post wise break up of the % audience of your fans or even non fans who have engaged with your page.

So, suppose you have a million fans and the number of People Talking for this week is only 2000. That implies that less than .0001% of your fans actually bothered to pay attention to your content, and that it's time to make your content more user friendly and interactive.

Shares:

Facebook Shares are also an important metric which are often neglected as 'Just another metric' by page administrators. Actually, this can help you gauge the impact and the success of the content posted on your page. For me, it is more powerful than even 'liking' or commenting on a post. Why?

If I 'like' a picture or comment on it, that is just an action I take at that very moment based on the content (for example, 'liking' a Justin Bieber Troll picture). But if I really like the content, then I'd want to share it with friends.

Now the same thing applies to brands. If a brand post/offer has a deep impact on me, I would also like my friends to know about it. For the brand, a share is more of a recommendation to other consumers. A share has a positive impact and helps the brand attract more fans.

For me, a friend/colleague recommending a brand to me is more meaningful than the brand boasting about its capabilities itself. This is where 'Shares' can help you reach the audience you want and in a more positive way.

Negative Feedback:

Negative Feedback metrics which have recently been included in the New insights by Facebook can also help if your content is being disliked or 'spammed' by users. So what exactly is Negative Feedback?

It gives you the number of users who have hidden your page's post, your page or even reported your post as Spam -  in short, it lists the number of irritated fans who either do not want you spamming their wall every hour or just do not like the content you are posting.

You can get these metrics post wise which can help you learn which posts are getting the most negative feedback and why.

This can help you take corrective measures to remedy your content and make it more interesting and user friendly. You can also revise your strategy as to when to post and in what intervals, so you don't spam users with too much content. Believe me, I have been there; some pages post every hour and after an extent it does get irritating. So be sure that you aren't one of them.

Keep it short and keep it interesting!!

Facebook offers you more than 100 metrics, and with so many options you might be confused as to which one is the most important and will help you best keep an eye on your business.

So it is best to come up with 3-4 of your KPI's which will help you identify your strong/weak points and then build your page on it.