How to Use Facebook Insights
How to use Facebook Insights to uncover useful information about your pages’ followers.
Facebook is a powerful platform on which small business owners and entrepreneurs can promote their products and services. But the key to utilizing this social media network to its fullest potential lies in analyzing your Page’s metrics. Thankfully, Facebook has a built-in analytics tool designed specifically for this purpose. Known as Facebook Insights, it reveals a plethora of useful information about the Facebook Page and its respective followers/audience.
Accessing Facebook Insights
To access Facebook Insights, log into your personal account, choose the “use Facebook” option as your Page, and then click the “Insights” tab at the top of your screen. This should reveal a new page featuring a column of options on the left-hand side, data in the center, and your 5 most recent posts at the bottom.
Note: Facebook Insights data is only available to pages with at least 30 likes.
Navigating the Insights Dashboard
From the main Insights dashboard, you’ll see data associated with your Page, including its total number of likes, whether or not your likes are trending up or down, the total number of followers, how many people are talking about your Page, and its weekly reach. Feel free to click around and familiarize yourself with these options. Obviously it’s important to identify how many people are following your Page and whether or not it’s trending in the right direction.
Virality of Posts
Another useful metric revealed within Facebook Insights is the “virality” of your posts. When a post goes viral, it can send floods of new visitors and followers to your Page. To see the virality of posts, look at the bottom of your Insights for your 5 most recent posts. Here, you’ll see data such as reach and engagement.
Likes
No metric holds more value in Facebook Metrics than likes. When a user is interested and engaged with a particular brand and/or its respective Page, they may ‘like’ the Page. Clicking the Likes tab on the left-hand side of your Page will reveal information about your Page’s likes, including the total number of likes to date, net likes (total likes minus unlikes), and where your likes have occurred.
Of course, this is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Facebook Insights. It may take some time getting used to, but once you learn the ropes of Insights you’ll be able to better optimize your Page for a greater engagement. And when followers are engaged, you can use your Page more efficiently to promote your products or services.
