How to Find and Use Facebook Analytics

Despite its recent data scandal, Facebook is still a major social network (and one we recommend to everyone who’s just getting started with their social media presence). So it’s only fitting that the first network we dive into specifics of be Facebook.

How to Find Facebook Analytics

Finding Facebook page analytics is actually really easy. Log into Facebook and go to your page. Then click the “Insights” tab at the top.

And there you are! You can now see all the numbers relating to your page and posts.

Using Facebook Analytics

Now that you have the numbers, what do you do with them?

The Page Summary

The Page Summary gives you an overview of what’s been happening on your page. The default view is for the previous 7 days, but you can change it by clicking the “Last 7 Days” dropdown and selecting a different range.

The summary shows nine different pieces of information about your page and the numbers associated with each. Each of the categories in the summary can be viewed in more detail using the tabs on the left side.

The most valuable thing you can do on this page, especially when you’re new and don’t have a lot of likes and engagement, is to look for spikes – spots where the numbers are higher than the surrounding days. For example, Ely Social’s page has spikes on May 11 and May 13. Once you’ve identified the spikes, you can scroll down and see what you posted on that day that got such a good reaction and brainstorm more similar things to post.

The Tabs

We’re going to look at a few of the tabs on the left and highlight where you can get some more valuable information. For a more in-depth look at the tabs, see this article from Hootsuite.

On the Posts tab, at the very top, you can see a breakdown of when the people who like your page are usually online. This can help you get an idea of the best times to post.

The Actions on Page tab will let you know how many people clicked on various things on your page, such as your website address or your call to action button. If your goal is to drive people to take action on your page, this tab will tell you how well you’re doing at it.

The Page Likes tab will give you data about how many likes you have, as well as where those likes happened, so you can see what posts or other activities are driving people to like your page.

Explore

There’s a lot you can do with Facebook analytics, and the easiest way to learn about it is to explore it yourself. Take half an hour, click through all the different tabs and options behind the Insights tab, and see what data there is for you to explore. Not all of it will be relevant or helpful for you if you’re new to Facebook, but there is still a lot of valuable information to be found.

Where Is Facebook Heading? An End-of-Year Reflection

It’s the end of the year, which means it’s time to do some predicting of the direction of social media marketing and what will be successful in 2018. All of my December blog posts are going to be focused on trends and predictions for the coming year. Starting today with a social media giant: Facebook.

Facebook has been launching a lot of new features recently. Some of them are logical, and some of them seem random. Here’s a short list of their biggest feature rollouts in the last year:

• Marketplace – a Craigslist-like way for you to list your used goods for sale and browse things for sale in your area
• Messenger Day – a Snapchat clone through the Facebook Messenger app that allows you to post pictures and short videos that your friends can view for 24 hours before they disappear
• Sending money – you are able to send money to your friends or request money from them via Facebook Messenger
• Ordering food – a new feature rolled out in October that combines several food-ordering sites to let you order your dinner through Facebook and have it delivered to your door

Some of these things make sense – a feature like Messenger Day doesn’t seem out of place with a social network. Others – like ordering food – don’t seem to fit at all. So what exactly is Facebook trying to accomplish here?

It all starts with WeChat

WeChat is a Chinese messaging app that is used by 95% of Chinese people over age 16 (source). That is a staggeringly high usage rate! The main reason for this high percentage of people using it is its ability to do everything. Far from just being a messaging app, WeChat also lets you check your bank account, order food, call a cab, and chat with colleagues, all from a single app.

More relevant to Facebook’s interests, WeChat’s wide variety of uses provides more potential revenue streams for the company. Facebook now seems to be attempting to copy this lucrative business model.

Facebook ads

Put simply, Facebook is running out of space to display ads. They’ve already maxed out the amount they can put in the newsfeed (at least without driving users away). They’ve started introducing mid-video ads to longer videos, selling ads inside Messenger, and even letting advertisers on its new Marketplace feature. But they’ve pretty much reached advertising saturation, and in order to keep seeing revenue growth, they have to expand to new uses in order to create new ad platforms.

The takeaway

If you want to advertise on Facebook in 2018, don’t limit yourself to just boosted posts. Facebook has been and is going to offer a lot of other places to put ads, and becoming an early adopter of one of the new ad spaces could help you stand out.

Also, if you use video in your marketing, consider longer videos. Since Facebook is now putting ads in the middle of videos, they’re prioritizing longer content. Creating longer videos (around 2 minutes) will help turn the Facebook algorithm in your favor. Just make sure it’s interesting enough that people will want to keep watching after the ad!

 

Are Facebook Pages Still Relevant in 2017?

You may have heard rumors of the decline of Facebook for business – that pages aren’t useful anymore and that likes mean nothing (or very little). But even if you haven’t, you may have doubts about putting effort into the social media giant. After all, it’s 13 years old, it doesn’t have a very specialized audience (it includes everyone from teenagers to grandparents), and it would seem to make more sense to focus on newer, more popular networks like Instagram and Snapchat. Right?

Social media experts (including me) say otherwise. Facebook pages are still relevant and it’s still valuable to maintain your Facebook presence. So let’s take a look at a few of the arguments for why Facebook pages aren’t important – and why Facebook pages are still relevant in 2017.

Argument #1: Facebook is losing its audience

Whether or not you’ve heard this myth (a rather old one from 2013), it’s simply not true. Facebook’s user base is currently bigger than the population of the three of the world’s largest countries (United States, Brazil, and China) … combined. (source) And everyone is on Facebook. No matter what your audience is – retirees, college students, young parents, or anything in between – your audience is on Facebook. And with 1.37 billion users active every day (source), Facebook is where a lot of people on social media are.

Argument #2: Your fans won’t see your posts

This argument is presented because of Facebook’s algorithm updates that are reducing the amount of Facebook fans who see your page’s posts. This is a frustrating development, but Facebook is trying to keep their users happy and not overwhelm them with brand posts – there are more Facebook pages than ever before, and Facebook can only succeed if the users are happy. And besides, as long as you’re posting regularly, your fans may not see everything you post, but they’ll still see some – and it only takes a few to keep you in their minds.

Argument #3: Page likes are irrelevant

Some people will argue that page likes are irrelevant (sometimes including argument #2 – they’re irrelevant because people won’t see your posts). But ever since Facebook introduced the “like” feature in 2009, Facebook likes have become a form of social proof. The more likes your page has, the more popular and valuable it appears to new visitors, and the more likely it is that they will trust you (and maybe click the “like” button themselves). Because of Facebook’s algorithms, likes don’t necessarily correlate to the size of your audience – it’s more about showing potential followers that your page is worthy of being liked.

Argument #4: You’ll get better results on [insert network here]

This is a “grass is greener” argument. Everyone seems to have their network of choice that gave them better results, and they’re happy to tell you how you’ll get a better ROI on X network than Facebook. And who knows, maybe your audience will respond better on Instagram, or Twitter, or another network. It depends on your audience. But success in social media is about going where the people are – and as we established back in Argument #1, the people are definitely on Facebook. Even if your page doesn’t do well, if you don’t spend a lot on advertising, all you’ve lost is time.

Bonus tip: Since Facebook is a general, multi-purpose network with a massive active audience, it’s a great network to get started with when you’re first starting to build your social media presence.