Getting the Most Out of Facebook Insights The New Facebook for Marketers – Part 2
Quietly, Facebook has been making improvements to its analytics platform, Facebook Insights. Analytics, so important for establishing ROI and optimizing campaigns, has been somewhat of a challenge for Facebook and marketers alike. Not a traditional web company by any means, Facebook has long struggled to identify the data of most use to marketers. Conversely, marketers have had difficulty making sense of the truly unique metrics Facebook makes available via insights.
While not as sexy as the sweeping changes made to its profiles and news feeds, the updates made to Facebook Insights are as critical to marketers as the changes in the platform itself. Interestingly, the applicability of the most prominent new metrics is somewhat limited, whereas the “below-the-fold” metrics are of far greater value.
Facebook: People Are Talking About This
Facebook: People Are Talking About This
As discussed in the previous post, Facebook is placing a premium on posts that elicit engagement: comments, likes, shares and so on.
To help, Facebook has created a new metric called “(people who are) talking about this.” This metric, which goes back seven days and as of this point does not have a customizable date range, measures how many people have completed one or more of the following actions:
- A Facebook user “liked” your Facebook page
- A fan posted to your Facebook page’s wall
- A fan commented on or shared one of your page’s posts
- A fan “mentioned” your page using the tagging functionality (the `@’ sign)
- A fan “checked in” at your place
- A fan tagged your page in a photo
- A fan “answered” one of your posted questions
- A fan “recommended” your Places page
Although Facebook makes this metric extremely prominent; placing it right beneath the fan count and front and center on the new Insights page, this metric has some inherent flaws.
Beyond the obvious limitations posed by the seven-day restriction (which will presumably be addressed at some point), the critical flaw in this metric is that it weighs all the components that make it up equally.
If five new people become fans of your page, that counts as five people talking about you. Similarly, if five people check in to your venue, that also counts as five people talking about you. While there is value in both of these actions, it’s likely that not only is their value different, it varies by business.
Similarly, if one user who is highly influential shares your post, that only counts as one person talking about you, whereas if you are tagged in four photos by four users, that counts as four people talking about you. But if that one person who shares your post is influential enough, that can have substantially more impact than the 1:4 disparity in the “people talking about you” metric would lead you to believe.
Most brands, if they are practicing marketing effectively, will see this number rise over time, so at a very high level, seeing trends in this number is moderately useful. But as it does not inform you of actions you should be taking in the future, you should take this metric with a grain of salt.
Facebook Insights
Other new metrics offered by the new Facebook Insights include:
Weekly Total Reach: This metric lets you know how many individual users have seen your page or its content. Limiting this metric’s effectiveness is that it measures how many people have seen an ad for your page or a sponsored story. As a result, it can be difficult to parse out how much of this metric is attributable to media expenditure versus the effectiveness of your content and Fan Page.
Friends of Fans: This metric counts the number of people who are two degrees of separation away from your Fan Page. In other words, it measures the total number of connections possessed by fans of your page. It’s a number that should trend upward as you gain more fans.
Most brands on Facebook are looking for both quantity and quality with respect to their fan base. Unfortunately, Friends of Fans isn’t needed to measure the former (fan count is clear enough) and it’s ambiguous at measuring the latter. Brands interested in measuring the quality of their fans are better served looking to engagement metrics, such as interactions per post.
Page Post Metrics
Of all the changes made to Facebook Insights, this is the one you need to care about.
As discussed in part one, Facebook is placing an increased emphasis on engagement. Brands whose posts accomplish this will be rewarded with greater visibility. Conversely, brands to fail to engage their fans will see Facebook curtail their posts’ visibility.
Facebook Insights: Page Posts
Each post made by your Facebook page gets its own line and set of metrics, including:
Reach: The number of unique people who have seen your post. This helps you identify the time and dates that reach the greatest number of fans.
Engaged Users: The number of unique people who have engaged with your post, including any click on a post. This allows you to view, at a glance, how engaging your posts are by volume.
Talking About This: The number of unique people who have liked, commented on or shared it post. It also counts RSVPs to an event and answers to a question. By clicking the number, you can see at a glance whether the interaction was a like, comment, share or other. This metric also helps you view, at a glance, how engaging your posts are by volume.
Virality: The most useful metric. The number of unique people who have interacted with your post as a percentage of unique people that have seen it. In the above image, there is a five-fold difference from the most to least engaging post! The virality metric helps you, at a glance, determine which posts are most engaging but weighted by reach.
Via Insights, Facebook now allows you to see the demographics of those who have interacted with your page!
Viral Reach: Facebook Insights also gives you a “Viral Reach” chart. This chart tracks the number of unique users who saw a story that was shared by one of their friends. Whereas the preceding Friends of Fans metric gives you the total number of second-degree connections your Facebook page has, Viral Reach tells you how many of those connections you actually reached – a far more useful measurement for determining how effectively your content is spreading beyond its existing reach.
Facebook Insights: Viral Reach
Facebook Insights For the Web
Facebook now offers Insights for your company website! Simply go to Facebook Insights and click the green “Insights For Your Website” button in the upper right hand corner. The process of installation (detailed here) is requires pasting a small code onto your website’s home page.
Once installed, Facebook Insights for your website allows you to measure the following:
Site Engagement: The number of times people posted a link to your website through a Facebook action, status or a wall post.
Distribution of Impressions: This metric measures the number of times people view stories shared by their friends in your news feed that link to your brand’s website.
Facebook Insights For Your Website
The New Facebook for Marketers by Russell Herder
Introduction: The New Facebook for Marketers
Part 1: Facebook Ticker and How the New News Feed Works
Part 2: Getting the Most Out of Facebook Insights
Part 3: The One Thing That Marketers Need to Know About the New Facebook
Part 4: What is Facebook Timeline?
@NeilAndrewJames
Quick response (QR) codes – those black-and-white symbols one can scan with a smartphone – have become a ubiquitous marketing tool in the United States, appearing in a wide variety of traditional and digital media. To research the marketing impact and efficacy of QR codes, our team at Russell Herder surveyed consumers nationwide to understand their familiarity with these symbols, interest in scanning them and satisfaction with what they receive in return. While it’s clear there is potential for this technology, marketers could learn from what prospective buyers are saying.
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