Despite a slew of privacy-related controversies last year, Facebook is still the top social media channel for most of the world.
As of late last year, Facebook still has over 2 billion active users per month. That’s a huge potential audience, which is why many businesses—up to 60 million—keep and maintain a Facebook page to engage and share content with would-be customers.
But how do companies know they’re successfully sending their message across to people on the world’s biggest social network? What if, say, a B2B software company is missing the mark when it comes to reaching its intended audience? Is it posting informative, insightful posts at the right time, when software engineers are sipping their morning coffee and catching up industry updates? Or is it posting when everyone’s clocked out and done for the day? Is there a difference between the two time windows?
That’s the kind of thing Facebook’s built-in analytics can help you figure out. These analytics, or metrics, can also narrow down the preferred type of content audiences prefer to engage with, tell you where traffic is coming from, and pinpoint the exact amount of time people spend watching videos—among other insights.
Want to know more about Facebook analytics? Here are some useful ways to measure your content’s effectiveness with Zuck’s analytics tools:
Post Reach
With Facebook Page Insights for Facebook Business, you can explore a plethora of metrics and KPIs (Key P that can provide content creation teams with all the information they need about their output’s effectiveness. One of the most important metrics to pay attention to is Post Reach. Fittingly, this number covers the people who have seen both your organic and paid posts over a period of time. Usually, Post Reach is visualized with a chart or graph.
With this metric, you can find out which type of post is more effective and figure out what kinds of posts are reaching your audiences most. Friendly, sardonic posts? Straight-laced, business-like posts? Post Reach will help you decide which tone you should choose to reach people. If your goal is to raise brand awareness or find your voice, you can use this information to discover the best types of posts to focus on and readjust the posts that fail to reach a large audience.
Engagement
Another crucial KPI for businesses on Facebook, Engagement tells you how involved your audience is with your page. Engagement is broken down into smaller metrics, including Likes, Reactions, Comments, Shares, and Post Clicks, so you can see exactly how the community you’re trying to build is interacting with your content? Are they liking all your posts? Or only a few? How many comments does each post receive? Are they sharing all that content with friends and family?
Engagement is a good way to gauge how exactly your audience interacts with your content. Are they liking posts, but not commenting? Maybe your content isn’t sparking any conversations. In that case, try asking your audience a question – “How do you think the GDPR will affect the financial sector?” Or include a call-to-action in that requires users to click on a link. Simply asking users to share could be all you need to get them to share posts, too. You can also see how many people hide, report as spam, or dislike your posts, too. Clearly, you will want to refrain from creating the type of content that will cause users to outright hide them. Avoid clickbait or sensational language and give your audience the type of posts that garner plenty of Likes and Reactions.
Referral Traffic
One of the best ways to measure your content’s effectiveness on Facebook is to look at your traffic numbers. It’s a clear way to see if folks are actually clicking on your call-to-action links that lead to your website, including clicks on links within posts, links in your profile, and clicks from people sharing your posts. If people are clicking your links that means your Facebook post headlines are attention-grabbing, your description copy is worth reading, and your calls-to-action are convincing. It also means your content is exactly what your audience is looking for.
If nobody’s clicking, then it’s time to reevaluate your headlines and your copy. Are you using the right keywords? Is your copy too long-in-the-tooth? It could even be the thumbnail image that appears when you post a link on a Facebook post. Experiment with different post-copy lengths and place keywords near the front of headlines. Optimize your posts until you see the traffic rise.
Video Engagement
If your company uses video, there are a few different metrics you can check to evaluate your content’s effectiveness, including the average view duration, the number of people reached, and audience retention. Views only count if users watch more than three seconds. But even then, audiences can drop off after those three seconds, so you should probably edit your videos down to only the most pertinent information.
Facebook also counts 30-Second Views. If users are viewing for more than 30 seconds, you likely have compelling video on your Facebook page. But your audience could still drop out if your video is too long, so keep things brief as possible. Like text-based posts, you can view the number of comments, likes, and shares, too, as well as the number of click-plays, which tell you when users are actually clicking on your video to play, rather than waiting for auto-play to kick in. Implement eye-catching thumbnails and useful flavor text to keep those clicks coming.
Of course, there’s a lot more to talk about regarding Facebook analytics, effective content, and social media outreach. Want more content marketing advice and information? Keep a tab open on this space.