This is a guest post by the one and only Nonprofit Facebook Guy – John Haydon (also a good buddy of mine). Make sure to check out his blog http://www.johnhaydon.com
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Facebook Pages include a reporting module called “Insights” which enables Page admins to understand how to better use their Page to market their cause and organization. Following are just some of the questions you can answer with these reports.
How active are Facebook users with our Page?
There are seven ways people can interact with your Page, which all effect your ability to show up in your fans news feeds. Consistently posting a variety of photos, videos and status updates directly effects how much Facebook users interact with your Page and it’s content.
Following are questions about those interactions which can be answered in the Users Reports:
- How many Facebook users view my Page each day?
- How many Facebook users (fans and non-fans interacted with my Page this month?
- How many fans have commented on our Page updates?
- What were the top three days for post comments within a specific time period?
- How many of our fans return more than once to our Page?
How much do people “like” your Page?
There are few questions you’ll have around fan growth. Many of the answers to these questions are found in the “New Likes” and “Total Likes” in the Users Reports and numbered accordingly.
- How many fans did we lose in this specific time period?
- How many fans did we lose on this specific date?
- Are we losing or gaining fans?
- How many people have “liked” our Page?
- How many people have “liked” our Page on this specific day?
- How many people have “liked” our Page within a specific time period?
- How many new fans did we get during this past month?
Where do our new fans come from?
The “Like Sources” report is especially important if your organization has invested in Facebook Sponsored Story Ads or have placed a LikeBox on your website.
- How many fans have liked our Page through a Facebook Ad?
- How many people have liked our Page through a Likebox?
- How many fans have liked us from a Page suggestion?
How interesting is your content?
Once someone likes your Page, how do you keep them coming back? Understanding how to update your Page with content that gets likes and comments is a challenge for all nonprofits.
The Interactions reports will answer the following questions:
- How many total post views did our content receive in this specific time period?
- Are people viewing our content more or less than the previous 30 days?
- How many likes did our content receive in this specific time period?
- How many specific comments did our content receive in this specific time period?
- How many people hid our Page stories from their news feed in this specific time period?
- What were the top three most active days for comments?
- What were the top three most active days for likes?
- What were the top three most active days for unsubscribes?
- Which posts received the highest interactions in this specific time period?
How much do your fans post on the Page?
In addition to liking and commenting on your Page stories, fans can also post photos, videos and updates directly on the wall (if you’ve turned this option off, rethink why). They can also post in the discussion board or write a review of your Page (if applicable).
The following questions can be answered by viewing the “Page Activity” graph within the Interactions Reports:
- How many times did our Page get tagged in this specific time period?
- How many times did fans post videos on our Page in this specific time period?
- How many times did fans post updates on our Page in this specific time period?
- Do our fans still use the discussion tabs?
What are our fan demographics?
Facebook Insights also include your traditional marketing fare like gender and age breakdown. Remember that age and location doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a social media savvy fanbase fans are (Baby Boomers are avid Facebook users too!).
The following questions can be answered by viewing the “Demographics” section within the User Reports:
- What’s our ratio of Men to Women?
- How old are most of our fans?
- What countries do most of our fans live in?
- What language to most of our fans speak?
- What cities do most of our fans live in?
How do people find out about your Page?
Knowing what sites refer the most traffic to your Facebook Page will tell you instantly where you need to focus your resources.
Which external websites send us the most traffic? Is it your blog? Is it a partner website? You can also answer see what tabs fans view the most within the “Total Tab Views” report.
What types of media do fans prefer?
When developing and refining your content strategy, it’s always a good idea to know what kind of content fans prefer.
The Media Consumption graph within the User Reports will show you this data for whatever date range you select.
- Do our fans like photos better than videos?
- How many video views per week?
Now some questions for you:
What reports do you find most useful? How do you use this data to improve your decision making?
Comment below with your insights (pun intended):
Frank! Thanks for having me here!
Glad to have ya hommie.
I want to know how many fans I have across a portfolio of pages I manage. And for global pages, I want to go beyond just 20 countries or 20 cities.
Hey Frank. Great Post. I hope you don’t mind I posted it to my site as well with full credit: www.jlpacifico.com. Let me know if it’s okay. James
Yea man. Glad it was useful and happy to see it spread on the web 🙂
This was good to review as I have looked at Insights before but wasn’t always clear on the significance of what I was seeing. Now my goal is to increase interactions of all kinds and to get more fans!
Is there a way to see what content fans are sharing?
I have always been confused about “post views”. It just means the post isn’t hidden from a person’s feed and it shows up there, yes? Doesn’t mean they actually read it…
I miss the old stat of knowing how many people hide your content. That gave me good info on when I might be posting too much.
Why does Facebook Insights show a relatively large number of users/fans from unexpected cities … some of them being quite small. It appears that Facebook attributes a city to a user/fan based on IP Address. Is that the IP Address at the time of becoming a fan? How are they counting?
To further complicate things, when I create a test add targeting just fans from those small towns, the number comes up as much smaller. Do ads and Insights not target cities using the same source?