As more businesses dive into social media, one challenge that resonates among many is how to achieve a return on their investment. As a business owner, you will be measuring how social media contributes to your overall business objectives. However, as a fan page administrator, you should also be monitoring key performance indicators (also known as KPI’s) in Facebook Insights as a measure of your page’s success.
The intention of this post isn’t to discuss how to meet your business goals (such as sales, leads or website traffic), but to highlight five KPI’s that you should be monitoring and to show why they contribute to your Facebook marketing success.
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Number of Likes
Yes, I know – it’s quality, not quantity, when it comes to Facebook fans, but keeping an eye on this number helps you spot any anomalies. If you can attribute an unusual fan increase to a specific post, ad campaign or promotion, you can learn from that and adapt your strategy accordingly.
Number of Unlikes
In the same way that irregular fan increases can indicate great fan page strategy, an unusual jump in your ‘Unlikes’ can point toward the opposite. If you notice such a jump, take a look at your page and question why. Perhaps you’re posting too much, being unresponsive or sharing content not relevant to your audience? If you can’t manage to keep fans from sticking around, you’re unlikely to turn them into customers either.
Reach
Prior to the new insights platform, admins were only able to see the number of impressions their content received. While this was useful, it didn’t specify how many unique users were actually being reached. For example, did 100 post impressions mean that 100 users were seeing a post once, or ten users were each seeing it ten times?
Now, not only can you see how many unique users your content is reaching, but also whether this reach is organic (viewed in a fans news-feed), paid (via advertising) or viral (users sharing your content). The higher your reach, the more visible your brand
Engaged Users
Exporting your data will allow you to find ‘Engaged Users’, defined by Facebook as “the number of people who clicked anywhere in your posts”. This is important as it goes beyond public engagement (‘Likes’, ‘Comments’ and ‘Shares’) to also include silent contributions, such as clicks on links and photo views.
Considering that 90% of users in online communities do not publicly contribute, this number provides a better insight into how well your content is being received than the engagement figures that are visible on your page
Talking About This
This metric is perhaps the most significant of all – partly because it is so prominent on fan pages and also because of how it measures your page’s performance. Rise Interactive describe it as “one singular rating intended to tell users how compelling and interesting a page’s content is”. I agree, and believe it is the most useful Facebook metric available in terms of measuring a page’s true value. A high number here indicates an engaging page that shares valuable and relevant content.
With an abundance of data available, it can be tricky to make sense of it all. Hopefully this post gives you a better idea of what data indicates performance, how you can monitor this and why the results should influence your strategy.
What do you think of Will’s list? Are there any other KPI’s you would recommend monitoring?
Will Russell is an online marketing freelancer from San Francisco, CA. Author of the blog Social Cycle, Will provides consultancy in social media marketing, SEO and content creation.
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