You’ve probably recognized the need to promote your brand on all the major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on. Facebook is still the largest social network globally, which means optimizing and promoting your content and brand can yield dividends. How do you do that? This is where Facebook Analytics comes into play. 

Facebook analytics is quite a handy stuff if you are looking to grow your brand and business through Facebook. Even knowing Facebook advertising is a must nowadays because understanding both can help you sometimes to increase instant Facebook page likes. These are simple things and once you enter the world of Facebook play with these things then you can slowly understand how to get success through it. Facebook is not just another social media platform rather it is a place from where you can dream of growth of your business online.

What is Facebook Analytics?

In a nutshell, Facebook Analytics is a powerful tool you can use to enhance your social media strategy and run effective marketing campaigns. Facebook Analytics helps you track page views, likes, actions on-page, and many more data points. You can measure these and improve them to boost your Facebook content marketing strategy.

How is this information useful? Diving deep into these metrics allows you to get an in-depth understanding of what resonates with your audience and what does not. You can post content accordingly. 

What is the difference between Facebook Page Insights and Facebook Audience Insights?

Both of them are Facebook Analytics tools and serve entirely different purposes. Here’s the difference between the two tools:

• Facebook Page Insights provides detailed analytics for your Facebook Page, allowing you to note what works and what does not work, figure out how your visitors interact with your content and optimize your content accordingly. 
• Facebook Audience Insights lets you understand your Facebook audience, helping you to target ads more effectively and create better content. 

How to use Facebook Analytics?

If you want to get insights from your Facebook page, click on ‘Insights’ after logging into Facebook. You will find the overview page on the left, and you can access this anytime you want. Overview, as the name suggests, gives you a comprehensive understanding of whatever is happening on your Facebook page. It is classified into three sections: Page summary, Your 5 Most Recent Posts, and Pages to Watch. Page summary includes the following metrics: 

• Actions on Page: This refers to the total clicks for your contact information and call-to-action button.
• Page views:  This refers to the total views of your Facebook Page, including people who viewed your page without logging into Facebook.
• Page Previews: This is the number of times people hover their mouse over your Facebook page information to find a preview of your page.
• Page Likes: As the term suggests, this refers to the new likes on your Facebook page. 
• Post reach: This term refers to the number of people who checked out your posts on their timelines.
• Story reach: Story reach refers to the number of people who checked out your Stories.
• Recommendations: This refers to the number of people who recommended your Page.
• Post engagement: This refers to the total post likes, comments, shares, and other forms of engagement.
• Responsiveness: This is an indication of how often and how quickly you respond to messages.
• Videos: This refers to the number of video views that last three seconds or more.
• Page followers: This shows the number of new followers
• Orders: This refers to your orders and earnings.

The second section, Your 5 Most Recent Posts, shows you the reach and engagement numbers of your latest posts. You also have an option to boost your best performing posts on your Facebook page. 

The third section is called Pages to Watch. Here, you may manually add the pages you want to compare to your page. You could add a competitor’s page and compare your page with theirs, which is an excellent way to benchmark your results to theirs. 

How do you optimize your Facebook Analytics?

Here are a few tweaks you could use to get more out of your Facebook analytics: 

Consider your target audience

Check if the people who visit your page are the kinds of people you expected to visit your page. You can get a detailed analysis of your audience using a tool called Audience Insights. This tool is built into Facebook Analytics. 

Figure out the best time to post

Scheduling your posts is vital to get the reach you want. When you start, consider using the data the experts have assembled to get a good start. Once you put out a few posts on your page, you can schedule them based on the data you collect on your audience. 

Stick to what works

Follow trends and tweaks that bring you results and discard the rest. Create the types of posts that tend to do well. As you do that, look out for posts that bring you negative attention and feedback. If you receive negative engagement like getting reported as spam, figure out why it happened and rectify it. Click on the Reach option to find this information. Keep tabs on the number of unfollows you get. If you see a surge, look at the content you’ve been posting. 

Check your Facebook Insights often

Unfortunately, using Facebook Insights to track and optimize your reach and engagement is not a one-time activity. You need to check your Facebook Analytics data regularly to be up-to-date on developing patterns. You can click on ‘Export Data’ on the top right of the overview section to download and keep a permanent record of your page data over 180 days in the last two years. 

What should you track using Facebook Insights?

Be sure to track the following parameters using Facebook Insights: 

Reach and engagement

Find out how many people saw your posts, engaged with them, hid, or reported them as spam. 

Actions

Find out the actions that people take on your Facebook page. Do they click on your website link or your custom Call-to-Action (CTA) button?

People

Find out the demographics of the people who check out your page. Use Audience Insights for more detailed information on this. Find out how people discovered your page and when they check it out. 

Views

This refers to the number of views on your page and the sections that people view. 

Posts

Find out how your posts are performing over time. 

There you have it – a simple yet comprehensive guide to Facebook Analytics to get you started. Be sure to pay close attention to each parameter and change your content marketing strategy accordingly.