Measuring performance on Facebook
Content
Measuring the Performance of Facebook Posts
Some notes: - Reach and Engagement are complimentary. Without reach you cannot get engagement, but the more engagement you get, the higher your reach becomes. This is because of Facebook’s “EdgeRank” algorithm, which tailors the content each user sees based on what content they have engaged with in the past. The primary goal of a Facebook page is to create engagement, so likes, comments and shares should be your primary performance metric. If you go to the Insights dashboard, these are aggregated for each post as “Talking About This” (“people who saw this post” = “Reach”).
Measuring the Overall Performance of Facebook Pages
Click into your page’s Insights dashboard
Total Likes = The total number of people who currently like your page. People Talking About This = The total number of people who have engaged with your page (like, comment or share) in the past 7 days. Weekly Total Reach = The total number of people who have seen any content from your page in the past 7 days. Some notes: - The relationship between “People Talking About This” and “Weekly Total Reach” is the same as described above for individual posts. Since the goal is engagement, “People Talking About This” is your primary metric of success, but engagement cannot be achieved without reach. Reach and engagement can fluctuate week-to-week based on what’s going on in the world, how often you posted, and many other factors. Obviously you want to see them go up (or at least hold steady), but these page-level metrics are just rough guides to performance – the post-level metrics are where you will really see how you are doing.
Tips
How do I make Reach go up? 1) Make sure posts are spaced apart rather than clustered together. When you put up two posts too close to each other, they typically start to compete and hurt the other one’s performance. Use the scheduler to post items at the best times for your audience. Performance of posts put up less than 2 hours apart v. posts that were spaced out:
2) Post at key times and on key days for your audience. Try posting at different times of day, and look for patterns in when posts reach the widest audience. Many pages find that posts on the weekend do better than posts during the week. Reach of posts by day of week posted:
3) Post text-only posts once in a while, especially for announcements. Text-only posts get the highest reach of any post type. Comparison of key metrics for different types of posts: Average Row Average Average Average Link of Average of Labels Reach Engagement Clicks Virality Clickability Link 3887.5 27.7 34.1 0.88% 1.19% Photo 5330.7 153.0 26.6 2.43% 0.62% Status 8422.8 87.9 1.06% Video 3832.4 32.9 1.02%
Tips
How do I make Engagement go up? 1) Look for content that has an emotional impact. It doesn’t matter if that impact is positive or negative, but if your content moves people, it will also move them to engage. 2) Ask questions and give clear calls to action. It might feel silly, but when you tell people what you want them to do with your content, they are more likely to do it. Good phrases: - Like this post if… - What do you think of…? - Would you…? 3) Post photos. Photographs tend to get more engagement than any other type of post. You can include a link to related content in the photo description.
Some notes: - Reach and Engagement are complimentary. Without reach you cannot get engagement, but the more engagement you get, the higher your reach becomes. This is because of Facebook’s “EdgeRank” algorithm, which tailors the content each user sees based on what content they have engaged with in the past. The primary goal of a Facebook page is to create engagement, so likes, comments and shares should be your primary performance metric. If you go to the Insights dashboard, these are aggregated for each post as “Talking About This” (“people who saw this post” = “Reach”).
Measuring the Overall Performance of Facebook Pages
Click into your page’s Insights dashboard
Total Likes = The total number of people who currently like your page. People Talking About This = The total number of people who have engaged with your page (like, comment or share) in the past 7 days. Weekly Total Reach = The total number of people who have seen any content from your page in the past 7 days. Some notes: - The relationship between “People Talking About This” and “Weekly Total Reach” is the same as described above for individual posts. Since the goal is engagement, “People Talking About This” is your primary metric of success, but engagement cannot be achieved without reach. Reach and engagement can fluctuate week-to-week based on what’s going on in the world, how often you posted, and many other factors. Obviously you want to see them go up (or at least hold steady), but these page-level metrics are just rough guides to performance – the post-level metrics are where you will really see how you are doing.
Tips
How do I make Reach go up? 1) Make sure posts are spaced apart rather than clustered together. When you put up two posts too close to each other, they typically start to compete and hurt the other one’s performance. Use the scheduler to post items at the best times for your audience. Performance of posts put up less than 2 hours apart v. posts that were spaced out:
2) Post at key times and on key days for your audience. Try posting at different times of day, and look for patterns in when posts reach the widest audience. Many pages find that posts on the weekend do better than posts during the week. Reach of posts by day of week posted:
3) Post text-only posts once in a while, especially for announcements. Text-only posts get the highest reach of any post type. Comparison of key metrics for different types of posts: Average Row Average Average Average Link of Average of Labels Reach Engagement Clicks Virality Clickability Link 3887.5 27.7 34.1 0.88% 1.19% Photo 5330.7 153.0 26.6 2.43% 0.62% Status 8422.8 87.9 1.06% Video 3832.4 32.9 1.02%
Tips
How do I make Engagement go up? 1) Look for content that has an emotional impact. It doesn’t matter if that impact is positive or negative, but if your content moves people, it will also move them to engage. 2) Ask questions and give clear calls to action. It might feel silly, but when you tell people what you want them to do with your content, they are more likely to do it. Good phrases: - Like this post if… - What do you think of…? - Would you…? 3) Post photos. Photographs tend to get more engagement than any other type of post. You can include a link to related content in the photo description.
