Running a social media platform like Facebook can be an awfully lonely business if you don’t keep an eye on what’s happening to your posts. We make a huge effort to keep our pages fresh and interesting, but how do we know we’re hitting the mark? Fortunately there are tools such as Facebook’s ‘Insights’ to check up on what keeps our fans coming back and when they’re most likely to do this.
Facebook Insights recently underwent a facelift and now has a nice clean dashboard that makes it easy to find your way around. Find it using the ‘View Insights’ tab on the Admin page.
This will take you to the dashboard with four useful tabs:
- Overview
- Page
- Posts
- People
There is loads of useful information about your fans and your posts here, but let’s focus on two critical ones:
How do I know what type of Facebook posts bring my fans back for more?
Use the ‘Posts’ tab, which will bring up a list of your posts and show you the post type (a link, photo, video or status update); the number of people the post reached; and how your fans engaged with it (clicks, likes, shares, comments). The bar graphs are easy to interpret and clearly show the stats for each post and comparisons with other posts.
Click on ‘Best Post Types’ to see whether your fans prefer status updates, links, photos or videos and use this as a guide to future posts, bearing in mind that you need to mix it up to maintain interest rather than just focussing on one type. People don’t always have enough time to read long articles or watch videos so keep them engaged with short, interesting status updates that tie directly into your social media strategy.
To see the post that reached the most people go to the ‘All Posts’ tab and click on‘Reach’ (it will display at the top of the list).
Click on this post to find out when it was sent because it’s a good indicator on when you should be scheduling future posts. But often it’s also about what the post was about – if they liked it they probably shared it with their friends which would positively impact the post’s reach.
Use the ‘Engagement’ tab and choose ‘Post Clicks’ or ‘Likes, Comments, Shares’ to see what your fans did with your post.
Use this information as a guide for future posts as it gives you a clue as to what type of content your fans prefer. The idea is to create loyal, interested advocates of your brand so you need to keep a careful watch on what type of content they’re enjoying and do more of the same. Don’t be scared to ask your fans what they’d like to know more about: communication is the key if you want to keep and grow your fan base.
What is the best time to post to maximise my post views?
To check when your fans are likely to be online and maximise your post’s hit rate, click on ‘Posts’ and then ‘When your fans are online’. This gives you some great graphs showing you the most popular days and times for viewing posts. Use this information to upload your posts when they’re most likely to be seen so that you can make the most of your fans’ attention while they’re online.
Visit our website for more on how to develop an effective social media strategy.