Changes In Facebook Insights: Just 3 Metrics You Need To Watch

Facebook has recently done a major overhaul of the “Insights” they provide for pages — the analytics that tell you what all your fans are doing, where they’re coming from, and how well you’re using social media to propel brand growth. Very soon, the “old” Insights will no longer be available. (You have exported all your data for historic comparisons and analysis, right?)

Just as the changes they make to the front end of Facebook send users into a frenzy of figuring out where all their favorite features went, these back-end changes might have you scratching your head. So, my tip today is to cut through the chaff, and if you have limited time to focus on everything, point out where to look for some key performance indicators.

And, it’s not just the number of fans who’ve “liked” your page:

Weekly Total Reach — You’ll find this one on the top bar of your overall page Insights tab, last on the right. It’s not enough just to look at total “likes” or fans; truth is, not all of them are picking up what you’re laying down on a regular basis. You’re also earning impressions from non-fans based on the fans who actually engage with you.

Another way to look at this is “weekly effective impressions,” and it’s a good baseline metric. In terms of any of the academic models of marketing you might frame it in, this measurement is about awareness.

People Talking About This — Of the 3 tabs under Insights, this is the last one, and the 2 images here in the post are at the bottom of that view. You can look at an aggregated view of the number of interactions people make with your page, or by using the drop-down menu, you can look more narrowly at the different types of interactions. “Stories from Your Posts” is any time someone clicks “like” or makes a comment on something your page has shared. “Mentions and Photo Tags” happen when a Facebook user creates a post of their own and creates a link to your page in doing so.

Produce remarkable content, interact with a community in a way that helps them solve their fundamental social needs, and they will reward you for it with positive affinity and advocacy. In that textbook sense of marketing, this is your engagement measurement.

Referral Traffic — This one isn’t in Facebook Insights at all. Sorry if you feel tricked. But the third thing to be thinking about, if your Facebook page isn’t where you’re achieving your ultimate goal, is whether that page is directing traffic to your desired transaction point. Are you shooting for sign-ups to a newsletter? Are you selling products on an ecommerce platform? If your goal lives on a website elsewhere, we want to look at the referral traffic that your Facebook page is sending there.

With some familiarity with a tool like Google Analytics, we can look at what those Facebook referrals are doing on your site, and if you’re achieving your goal. This is your conversion measurement, in the theoretical sense.

The rest of the numbers provided by Facebook Insights certainly have their use, and there are tools that can give you even more information than Insights provides. However, if there’s not enough time and experience to put all those numbers to good use, these 3 measurements, will easily tell you if you’re getting the results you need from this social media channel.