How to use the new Facebook Insights

The upgraded Facebook metric tool explained in plain English

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, social media managers, individuals.

Two weeks ago, Facebook launched a completely new version of Facebook Page Insights along with several new metrics.

Some of the new metrics include:

• People Talking About This – This is the number of people who engage with your Page and includes users who have liked your Page, commented on or shared a post from your Page, answered a Question you’ve asked on your Page, or tagged your Page in an update or in a photo. This also includes Facebook users who’ve responded to an event on your Page.
• Friends of Fans – This is the total number of friends all your fans have.
• Reach – The number of people who have seen content associated with your Page.
• Virality – The percent of people who saw a story from your Page and “talked about it.”

How to access Insights on your Facebook Page

You can access your Facebook Page Insights directly under your Facebook Page’s main image in the sidebar (FYI – this tab can only be viewed by Page admins).

When you click on the Insights icon (see image above), you’ll go directly to an overview of analytics for your Facebook page. You’ll also notice that three sub-tabs have appeared in the sidebar: “Fans,” “Reach” and “Talking About This.”

Making sense of your Page overview

The first tab you’ll see when you click on Insights is an overview of your Page. This tab shows you the day-to-day information you need to know as a page administrator.

What do those four numbers at the top mean?

Those four numbers at the very top of this page are the most current snapshot of your page. Following is the definition for each number:

• Total Likes – Total likes is simply the number of people who have liked your Facebook Page up until yesterday.
• Friends of Fans – Friends of fans is the total number of friends that all of your Facebook fans have, taking mutual friends into account. This number is more useful if you are running a Facebook Sponsored Like Story because it would be the total number of people who could see that ad. The percent increase or decrease next to this number is a comparison with the previous seven-day period.
• People Talking About This – This is the number of people who engaged with your Page over the past seven days and includes users who liked your Page, commented on or shared a post from your Page, answered a Question you’ve asked on your Page, or tagged your Page in an update or in a photo. This also includes Facebook users who’ve responded to an event on your Page. The percent increase or decrease next to this number is a comparison with the previous seven-day period.
• Weekly Total Reach – This is the number of people who have seen any content associated with your Page (including any Ads or Sponsored Stories pointing to your Page) over the past seven days. The percent increase or decrease next to this number is a comparison with the previous seven-day period.

Underneath these four numbers you’ll see a graph with rolling weekly numbers for “Talking About This” and “Weekly Total Reach” for the past month. You’ll also see dots for each day that you’ve posted to your page (dot size indicates the number of posts for that day).

What does the Page Posts information mean?

Under the graph you’ll see a spreadsheet of your most recent page updates, with information about how Facebook users engaged with that content. Each column can be sorted, and you can even filter by post type at the top left of this spreadsheet (click on “All Post Types” at the top right of the spreadsheet to filter).

Following is the definition for each column:

• Date – The date that your post was published.
• Post – The type of post (post, photo, video, link, platform post) and excerpt.
• Reach – The number of people who saw that update, or the number of times that update was displayed.
• Engaged Users – The number of people who have clicked anywhere on your Post.
• Talking About This – The number of people who have created a story from your Post (see what this includes at the beginning of this article).
• Virality – The number of people your post reached who “talked about it” (Talking about this divided by Reach).

When you click on each number in this report, a small chart will pop up with more detail. These will be covered later this week (subscribe so you don’t miss out!)

What do the Fans, Reach & Talking About This tabs tell me?

• The “Fans” tab displays the same type of information that was displayed in the old Facebook Insights reports. You’ll see demographic info about your fans, how many people have liked your page, how many people have unliked your page, as well as a list of your top sources for fans.
• The “Reach” tab shows you information about who saw any content about your Page. This will include both fans and non-fans.
• The “Talking About This” tab shows you who created a story about your Page.

Do you like the new Insights?John Haydon delivers social web strategy solutions for “the quick, the smart, and the slightly manic.” Curious? Then visit the John Haydon blog, follow him on Twitter or leave a comment.