I love statistics. Unlike opinions that are biased and can be said without perspective, statistics just give you the cold, hard facts and nothing more. It’s great for sports, great for politics, and, believe it or not, great for social media.
There’s a great amount of stats you can look up for free at any time on your Facebook page. Just click onto ‘Insights’ at the top of your company’s page and you’ll find yourself standing at the doorway to a home full of rooms, bursting at the seams with social media stats that can help elevate your brand to your expectations.
Now the only problem is deciding which stats to pay attention to. Social media goes well beyond the likes, comments, and shares you see on the surface. Those insights are available for your viewing and are designed to help you evaluate what type of posts work and which posts fall flat. With stats, you’ll be able to dive much deeper into what separates the successful social media pages from those that fail.
And fortunately for you, we’re to help. Check out these four, easily accessible stats that will help you evaluate how to properly run a successful Facebook page:
1. Engagement Rate
This statistical marker is key to knowing just how successful your page is. Engagement rate basically covers every interaction your fans have with your post, including likes, comments, and shares. Every activity that takes place on a post, from the post’s reach to those who interact with it, is taken into account, providing you with a metric that accurately depicts just how your post is performing.
Plus, it’s relative to your page’s follower or like count. Judging a page simply by its like and comments doesn’t cut it because pages obviously vary in how many fans they have. Engagement rate, however, does not discriminate, and the same formula can apply to any page, no matter the size.
The next time you check out your page’s progress, check on the engagement rate before anything else.
2. Likes/Followers
This should go without being said. Your followers and likes are the life blood of your social media page, and you’re basically shouting into the wind with nobody listening without them.
Naturally, you’re going to pay attention to your likes and followers probably as much as any statistics, and that’s because it’s one of the first things you see when clicking onto someone’s Twitter or Facebook. A high follower/like count adds legitimacy to the page. You’re obviously more inclined to have your interest peaked when you see what the page with 500,000 followers is doing, compared to the page with only 2,000 followers.
You think to yourself, “Obviously the page with 500,000 followers is doing something right.” Well, a lot of that has to do with the brand itself. If it’s a well-known brand that’s easily recognizable, whether it’s because of its longevity or influence on television, they’re going to end up with a lot of followers because people just know a lot about them.
Since we’re talking about small to medium-sized businesses, however, it’s alright to have only a few hundred or few thousand followers. Your follower count is mostly those who are aware of your business; and since you’re a local business, your follower count is going to be representative of your business’s reach.
Also, make sure to check on the type of people that are following and liking your page. This is a great way of understanding your demographic, which you can do with Facebook’s insight tools that allow you to see your followers’ age and gender. For example, we were experimenting with one of the pages we run with a number of posts, before we finally found the right post by going through the profiles of who was commenting, liking, and sharing our posts.
From there, we were able to appeal to that demographic and now see consistent numbers as a result. Don’t look at your follower and like count as a number. Treat each one as an individual and see what binds them all together that they relate to when they like your page.
3. Shares
If you’re running a business, what’s the best way of creating a solid foundation? Through a loyal legion of customers. Those customers will continue to buy your product or use your service, which will, hopefully, lead to those customers telling their friends and family about your business. It’s through this method of referrals that allows you to build up a loyal fanbase that will continue to frequent your business.
Consider a share on a post as something similar. A fan/follower likes your post so much that they’ll go even further than simply liking or commenting by sharing the post with their friends and family.
4. Click-throughs/Post Clicks
This is an underutilized tool that should be given more of a look into. If you go into your Facebook page’s insights, there’s a barometer that allows you to see which of your posts are being clicked on. Post-clicks are essentially a way of telling you that you grabbed your audience’s initial attention and that they were looking for more.
Congratulations! Yelling at your audience to look your way and actually warranting a response is one of the most difficult things you can do in social media, since everyone else is trying to do the same exact thing. As I’ve mentioned before, with so much information available, it takes a special kind of post for someone to stop their scrolling and take the time to look through a particular post.
Judging your posts by how much they clicked on is an excellent way to see what types of posts are working, especially when it comes to the images you’re using. When your fans click on a post, they’re clicking on the image so that they can get a better look and fill out their entire computer screen with your post.
That’s what you call genuine interest; the crux of social media.
