Measuring Facebook Success
Whether you feel like social media is a necessary evil or a core strategy, it’s essential that you have a way of measuring success. Likes are great: but are these people actually buying your product or signing up for your service? It can be easy to give into nebulous standards like impressions and think you’re making a difference. But at the end of the day, any effort that costs your brand money should be qualified in real, black-and-white terms.
Here’s how you find, interpret, and use data according to key performance metrics (KPIs). Get clear on these steps to understand if you are actually converting customers.
Where is the Data?
First, where are you going to find your FB data? This depends. That’s not a cop-out answer: there are numerous ways you could have social media set up that will deliver data to you differently. Level set with your team to understand whether this data is camping out in:
- Facebook Insights: the internal mechanism FB has for measuring and reporting
- SMMS: if your team uses a social media management software (like Later, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Social Pilot, etc.), those platforms have dashboards full of data
In rare occasions, if you’ve given away the keys to the kingdom, an agency may be gathering data from multiple sources and delivering custom reports to you. It’s worth an ask to best understand where their data comes from. Action built on unreliable, outdated, or misinterpreted data is a waste. Don’t spin the wheels on this one.
What Does the Data Mean?
Facebook data is a minefield of unique terms. Here are the basic elements that Facebook measures—and that you should plainly see—in your data.
Facebook Post Data
For every post your business puts on Facebook, you can see:
- The number of people it reached: this includes anyone whose feed it appeared in. Now, keep in mind how people scroll. Just because you reached someone, doesn’t mean they saw you.
- Post clicks: this indicates a higher level of engagement.
- Reactions, comments and shares: reactions are the “haha,” “care,” “wow” emoticons FB has added to its post responses. Comments and shares are self-explanatory. A share is your gold standard: this may indicate a high level of loyalty (maybe it was your spouse) OR that your content was extremely compelling or entertaining.
Facebook Ad Data
For every Facebook lead gen ad you run, you can see:
- Link clicks: for ads set up to drive web traffic.
- Cost per result: how much each of those clicks cost you.
- Result rate: what percentage of people who saw the ad clicked it.
Two Notes:
- Keep in mind, there will be some alternate metrics for ads set up to generate FB likes or with other goals.
- Depending on how you create and deliver ads (likely through Facebook Business Manager/Ads Manager), you can see amalgamated info from ad sets.
Facebook analytics actually scan more than just your page. Connected accounts are also part of the data. For example, if you have a Facebook pixel set up on your webpage. For any further degrees of complexity, it’s important that you get a clear understanding of the proposed value.
How is additional architecture and connecting points going to enhance your ability to target and track? Again, your team needs to use clear terms, black-and-white metrics and—at the end of the day—only do profit-building work.
Six KPIs for FB
Here are six key performance indicators that can help you measure the health and effectiveness of your social media presence.
01.
Follower Count
Whether or not you’re directly working on social media, knowing this number matters. Quarterly goals could be instituted to grow your following. For instance, if you have 5k right now, how many should you have at the end of the year?
02.
Reach
Post reach is less about engagement and more about how you’re doing with the algorithm. You probably know that Facebook doesn’t deliver your content to everyone who follows you. How many people your content actually gets to tells you how savvy your social media marketers are at working with the code.
03.
Impressions
This is again a metric that will tell you something about exposure but also indicates interest. If followers circle back and review your content, indicating a high interest, this data tells you about intent. The posts that perform well in this are ones you should learn from, leveraging that knowledge to deliver the most engaging content possible.
04.
Engagement and Engagement Rate
Any engagement is collected in this data point. Iconosquare discovered that, globally, the average page engagement rate on Facebook is 28.3%, while the average engagement rate per post is 3.22% and the average engagement on reach is 0.09%. How is yours?
05.
Click-Through Rate
Click-Through Rate, also known as CTR, is an important metric to track. This number tells you how many of the people who saw your content clicked on it. The formula to measure the CTR for a post, divide the number of link clicks by the reach, and multiply by 100. How engaged is your audience?
06.
Video Engagement
Videos are the best way to increase your reach, impressions, and engagement. More people are watching video than any other content. Facebook likes video and delivers it more liberally than text-based content. Are you using video and how does it perform for you?
Measure Success & Get More Of It
The only useful data point is the one you use to improve. Successful reporting should result in change for the better. As you use various tools and platforms for digital marketing, it’s essential that your team takes the time to get it right.Because it does require specialized knowledge and time, many companies outsource social media marketing efforts. Your ROI should take into account what you spend on an agency. At the end of the day, business owners and leaders have the most skin in the game. It’s up to you to know what you’re being told and make strategic decisions to grow your business.
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