by samBy 2012, registered Facebook users hit 901 million, which means that the social networking site has become an invaluable medium and tool for businesses. Having an existence on Facebook is fast becoming an essential part of any successful marketing strategy.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of any marketing scheme, it’s necessary to look at the statistics. Companies can spend thousands on exhaustive metrics packages but Facebook Insights allows users free and easy access to data with just the click of a button—but how useful is it?
It’s simple to use
For those who are not yet social-media literate and those who are fluent alike, Insights is simple to use and easy to understand. Visualisations such as graphs showing the number of likes, for instance, quickly show a visual trend, simple to understand at first glance. It is possible to see the amount of likes rise and/or fall overtime periods.
You can see who’s interacting with your posts
Viral Reach and How People Are Talking About Your Page features allow users to determine who’s interacting with posts, which posts are interacted with, and the types of interaction. Posts that have engaged users may have likes, comments, shares, or mentions, and you can create a breakdown of how many shares a post enjoyed in comparison to likes, etc. In this way, it’s easy to scroll down and see what worked and what failed when it comes to engagement with the content. You may find that posts with specific content resulted in a high number of likes or shares, and so can aim to upload similar content, avoiding less popular content.
You can view user demographics
Age, gender, and geographical demographic features can also be viewed with Facebook Insights. You may find that your Facebook activities are appealing to a different demographic than expected, and you can then proceed to tailor your campaign towards individual demographics—young females or older men living in London. This will make your Facebook advertising much more relevant and effective.
Easy-to-read charts show the basic demographics of Likers (via Facebook)
Facebook Insights may not be intricate or complex enough to satisfy large, well-known brand companies. For such companies, Insights is too shallow, and not elaborate enough to fully analyse the extent of marketing success in social media channels. But for smaller businesses, or those just beginning to have a presence on the social media scene, it is a simple way to gain an overview of their Facebook page’s success and interactions.
It’s easy to get lost in the statistics of more complicated metrics packages, but Facebook Insights is extremely user-friendly, even for beginners.
So, while Insights is not quite deep enough for companies with millions of customers, for smaller or start-up businesses, it is perfect for getting to know your online audience, social media optimisation, and getting to grips with statistics without having to fork out on expensive packages that may be unnecessary.