By using Facebook Insights, you’ll be able to determine the best time of day to post, the best day of the week to post, and what type of content is most popular.

It is important to note that the Facebook Insights tool is constantly updated to reflect your page’s developments and any patterns that may form. So you’ll need to keep checking back to keep in the loop.

So, what can you learn from Facebook insights?

1. How to Access Facebook Insights

Go to your Facebook Business page, then click “See All,” under “Insights” on desktop.

This is the main Insights dashboard, and here you’ll see information about trends, posts, and your audience.

You’ll be able to see your most recent posts, Facebook likes, reach, actions on page, the gender and age of your audience, and much, much more. Don’t be afraid to dive in here; it might look a bit overwhelming, but it is pretty easy to navigate.

2. Facebook Insights: Virality of Posts

One of the most important things you can learn is what type of content is likley to go viral.

Click on Posts, you’ll see your latest Facebook posts and learn about their reach and engagement. This is especially useful if you would like to see which posts were the most successful.

You can sort posts based on:

• Reach (organic vs paid)
• Type of post
• Targeting
• Reach engagement
• Date published

This is useful if you want to know the success of a certain post (i.e., a video you posted recently). So instead of sifting through all the posts, you can simply sort by videos.

You’ll be able to see the date the post was made, the title of the post, the type of post, who it targeted, reach, and engagement. You won’t see the virality in a percentage form anymore, but you can still gain a ton of useful knowledge about your post behavior.

Takeaway: Knowing the reaction to different types of Facebook posts gives you the knowledge to create more content that your fans like, which will then increase your branding, reach, and hopefully drive traffic to your website.

3. Facebook Insights: Page Likes

If you click on “Likes,” you’ll be able to see the demographics as well as the locations of your fans. You’ll also be able to see their age groups.

In this example, the Cheap Flights South Africa fan page has a much larger female fan base than a male fan base. We are also able to see that most users are in Cape Town, South Africa, so they should customize their posts accordingly.

Below you’ll see another graph that looks like this:

Now you can search by new likes and even by unlikes. For example, in the above graph, you can see the fan page had some unlikes.

It would be useful to go back to your page and see what posts you wrote on those days. Your previous posts may be able to give you an indication as to what went wrong that day.

Weren’t you entertaining enough? Or were you just too much? Perhaps you posted too many articles and not enough images? It is crucial that you do this step otherwise the stats are pretty much just stats.

What to get more likes? Check out this video for seven strategies to grow your Facebook likes:

Takeaway: Having demographic information about your fans allows you to build personas of your target audience. This can be very beneficial when creating landing pages, home page copy, and overall marketing messages.

4. Facebook Insights: Reach

It’s all very good and well that you have a Facebook business page, but how much of your content is actually reaching your fans? Who is talking about your page? Are any of your fans referring your page to others or sharing your images with their friends?

The Reach section, located just under Likes in the left-hand bar, will provide this crucial information.

It will also tell you how often your posts are marked as hide, report as spam and unlike.

Takeaway: The important part of the Reach area is that you can see what days and types of content help you reach the widest possible audience. (Unlike before, you won’t see reach in terms of paid Facebook ads; you’ll need to use the Ads Manager for this information.

5. Facebook Check-Ins

Facebook check-ins can be really useful for companies that have a physical location. Fans that ‘check-in’ when they arrive at your business show their loyalty to you in doing so.

Under the check-in section, you’ll be able to see the number of people who have checked in, where they live, whether they are male or female, etc.

Takeaway: Check-in data is extremely valuable for businesses with a physical presence. From being able to measure the social media impact on sales, to monitoring your busiest days – definitely, dig into this info!

6. Want More Detailed Facebook Insights Data? 

Insights already offers a ton of data, but did you know you can actually export the data? Export your data using the top right button on the Insights page.

This little block will pop up:

Select Page Level Data and the MS Excel format option. You can choose a date range for the data.

Once you’ve downloaded the insights you’ll see never-ending columns of data which may at first seem overwhelming. At the bottom, you’ll also see various data sheets containing information such as key metrics, daily like sources, daily viral reach etc.

Each column in the key metrics sheet provides you will different information. For example, if you scroll to the Lifetime Total Likes column you’ll be able to see how many likes your page received over the dates you specified.

Total Daily Reach is useful as well and here you’ll be able to see the number of people your posts may have reached (even from friends of your fans).

Takeaway: Sometimes looking at the tabulated data can provide more insights than graphs. If you’re proficient with Excel, you can slice and dice your data to find out more about your Fans and social media impact.

My recommendation: Don’t be afraid to dive in and see what’s inside!

Conclusion

From learning what types of Facebook posts are most effective to learning where your audience is located, Facebook Insights provides a plethora of useful information about your business page.

However, the key is to take that data and create something meaningful with it. Use the data to track the performance of your page, find emerging patterns, and develop a more effective social media strategy.

What have you learned about your post or audience from Facebook Insights? How will that data help you create a more effective Facebook strategy? 

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights appeared first on Neil Patel.

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