One of the biggest problems with Facebook and Instagram insights is that there are so many numbers to look at. When you’re run off your feet, running your small business, there’s just not enough time in the day to look at every single one – and the good news is that you don’t have to!
You don’t have to be a social media data analyst as well as everything else! You simply need to understand enough about the numbers so you can make better marketing decisions.
There is no single most important figure!
There really isn’t – it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your social media posts.
- If you’re trying to grow your audience, follower growth and reach may be useful.
- If you’re trying to build engagement and community, comments, shares and saves become more important.
- If you’re trying to drive people to your website, link clicks matter.
- If you’re trying to generate enquiries, messages and website visits will be more important than likes.
So, the first question to ask yourself is ‘What am I trying to achieve?’ Then you know where to start.
Metric 1 – Reach
Reach is worth looking at as it tells you how many people your content was shown to. But don’t think that just because you have a higher reach, that it’s a better post. That’s not necessarily true. A post can reach thousands of people and generate absolutely no meaningful response.
A different post might reach a much smaller audience, but result in comments, shares, website visits or enquiries.
Reach tells you about visibility – it doesn’t tell you about value.
Metric 2 – Shares
For most businesses, shares are one of the most interesting things to keep an eye on, because they mean that someone has thought that your post is worth passing on to their followers.
Why might it be shared? It could be that it’s funny, inspirational, useful, relatable or because they think it might help their followers. Whatever the reason, the point is that it’s been shared – they didn’t just scroll past.
So, if you get shares, look at the post and see why – what made people want to share it? Then you can think of ways to create similar content with the same qualities.
Metric 3 – Saves
Saves are another useful metric – it again shows that you stopped the scroll long enough for someone to read your post and think it’s worth saving for later. Saves are often the result of educational or inspirational content.
If you get a save on your posts, it’s worth looking at it and finding out why – again, you can then create similar posts in future.
Metric 4 – Comments
Comments – this is my favourite metric! It shows that your content has started a conversation, or someone might be asking a question or sharing their opinion of what you’ve written.
Comments give you useful information about what matters to your audience. Look at the type of comments you get…It’s inevitable, you’ll get the odd ‘love this’, ‘cute’, or just ‘have a good day’. But you’ll also get comments such as ‘I’ve been struggling with exactly this’, or you may get a question asking for more information or giving you an example of their experience.
These comments can help give you more ideas for future content and spark a two-way conversation – or both. Your audience is telling you what they like, dislike or what they could really use help with.
Metric 5 – Link clicks and website visits
If you want to achieve driving more traffic to your website, this is the metric to look at. You might post something that gets 50 likes – you might post something that only gets 10. But if the second post generates 8 website clicks and the first doesn’t generate any, which one is more useful to your business?
This is another reason why likes shouldn’t automatically be your measure of success.
Metric 6 – Profile visits
This tends to be more linked to Instagram – profile visits can tell you that your post has sparked curiosity. Someone saw it and thought that they need to check out your business – so they go to your profile to find out more.
BUT, if lots of people are visiting your profile, but very few are following you or contacting you, look at your profile.
Is it clear? Does it clearly explain who you are, what you do/sell, or what you help people with? Does your personality shine through. Is there a clear reason why someone should want to click on your website to find out more?
Sometimes your insights don’t just tell you what’s working – they also help you find out where you need to improve things.
Metric 7 – Follower growth
Ok, so I know that I have said before that you don’t need to become obsessed with follower growth – and you don’t, but it does matter.
It matters in that it’s useful if your growing audience are potential customers. But 2,000 random followers aren’t necessarily better than 500, if those 500 genuinely like your business and want what you sell or offer.
Remember too, that net follower growth gives you a more realistic picture that simply looking at how many new followers you’ve gained. Look at this metric more as a trend than a daily score. Are you gradually attracting the right people?
Now – what can you ignore?
OK, maybe not so much ignore, but more you can stop being obsessed about!
Likes – they’re not meaningless as they are a useful indication that someone enjoyed your content. But they don’t tell you everything – and there are people who scroll through Facebook and Instagram and just stick a like by every post.
Don’t be disappointed if your post doesn’t get lots of likes, it might still generate website visits, profile visits, enquiries or sales – and even shares and saves. You need to look at the bigger picture.
Impressions – This is a number that can be useful, but if you’re already thinking the analytics you already know about are a lot, you could discard this one. Impressions are useful if you’re trying to understand how often content is being shown. It only tracks visibility – let me give you an example. Your post shows it reached 100 people, but impressions say 300. Your reach is the actual number of people who were shown it – impressions are the number of times it was looked at, so could be multiple times from one person. It could be that on one particular day; your post appears in the same person’s feed every time they go into it. This will count as 1 reach, but multiple impressions. So, not really an accurate number.
Don’t worry about…
- The fact your engagement rate went from 4.2% to 3.9%. It will fluctuate every day.
- Don’t worry if your reach dropped slightly from one week to the next.
Your audience behaves differently every day and from week to week. You know that there will be some weeks that you see businesses you follow in your feed – other times, you won’t see any that you know or follow. This all affects your numbers.
- The algorithm changes
- People go on holiday
- School holidays happen
- The weather changes
- Life happens
All these things affect the numbers…surprisingly! My advice is to look for patterns, not tiny fluctuations.
Don’t worry about your follower count from yesterday. You may have gained three followers; you may have lost six. Your follower count isn’t going to tell you much about how your marketing is performing.
This is one statement I always remember from some training I did early on about social media…
You’re building a business, not taking part in a popularity contest.
This is so true! I see businesses posting that they got an award from Facebook for starting conversations or for putting out engaging content. I’m going to share something now – I HAVE NEVER EVER had any of these in the whole 14 years I’ve been in business – NOT ONCE!
It used to really bother me – now it doesn’t – I’m happy for those of you who do, but I’m happy that my content is liked because my audience say so and react! That’s not to take away from those who do get these recognitions – I’m pleased that small businesses get noticed – and Facebook absolutely should do that! But if, like me, you don’t get those accolades, don’t let it worry you!
Finally, here is a summary of what you should track…
- If your goal is visibility – look at Reach
- If you goal is engagement – look at comments, shares and saves
- If your goal is website traffic – look at link clicks and website visits and check you have those links in your profile or bio.
- If you goal is audience growth – look at follower growth and net follower growth.
- If your goal is enquiries – look at messages, profile visits and website clicks
Finally, if your goal is sales – you need to look beyond the metrics and look at your marketing and how it actually contributes to sales. For sales, marketing is the most important metric of all – your strategy, your content, and how it all fits together.
Remember – your aim isn’t to create one lucky post, it’s to understand your audience well enough to create more of the content they actually want to see – and that’s where your metrics help.
If your goal is more sales, I can help you look at your marketing strategy and help you build a workable one, along with a content strategy and your customer journey – all in easy to follow, step by step instructions.
Message me if you want to get your marketing on track for more sales.
Marketing Made Simple.