When you set out on your business journey with Facebook, it can be easy to overlook the importance of your Facebook Insights page. We are here to make it clear: this would be a mistake! Facebook Insights contains a gold mine of information for authorpreneurs. Insights will provide you will all kinds of useful data concerning your audience and demographics and will ultimately help you design both targeted posts and ads with the end goal of growing your Page and business.
When you open your Insights page, the first thing that you’ll see is your dashboard with a list of handy links on your left. Facebooks Insights provides information on your Reach, Likes, Engagement, as well as Page Views, to name a few. You can also check out where your followers come from, and all types of other information about them. These constantly updated graphs and figures will help you narrow down who your target market is so that you can really hone in on it with a focused marketing strategy.
So, for example, if you are looking to increase your Page growth, you’ll want to pay close attention to the Page Likes and Reach metrics. If you are looking to see what kind of engagement your latest event is generating, you’ll want to check out your Event metrics. And so on. One of our favorite things about Facebook Insights is its great lay-out where everything is right there in front of you: completely accessible, cleanly organized, and extremely useful. You can quickly check out how well each of your Facebook posts are doing and see which ones people find the most engaging. This will help you benchmark the best formats for future ads, as well!
The real power of Facebook Insights is that you get a complete overview of all action on your Page, with everything displayed in an easily viewable format that can also be exported if necessary. We cannot emphasize enough how good of an idea it is to spend a few initial hours reading through your Page’s Insights and learning from the wealth of information that’s at your disposal. There is even a spot where you can compare your Page with other Pages similar to yours, which is an awesome way to see how you are doing in comparison!
We have previously discussed how important it is to understand the demographics of your target market so that you can then optimize your Ads accordingly. This is where your Facebook Audience Insights comes in handy: an overview of all types of information on your Page’s audience at your fingertips! Audience Insights tells you the average age of your audience, what their interests are, where they come from, what other Pages they like, and a plethora of other relevant data. These Audience Insights are very important for you and your business, as understanding them will help you find your way to stand out from the crowd.
If you have been around Facebook long enough, you already know that the algorithms change on a regular basis, and just posting doesn’t guarantee that you will appear on anyone’s feed. Nowadays, you have to actively optimize each post so that it will organically appear in front of your fans as they scroll through their newsfeeds. And by optimizing we mean targeting them, but also attracting them, as you need them to see it and then engage so that more people will see it. It sounds a little complicated but in reality, as long as you use all the data that Facebook has to offer, it will soon become like second nature.
By analyzing your Audience Insights, you may see, for example, that your followers are mainly female, aged between 25 and 34, prefer to use their mobile devices, and like to buy clothes and subscription services. You can compose your posts to target these people specifically OR you can allow Facebook to optimize these posts for you.
Go to your Settings tab and allow “Audience Optimization For Posts.” Then, next time you go to compose a post, you will see a new icon appear in the box next to the tagging and location icons. When used, this optimization tool will allow Facebook to restrict your post to appear in front of those who it feels will be the most likely to engage with it. You can add a ton of information into the Preferred Audience and Audience Restrictions tabs and try out for yourself to see what works and what doesn’t. Your Insights page will let you know right away which posts are more engaging than others!
It may feel a little overwhelming at first, seeing all of this data in front of you, but it’s actually really helpful and easy once you’ve familiarized yourself. Reviewing your Insights can be added to your daily routine and will quickly help you understand which factors are generating activity on your Page as well as where you are falling short.
Best,
Marquina
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