10 metrics you should be using on Facebook

Since Facebook’s launch in 2004, retailers have welcomed social media as a valuable tribune to promote their businesses. It’s become second nature to most of us; upload content, click, and your message will be broadcasted for the world to see.Whether it’s sharing a cat video or uploading a meticulously edited blogpost for your shop, you can be sure your content won’t be left unseen.

Facebook currently ranks as the world’s most populated social media platform, counting 2 billion users. This may leave you with the exciting impression that your business is benefiting from a worldwide reach. Yet, not knowing how to direct the right content at the right people might mean you’re propelling your message into a sea of uninterested users. Understanding Facebook’s Metrics is fundamental in ensuring that you address a demographic that is relevant to your business and who will actively engage with your posts.

We broke down Facebook’s lingo so you can get a better understanding of your store’s social media performance and translate those views and likes into concrete information you can profit from.

1. Reach

Reaching out to new and potential customers is a priority for most retailers, so it’s not surprising their focus first goes toward the Reach metric. Understanding a post’s reach allows you to see the size of the audience viewing your content. This is a number you’ll want to maximize; the larger your reach, the more users you are exposing to your brand. While this is one of the most commonly used metrics, don’t make the mistake of reading it as the most important. Many times, quality can trump quantity and although you may reach an impressive number of users, you need to account for other factors to ensure that your content is interesting to them.

2. Impressions

The number of impressions a post gets is often confused with a post’s reach. Reach refers to the amount of people were made aware of a post while impressions cue you in on how many times your content was viewed. Eg. If a single user views your post twice they will be included once in your reach and twice in your impressions. Users who generate more impressions are more likely to recall your brand and perform a call to action (CTA). Having a large number of impressions in relation to reach means that you are creating multiple brand touchpoints with your users.

3. Post Engagement

While reach and impressions are important indicators of your brand’s online visibility, post engagement signifies a more active interest on behalf of users. People who engage with your posts are interested enough to interact with it, whether by liking, commenting, sharing or clicking a photo or CTA. As a tool for independent businesses, Facebook should be used to nurture and create relationships with your users. The number of post engagements is the perfect metric to measure the effectiveness of your social strategy in addressing current and future customers in a meaningful way.

4. Shares

When it comes to engaging with digital content, shares are possibly the clearest and most valuable indicator of a user’s genuine interest in your brand. When a user shares your content to their own content for all of their friends and followers to see, they are increasing the potential organic reach of your post. This means people are not only registering the information you are directing at them, they are getting excited about it and want their circle of contacts to see it too. You’ll want to keep track of how many shares your posts are getting and ensure that your social strategy fosters as many exchanges around your content as possible.

5. Link Clicks

While social media is a great tool to create an authentic relationship and nurture your existing customers, it can also be used as a tool to generate new clientele. Link clicks indicate the number of users who followed a call-to-action to an external website that you placed on your post. Factoring this metric into your brand’s success evaluation enables you to gage whether you are targeting the appropriate audience on Facebook. A low amount of link clicks might be a sign that you need to reorient your content toward another demographic or modify it to make it more adapted to your targeted audience.

6. Web Conversions

You may have noticed that your link clicks are low, but your number of web conversions is high. This might mean that your brand is reaching the right customer type, but that your Facebook messaging needs to be reviewed. Web conversions offer a clear view of how many users are taking the time to visit your website and performing activities such as registering, checking out, adding items to their shopping cart or viewing a particular page. Virtually any page on your website can represent a conversion, and you can create and add the Facebook pixel code on any page of your website.

In relation to link clicks, web conversions allow you to measure how well your website converts potential customers you are targeting on Facebook. This metric is important, as a post with many link clicks and little web conversions may ultimately show that you are targeting the wrong users.

7. Page Followers

When you like a page, you automatically follow it; however, users can continue to like your page and unfollow your content updates. On the other hand, Page Followers are users who receive your content updates on their newsfeed. While the number of likes your page generates reflects the growth of your social media presence, it is important to measure the number of followers your page has, as you want to ensure as many users as possible are viewing your content. If your number of likes and followers are too disparate, it might be time to revisit your posts’ style or frequency.

8. Page Views

For most retailers, being active on social media is a way to maintain the interest and loyalty of current customers as well as foster relationships with new ones. You’ll want to be updated on the quantity and frequency at which people view your content but don’t neglect to notice how many of these people are new to your page. The Page Views tool shows you the number of times your business page has been viewed by users who are either logged in to their account or not logged in to their account.You can gather important insight into how well your page is converting likes and followers by looking at page views in relation to the number of new likes and followers your page receives. If you are receiving a high number of page views with little new likes and follows, you might consider changing elements of your page to increase conversion.

9. People

Now that you’ve assessed how many users are engaging with your page and how they are doing so, you need to dig and discover the people behind the likes and views. The people metric gives you insight into the demographics of users who like your page. How old are they? What’s their gender? Where are they from? Knowing who your followers are is crucial to developing successful communication strategies, as well as understanding which of your business’ target customers are active on your social platforms. This metric should be monitored regularly and used to adapt your social messaging.

10. Message response time and rate

Your business’ social media profile serves as a vehicle for content you wish to transmit to customers but it’s also a common way for potential customers to reach you. As much as you care about how well they engage with your messages, users want to know that you are responsive and available to them. The message response time and rate tool clues users in on the quality and rapidity of your service. Message Response measures the the average time it takes your Page to send initial responses to new messages in one day while Response Rate is the percentage of messages your page has answered. A low message response time and high message response rate shows your users that you are available and open to interacting with them. Customers then trust you more as they are comfortable knowing that if something goes wrong with their product or service or if they have a comment or question, you’ll be there to help them out.

Despite how accessible Facebook marketing may be to business owners, making your online presence relevant and lucrative is no easy feat. Thankfully, Facebook and other social sites provide retailers with tools that help them shine a light on their online strategy’s strengths and weaknesses so they can learn to speak their customers’ language. Metrics confirm that there is force in numbers (of likes) but also remind retailers of the individuals behind each click, encouraging them to foster authentic communication between them and their customers.