Facebook Metrics Exposed: A Deep Dive into Facebook Metrics and What They Mean for Your Organization

According to Pew Research Center (2021), 69% of U.S. adults use Facebook. Social media is a powerful tool for businesses and individuals to connect with people and promote products by creating and sharing content. With so many users flooding news feeds, how do you make sure your business' content does not get left behind? Data-driven strategic planning is the best way to make sure your content reaches the right audience and inspires action. Metrics help create content that resonates with the right audience, and understanding those metrics can better align your content with your marketing goals. In this fact sheet, we will help you understand Facebook metrics. This fact sheet will cover audience, awareness, engagement, conversion and customer care metrics. These metrics can help you make strategic choices in Facebook and other digital marketing.

 

Audience Metrics

The first step in your marketing plan should be to identify your target audience. When identifying a target audience, it is important to be as specific as possible. Four key levels of segmentation to analyze are your audience’s geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics. When looking at audience metrics on social media, you can see demographic data on your followers. These metrics allow you to assess if your content is reaching your intended target audience. Facebook will give you insights concerning the following demographics:

 

Gender and age:

• Audience insights on Facebook will show the percentage of your followers who are men and women.
• Audience insights will also show what percentage of your followers fall into specific age ranges. Age range data is split by gender so you can see the percentage of followers you have between the age of 25-35 years old who are men and the percentage of followers you have between the age of 25-35 years old who are women.

 

Location

• Audience insights show which countries and cities your followers represent as a percentage.

 

Awareness Metrics

Awareness metrics show how much attention a brand gets on social media. The more recognizable your brand is, the more success you will have in converting Facebook followers to customers. Customers are more likely to remember and recommend brands they are familiar with. Effective marketing leads customers to recall, recognize and relate to your brand ,and that starts with awareness of the brand. Each organization should set metric goals that are most related to its business objectives.

 

Brand Mentions

• This is how many times people mention your brand online. Mentions can include posts or stories your brand is tagged in. It can also include informal mentions, such as posts or stories you are not tagged in but are talking about your brand or someone showing something with your brand on it in a social media post.

 

Page Likes

• When someone likes your page, they will show up as part of your audience.

 

Page Followers

• Users can choose different settings when they follow your page. The default setting will show your posts in their feed in the usual order. The favorites setting will prioritize your posts in their feed. Clicking unfollow will remove your posts from their feed. When a user likes your page, they automatically follow the page with the default setting. Users can follow your page without liking your page. When you click on your followers at the top of the Facebook page, you can see who likes your page and who follows it.

 

Reach

• Reach refers to the number of accounts that saw a post or page. Reach is influenced by when your audience is most active and what your audience finds valuable about the post. Generally, when your content gets shared on Facebook, it increases your reach.
• Reach metrics can be seen on individual posts, stories or your overall page within a given timeframe.

 

Impressions

• Impressions refer to the number of times your content was displayed, whether it was clicked on or not.
• A viewer does not have to engage with your post for it to count as an impression.
• This metric includes multiple views by the same account.

 

Plays

• For video content, the number of plays indicates the number of times your reel starts to play for each impression, excluding replays.

 

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics measure how many accounts are interacting with your content versus accounts just seeing the content on your page. Engagement is an important measure of how involved your audience is with your content. Generally, an involved audience is more likely to click links shared on your page, visit your website, sign up for a newsletter or purchase your products. Each organization should set metric goals that are most related to its business objectives.

 

Reactions

• Users can react to your content with the reactions seen below:

Comments

• Users can leave comments on your posts to interact with you, your brand and your content.

 

Direct Messages

• Users can send your page direct messages that will show up in Facebook messenger. If a user replies or reacts to your stories, this will also show up in your direct messages.

 

Shares

• Users can share your content to their page or stories, adding text above your original post. Your page still appears as the original poster when someone shares your content.

 

Total Engagement

• Engagement reflects the total number of accounts that left reactions, shares or comments. Engagement metrics can be seen on individual posts, stories or your overall page engagement within a given timeframe.
• Page insights show the total number of accounts that engaged with your content, along with a percent increase or decrease from the previous time frame’s engagement total.
• Total engagement rates give you a more accurate representation of how your content is performing relative to the size of your page. To calculate your total engagement rate, you can take the sum of reactions, comments and shares, divide it by the number of followers your page has and multiply by 100.
  • If the content posted on my page had 49,000 reactions, comments and shares last month and my page has 650 followers, my total engagement rate is:
    49,000/650 = 75.38 x 100 = 7,538% total engagement

 

Conversion Metrics

Conversion metrics show the behaviors and actions your audience take when interacting with your content. These metrics are key performance indicators that measure how well your social media strategy converts Facebook users into active participants in your business. This data can be used to develop a social media strategy that resonates with your audience.

 

Conversion Rate

• The conversion rate represents the number of users who took a desired action after clicking a link on your post or ad. You get to decide what a conversion means to your business. Some examples of conversion actions include:
  • Downloads
  • Subscriptions
  • Registrations
  • Sales
• To calculate your conversion rate, you divide link clicks by the action you wanted the audience to take. Let’s say you made a post asking people to sign up for a waitlist. You had 683 people click the link you shared, and 51 people joined your waitlist. 51/683 = .075 x 100 = 7.5% conversion rate.

 

Click-through Rate

• Click-through rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks your post or ad gets by the number of impressions that post received.
  • If my post had 104 impressions and two link clicks, my click-through rate is: 2/104 = .019 x 100 = 1.9% click-through rate
• This metric measures how effectively your content is driving your audience to take action. A low click-through rate means your content has a high number of impressions and a low number of clicks, which indicates your audience is not resonating with your content.

 

Customer Care Metrics

Customer care metrics provide insight into how your business is perceived by customers. These metrics also hold you accountable for responding promptly to customer questions and concerns. Tracking customer care shows data that can help improve customer loyalty and retention.

 

Reviews and Testimonials

• Positive and negative reviews and testimonials from users who have worked with you or bought a product from you are important to track. This can look like comments on your content, rating your page, leaving a review or endorsing your brand.

 

Customer Response Rate

• The customer response rate is calculated by the number of messages you respond to divided by the number of messages you receive.
  • If I have seven messages sent to my business account, and I only respond to five of them, my customer response rate is:
    5/7 = .71 x 100 = 71% response rate

 

Customer Response Time

• Customer response time indicates how long a page will take to respond to a message.

 

Social media platforms and algorithms used to push content on social media feeds are constantly evolving, and your social media plan must evolve with the changing platforms. Being aware of what metrics are available, what they mean and how they measure overall effectiveness on social media makes it easier to adapt social media strategies. By starting with an audience metric analysis, you can see who you are reaching and tailor content to a specific target audience. Awareness metrics allow you to track how much attentions your brand gets, which can help convert followers to customers. Engagement metrics help build trust and relatability associated with your brand. Conversion metrics allow you to assess how well your current social media strategy converts traffic on your page to perform specific actions. Customer care metrics hold you accountable for fostering communications with customers, which can improve customer perceptions. Tracking all these metrics together can help you adapt your social media plans smoothly when social media platforms and algorithms change.

 

References

Newberry, C. (2022, June 23). 16 Key Social Media Metrics to Track in 2023. Hootsuite https://blog.hootsuite. com/social-media-metrics/

 

Meta Business Help Center. (2023). About Insights in Meta Business Suite. https://www.facebook.com/business/ help/700570830721044?id=765488040896522&ref=f bb_fbs_products

 

Hootsuite. (2023, March 19). Facebook Page Metrics. https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/5679252670107Facebook-Page-metrics 

 

Auxier, B., Anderson, M. (2021, April 7). Social Media Use in 2021. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch. org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/