Getting the most from Facebook Insights part one

Fortunately due to the ever-increasing array of tools available to you using social media to build your nonprofit fundraising profile has never been easier. Today I wanted to share the first in a three-part guide to provide an effective overview of the greatly improved Facebook reporting tool ‘Insights’. While Facebook have provided analytics since the early days of company/business pages the changes rolled out last year make the metrics more user-friendly and far more beneficial to you.

Last summer company page users on Facebook were invited to try out the beta of Insights whereas the final version was delivered in October, even since that time I’ve seen some upgrades to the tool as enhancement continues. You might be wondering how best to build a Facebook marketing strategy for your organization and Insights provides many of the answers, even if you only decide to use some of the reports. You’re not alone if you tend to add information to your Facebook timeline on an ad-hoc basis; a blog post here, some company news there and a topical photograph at the end of a busy day. However understanding how users react to your activity is the first step in improving your results from Facebook.

Getting Started: Accessing your Facebook Insights couldn’t be simpler, on your business page just look for the Insights box and click on that section. Your admin panel also provides extra information including recent comments, overall new activity, snapshot of recent post performances along with total followers and reach of your page statistics. On the top toolbar you can also edit your page, learn about promoting your page and find Facebook help. For now though let’s just click on ‘Check out the new Page Insights’.

‘Getting Started’

Insights Landing Page: Your landing page gives you access to all of the key reports provided by Facebook along with some key data for the last week and/or the most 5 most recent posts. When you just require a snapshot of recent performance the critical data with the exception of ‘People’ is housed on this page. Navigation options include the top toolbar for all 5 categories or you can click below on any of the graphic reports.

The information provided will always compare this week (the most recent seven days) with the previous rolling seven-day period. Page likes, post reach and engagement will show you the current total with change from last week along with net changes comparing week to week. While each of these views are useful you have to dig deeper to enable Insights to assist with your marketing plan which I’ll explain over parts two and three.

The Facebook Insights landing page

In part two we’ll take an in-depth look at what can be learned from the ‘Posts’ and ‘Peoples’ page. I think many people become too obsessed with the total ‘Likes’ on their page (your page followers) when you’re looking to build engagement the data in these two sections is really key to getting the best possible Facebook results. We’ll look at when you should post, what you should post and how best to navigate these reports.
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.