What are social media insights?
Simply put, social media insights = data that tells you how your social media content is performing.
Also known as analytics, or social media metrics, your social media insights should be monitored regularly to ensure your efforts are actually having a positive impact on your business.
The key is to determine what your goal is before you start to track your insights. What do you want to achieve? Brand awareness? Engagement? Leads? Conversions or sales? Deciding on this first will determine which insights you should be focusing on.
What do they all mean?
Engagement: Likes, comments, shares and clicks
Impressions: The number of times your post appears in someone’s timeline
Post Reach: The number of unique users who saw your post
Post Engagements or Interactions: The number of engagements divided by impressions or reach
Page Reach: The number of people who saw any of your post content during a given period of time
Page Views: The number of times a Page’s profile has been viewed by people
Followers: The number of people following your page
New Followers: The number of people new to following your page in a given period of time
Profile Visits: The number of people visiting your profile from a post
Website Clicks: The number of people clicking on your website link from your profile
How do I check my insights?
You can find your social media insights through your account on each social media platform. Or, you can use one of these tools (some free, some paid for).
Go to your business page > Scroll down the menu on the left hand side > Click on Insights.
Or, use the Facebook Business Suite app (I find this much easier to use!)
From your business profile > Click on Insights
If you don’t have this option it is because you don’t have a Professional account. You can easily switch your account to a Professional account though. Just go to Settings > Account > Scroll down to Switch to a Professional account
From the Home Page > Click More > Analytics
If you have a personal account, go to your Profile > Scroll down until you see Dashboard. This gives you some limited information about how many people have viewed your profile and posts, and how many times you have appeared in a search.
From a business account, go to your business and you will see Analytics on the top menu.
You should also look at your top performing posts – do you see a pattern? Are you top performing posts videos, images, or text only posts? Do more of what is performing well, and less (or none) of what is performing badly!
What do I do with my social media insights data?
The first thing you need to do is have somewhere to store this data so you can see, at a glance, how your social media is performing. I use a simple Google Sheet for this (drop me an email if you’d like me to send you a copy).
Next, at the end of each month, make a note of all of the data you want to track. Think about those goals – brand awareness, engagement, leads, website visits, sales?
Brand awareness = mentions and reach
Engagement = engagement and post engagement
Leads = always ask your leads where they found you and make a note of this on your tracker
Website visits = website clicks
Sales = find out more about Facebook/Instagram shop insights here
Step back and take a look at the data. Where can you improve? What needs tweaking? A lot of this will be trial and error, but by monitoring your social media insights regularly, you will get there quicker. You’ll waste less time posting content that isn’t working for you and you’ll get to learn what your audience wants.
