Welcome to the third part of our Facebook Best Practices series. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to analyze your Facebook data to make better business decisions. Whether you are having trouble figuring out your optimal posting time on Facebook, or want to find out more about what your followers are interested in, you’re sure to get some valuable tips from diving deeper into Facebook analytics.
Analytics can be challenging. Everyone knows they’re important, but how do you know you’re making the best use of the wide range of analytical tools Facebook makes available when it comes to improving your Facebook marketing strategy?
In this post, we will go over:
✔️ How to find your optimal posting times
✔️How to analyze your best posts
✔️ How to optimize your CTA button
✔️ How to use audience analytics
To access your Facebook analytics, we recommend navigating to your Facebook Business Manager account. You can learn more about Facebook Business Manager here.
- On the right-hand side, navigate to “Posts” and you will be directed to a tab that displays “When Your Fans Are Online.”
Based off of this chart, our hypothesis would be that the best time to post would be 6 PM. This could be because most of your audience is home from work and browsing Facebook.
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Remember that you should always test how your posts perform across a few different days and times. This chart should serve as a starting point but it is always important to test post times. |
Though there are several third-party tools you can use to analyze and keep track of your social media efforts, for this blog post we will be focusing on using Facebook’s built-in analytics tools. These tools are quite powerful by themselves.
To analyze your blog posts, you’ll still be working in the Insights tab under “Posts,” but this time, scroll down and see all the posts that have been published on your Facebook timeline.
On the top right-hand side, you should be able to toggle down and filter the results by:
This is the best way to see how your most recent Facebook posts are doing. If, however, you want to compare data from previous months or analyze your top performing posts, you can do so by exporting the data and reviewing it that way.
2. Once you click “Export Data,” you are prompted to select a Data Type. Select Post Data and choose the date range that you would like to evaluate.
Facebook lets you place a call-to-action (CTA) button near the top of your page, just underneath your cover photo. The CTA button is a great way to keep your audience engaged and help direct them towards an action you’d like them to take.
Facebook gives you the ability to select a range of CTA buttons based on your business type.
Before choosing a CTA button, it is important to think through what you’d like to achieve.
Perhaps you’ve just launched a new app and want to have customers download it -- or maybe you have an ecommerce business and want clients to buy your latest products.
For more on this topic, check out our post “How to Optimize your Facebook Business Page.”
Facebook’s built-in analytics tools can aid you in your target audience research. They can help you to learn more about the demographics of your followers such as how much money they make, the other pages they follow, and more! These data points can be especially helpful when you are deciding which content to push out or which ad will resonate with your audience.
- Under Plan, click Audience Insights.
From there, you have two options:
You can either learn more about “Everyone on Facebook” or “People connected to your Page.”
To understand what may appeal to your followers, click on “People connected to your Page.” This is where it starts getting interesting.
Using Audience Insights, you can toggle between Demographics, Page Likes, Location, and Activity.
With Demographics, you should be able to find:
With Page Likes, you’re able to access the top pages your followers like.
Depending on the industry that you’re in, Page Likes can be very helpful. For example, if you are planning to run an ad campaign for a new product, you might consider partnering up with one or more of these companies.
This could be helpful if you are planning to create location-specific posts or to share trending news. If you have a significant number of fans who speak another language, such as Spanish or Tagalog, you might consider targeting them with posts in that language as well.
Now that we have learned more about those who are currently following your Page, we can go back to Audience Insights and do a deep dive into “Everyone on Facebook.”
PIcture this: you work for a digital marketing company that sells online courses. You are tasked with finding out more about your target audience so that you can create meaningful content that generates more leads. How do you go about doing this? Facebook offers a perfect first step!
Under Interests, you can add the name of other similar companies or even your competitors. In this example we added “Neil Patel,” the name of a well known digital marketer and blogger.
What shows up is a goldmine of amazing data that you can use to further your research. Facebook will show you what pages the followers of Neil Patel likes or follow.
Take a look at “Software Category,” “Product/Service,” “Internet Company,” or “Professional Service.” Maybe you can create tutorials focusing on the different tools that your target audience uses.
Those who are interested in Neil Patel get the latest news (News & Media Website) from Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, and others. You can use this information to see if you could guest post on any of these websites and reach your target audience, or advertise with them.
Neil Patel followers also interact with other entrepreneurs such as Mike Dillard, Gary Vaynerchuk, Russel Brunson, and more! Add them under “additional interests” and start to further your research.
Now that you know what entrepreneurs and brands your target audience follows, it should be easier to create social media posts that are engaging and interesting to that audience. You could, perhaps, take a popular quote from Mike Dillard and create a graphic from that, or repost a blog post from Social Media Examiner.
We hope you’ll harness the power of Facebook analytics and make more insightful decisions moving forward!
Diana Trinh is a writer, traveler, and food enthusiast.
