This is Day 27 of the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program. You can learn more about the program here.
Facebook provides all page administrators with a tool for tracking the growth of the page as well as the number of interactions on your page. There are a few numbers which you can look at to determine how to improve you page most effectively. Ultimately by performing the steps outlined over the 30 days to 3,000 fans program, you should have figured out the most effective methods of improving your page.
Understanding Post Quality
Facebook provides one metric which they suggest page administrators use to determine the quality of their posts called “Post Quality”. I tell most people to take this metric with a grain of salt. The system encourages that you increase the volume of posts that you make to a reasonable level (2 -3 times a day) and to improve the quality of the posts as measured by the number of comments and likes on each post.
As I’ve written a number of times, it’s possible to increase the number of comments and likes by asking questions as well as posting more relevant posts. I’ve also found that jokes tend to get a larger response. Facebook then determines post quality in a number of ways but the most obvious is the number of interactions as a percentage of the size of your fan base. If 50 percent of your fan base is interacting regularly, you’ll end up with a high post quality score.
While there are a number of other metrics that you can keep track of to increase your post quality, I honestly don’t think this is the most effective measure of the success of your page. It may be possible to attract a large number of fans who are simply not active. Well known brands and personalities tend to get a larger number of replies per post. The best model to improving your post quality is to test out various types of posts and see which attract the most responses.
Whenever you find a post which attracts a large response, you may want to make it a habit to post similar updates.
5 Important Insight Metrics
Total Fans And Unsubscribed Fans
One of the most useful charts is the number of fans you have and the number of unsubscribed fans. Depending on the type of page you have and the level activity on your page, you will tend to see different growth charts. One of the most important levels to monitor is the percentage of fans who’ve unsubscribed. If this percentage is increasing over time, you may want to check out the type of content you’re posting as well as the volume of posts. While posting often is important, you can chase fans away by posting too often.
Interactions
As the number of fans on your Facebook page increases, the number of users interacting with your page should increase as well. Whether it’s comments, wall posts, or likes, you can view the number of interactions on your Facebook Page by viewing the “interactions” graph. This graph tends to be pretty useful for seeing how well you are engaging users on your Facebook page and also happens to be the default graph when you view your page insights.
Interactions Per Post
This happens to be one of my favorite charts. If you’re fan base is growing you should also slowly improve the quality of your posts as you see how fans respond. It can be a misleading chart though as interactions per post should increase proportionally to the number of fans you have. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t show any percentage charts but basic division will give you that information. If your interactions per post aren’t increasing over time then you aren’t doing a good job of producing valuable content. Tomorrow I’ll be discussing content strategy more in depth if this is an area where you are having problems.
Page Views
If you’re a webmaster there is no doubt that you have spent countless hours working with Google Analytics. The page view has become one of the standard measures of success on the internet. This chart is pretty straight forward as it depicts the total number of pageviews to your Facebook Page. Whether it’s new fans or existing fans, all page views are grouped into this metric. As you grow your page, the total number of daily page views should be increasing as well.
Demographics
One of the best features of Facebook page insights is the ability to track the demographics of your fan base. While Facebook has the breakdown of your fans’ demographics as percentages you can also view the absolute number of users within your Facebook page by their gender and age. By viewing the demographics chart you will be able to see which demographic groups are growing quickest as well as which demographic groups are the largest.
Daily Task
Spend some time navigating your Facebook Page metrics. To get there, click on “See All” from within the “Insights” box on the left-hand side of your Facebook Page.
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Hey Nick,
Great advice, but do you know if there is rhyme or reason for Facebook showing you your full insights page or not?
Our page has over 6,000 fans, and a post quality that is fairly consistently 4 stars–yet last week we were unable to see our full insights because facebook said our post quality was not high enough. Is there any rhyme or reason to this?
Jay
Comment by Jay Carmona — September 16, 2009 @ 10:45 am
yea we were having trouble with insights a few days now but we believe its a facebook glitch
Comment by lenny mauricio — September 16, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
thank you for teaching the novice as well as advanced social networker on FB.
Debby
HomeopathyWorldcommunity
Comment by Debby Bruck — September 16, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
@Jay You may not have had enough interactions over the past 2 weeks. Facebook requires a minimum number of interactions per measured period in order to protect the privacy of your fans.
Comment by Dave Kerpen — September 16, 2009 @ 7:27 pm
It's too bad FB doesn't consider the outside world, for example click-throughs and comments on your articles via FriendFeed, Digg, Delicious etc. Maybe they will do that once they swallow a few more of these companies.
Comment by John McTigue — September 19, 2009 @ 10:39 am
Would like to asked..my problem is..to get fan's name by using fan's user id after i know total of the fans from Fan Page Insights?
Comment by Sofia Hanoum Jamalud — October 26, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
Great post Nick, thanks for this! I have a quick question, I know that total interactions is defined as the average number of comments, wall posts and likes for each piece of content. However for one of my business pages, the interactions per post does not appear to be the average combination of these three metrics. Do you have any information on this? Is there by chance another metric that it's including? Any help on this would be great!
Comment by Naomi — October 28, 2009 @ 10:25 am
Does anyone know any way to get more insight into your fans? I want to know where our fans live — i.e., number of fans per state, per city, per university. I cannot find anywhere where you can see this type of data. Also, I would like to know, who were the last 100 fans to join or the last 10. We see how our fan list is growing, but cannot tell who the most recent fans are.
Comment by Jim — November 5, 2009 @ 5:04 am
hey
i just wanted to know the unsubscribed fans on my FB page.
(names of individuals)
Comment by sandy paul — January 1, 2010 @ 4:11 am
I'm managing the fan page for an annual festival outside Houston. This is my first go around.
And I was wondering. I have 5 stars, and a growing fan base, through ads we're running, but post quality is 12.X
Is that good or bad? Reading some of the previous comments, I can't really be sure if the PQ number is all that valid.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spring-TX/Texas-Cra...
Comment by mark matsusaki — March 26, 2010 @ 10:10 pm
Is there a way I can monitor new comments on my business page … say I add an update a long time back and now someone visits today and writes crap as a comment, whats the way to get a notification for each comment to moderate?
Comment by AjiNIMC — April 25, 2010 @ 6:02 am
hi
not clear to me on page views
I only have 20 fans, insight says i have around 2 'unique page views' a day,
but i have around 100 'page views' a day.
can you explain what these two categories mean, also these 100 people are they people who see the full fan page or just the newsfeed on someone elses page?
or did they find it via search check the full fan page but not 'Like"
would be great to get the details
Comment by jules — April 27, 2010 @ 12:27 am
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/U/unique_visitor.ht...
hope this helps Jules!
Comment by [Kayo] Photography — June 25, 2010 @ 8:46 am
Does any one know if the FB stats are for only "fans". Will it track activity of any person visiting the fan page? even if they are not a "fan"?
Comment by Shepherd — July 13, 2010 @ 12:30 pm
I’m exploring this Insights option for my company’s Facebook page this morning and am still utterly confused as to how to get started… I am simply trying to see what visitors are viewing my company’s facebook page, viewing my posts to my facebook page, and possibly who is SHARING the posts to other users.
How do I do this? It’s asking me to enter a domain when I’m trying to get the application. What information do I need to enter to track the information I need? Help anyone?
Comment by Nikki — August 11, 2010 @ 9:42 am
Can we see who views our fb?
please someone answer me
Comment by sahar — August 31, 2010 @ 11:33 am
No. They have to "Like" the fanpage first..
Comment by @KIDDERUPDATES — March 16, 2011 @ 1:01 pm
Did you get an answer to this question? I would also like to know if one can see who unsubscribes?
Comment by Louisa — April 17, 2011 @ 5:54 pm
http://www.smoeye.com can do it for you
Comment by smoeye — December 29, 2011 @ 4:25 am