Media Metrics and Analytics Lecture 5 1 Facebook

Media Metrics and Analytics Lecture 5 -1 Facebook Insights

There is More to Facebook than Profiles • There’s a difference between profiles and pages • Profiles are standard personal Facebook sites • Pages are for organizations, businesses, public figures, bands, etc. • You add “fans” on a page (as opposed to “friends” on a profile

Page Analytics The main consideration is that pages allow you access to analytics You can do some analysis on profiles, and there are third-party programs that you can use, but a page allows you access to a very powerful data analysis tool – Facebook Analytics

Overall Concepts Continued… • Search for “create a page on Facebook” and you’ll be taken to the appropriate area • You can create a page if you want, but it’s not necessary at this point • If you create a page, be sure it’s within Facebook guidelines as you don’t want account suspended

Locating Insights On a page (remember, not on a profile) Insights is on the top menu bar

What Facebook Insights Measures • Please see the assigned videos for a walk-through • There’s a lot to cover, so in this lecture we’ll focus primarily on the concepts • Note when viewing the tapes or screenshots that the layout you see may be different because layouts change and browsers and devices may render differently

What Facebook Insights Measures, Continued… • All measures are viewable via a dropdown selection of today, yesterday, last seven days, and last 28 days • Those are the only choices, which is something of a limitation

Here’s What a Summary Page Looks Like Set to “Yesterday” – Meaning Only What Happened in a One-Day Period

You Can Explore these Metrics on Your Summary Page, Among Others These are the measures you’ll see on the summary page (you can click on the main measure for more information), listed in the right-to-left manner they are displayed…these are not necessarily in the order of any presumed importance • Actions on page – a count of people who clicked on various “action” buttons, such as phone number or clicking through to a website • Page views – a count of how many people saw the page

Metrics on the Preview Page, Continued… • Page previews – how many times a viewer hovered over a preview…not generally a measure most people pay much attention to • Page likes – the number of people who liked the page…if you drill down on this you can see time periods and the geographic area the likes came from

Main Facebook Metrics, Continued… • Post reach – the number of accounts in which a post from your site appeared in the news feed • Recommendations – the number or times someone recommended your page • Post engagements – primarily the sum of likes, comments, and shares

Main Facebook Metrics, Continued… • Page responsiveness – the percentage of messages you responded to, along with an average of how long it took you • Videos – the number of times videos on your page played for at least three seconds • Page followers – the number of people who followed your page

Important Characteristics of Facebook Analytics • Most metrics depict free (”organic”) views and paid views…paid views may come from ads or promotions…he re’s how it is broken down in “post reach”

Important Characteristics of Facebook Insights, Continued…. Timing is important in social media because it’s thought to be very important to post when the maximum number of followers are online. Clearly, followers of a band that plays late nights in clubs will probably have different schedules than followers of a page for dairy farmers. On your summary page, Facebook will analyze the peak times for your followers (when they are online)

Important Characteristics of Facebook Insights, Continued…. You can also get a general idea of how the page is performing over time on the summary page’s top five posts listings. The ”Boost Post” button is for buying a paid promotion

Key Takeaways from Facebook Insights • Facebook makes money from advertising – including from “boosted” posts, which can be purchased for relatively small amounts of money and inserted into more newsfeeds • One reason Facebook provides its data separated between organic and paid is to give users an idea of how effective their paid material is…and in theory, boost sales of paid posts and other items

Key Takeaways from Facebook Insights, Continued… • Facebook is unique in that it brings high-tech marketing to very small enterprises (though of course it is not limited to small users or ad budgets) • There are many things measured by Facebook Insights, and while you can produce highly detailed statistics it’s important to remember that you need to measure what’s important to you

Key Takeaways from Facebook Insights, Continued… • For example, if you are promoting a cause, the nature of your engagements is important to assess • You may want to pay close attention to likes, positive comments, and any other indicator or approval or disapproval of your message

Key Takeaways from Facebook Insights, Continued… • On the other hand, if you are selling a product, or trying to get visitors to complete an online form, conversions will be important • Paid advertising is beyond the scope of this course, but note that Facebook offers many advertising products and ways to develop leads and chart conversions

What’s Ahead • Before moving to the next iterations of social media metrics and analytics, we’ll look at another type of analysis that is particularly useful in social media – content analysis • Note that content analysis is a broad term, but we will look at some of more accessible uses of the method