Social media has become a major component in most business’ digital marketing strategy. With nearly 1.5 billion monthly users, Facebook is among one of the most important social media networks to incorporate into your marketing methods.
Promoting your content, branding your company and engaging with your audience is a given when using Facebook. But how do you know if your efforts are worthwhile? Easy — with Facebook Insights!
Facebook Insights is a free analytics tool that measures several key performance indicators (KPIs), including engagement, reach and audience growth. You can view your data in a variety of ways depending on what you are mining.
Among my essential data views are:
- Comparing post engagement
- Looking at the types of best performing posts
- Post reach
- Reach demographics
However, one extremely important feature is Pages To Watch. Located at the bottom of the Insights Overview tab, Pages to Watch showcases competitors in your area. For local businesses, this can be extremely useful because it defines the baseline data for your industry depending on your location.
Why is this so important? Think of it this way — some sports are way more popular in certain areas than others. For example, hockey is huge in the Northeast and Canada, whereas football is king in the south. The same goes for industry performance; if you are a local business operating on a local scale, you must look at your competitors’ performance and not solely on your industry’s standards. Evaluating these sets of data will bring into perspective at what level you should be performing.
Another advantage of the Pages To Watch feature is viewing what your competitors are posting. You can view their top posts for the week as well as see the engagement those posts received. This will help you determine which type of posts appeal to your audience and which do not. More importantly, this can be a way to revamp your social strategy, inspire future posts and gain insights to optimize your campaigns.
Redefining your benchmark data will help you redefine your social media strategy. Remember, Facebook Insights is a free analytical tool that has so much to offer. Understanding on what scale your local business should be performing is crucial for your marketing efforts as a whole.
