With any good social media strategy comes a way to measure its success. What do you consider the success of your school district’s Facebook page? Simply having a presence on Facebook is not the point of the platform. Much like any other PR or marketing effort, your Facebook page should show solid growth and engagement. With Facebook Insights, the analytics system tied to every Facebook page, measuring your page’s progress has never been easier.
Here are five important metrics to track on your district’s Facebook page:
1. Demographics. The overall number of “likes” or fans on your page is easy to track, but look inside that number. Is your page dominated by a female presence? What age groups tend to follow your page? These numbers are important when planning content.
2. Geographics. Where are your fans from? Of course, your page is going to be “liked” by some people not affiliated with your school district, but if most of your fans are from Australia or India, for example, your page is likely not hitting its geographic target.
3. Reach. Facebook measures anyone who has seen content associated with your page. This means that your page has a reach many times bigger than just those people listed as fans. You can discover how many unique people have seen content from your page (and many times you will be surprised at this large number).
4. Talking About Your Page. Facebook tracks people who have created a “story” about your page. A “story” includes liking your page, posting to your wall, commenting or liking a post, sharing a post, answering a question, etc. This is how your page continues to grow and become known. You want people to talk about your page!
5. Content. If you are simply recycling content from your website, please stop and develop a strategic content plan for your Facebook page. This becomes easier to do when you know what content appeals to your audience. You can find this out by measuring your content. What are the most popular types of posts? Probably photos and videos. Facebook Insights allows you to see individual posts and how they perform. Use this data each month to set what kind of content you are pushing out.
By taking the time to utilize Insights within Facebook, you can start to show your leadership team results from investing in social media.
There’s a part of me that wants to measure our social media success based on how many complaints and questions are submitted. Each one that we are able to respond to and lay to rest is a problem that could have taken on a life of its own if we weren’t easily available on social media.