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We regularly send out monthly social media reports to our clients so they can see exactly how they are performing for their audience. While our team here at IDG see terms and statistics listed on this document regularly, we understand that some of the terminologies are confusing to people who might not look at their analytics on a daily basis. Whether you are managing your own social media presence, or you are one of our clients looking to grasp further what these numbers mean, stay tuned for the complete guide to social media analytics.
Disclaimer: Statistics that only apply to specific platforms will be labeled as such.
Facebook Page Likes
The first piece of information everyone looks at is how many likes/followers you have on Facebook. As the title suggests, this refers to how many users like or follow your business page. You want these to increase in size each month whether it’s organically or through paid like campaigns. We always recommend running a like campaign as it’s challenging to be seen otherwise.
In regards to following a Facebook page, this refers to whether or not someone selects to see posts from your business upon liking. Users have multiple options when clicking the like button, all a little different from another. Like and Default Following is the most common as it’s the defaulted option when clicking. In this situation, Facebook uses its algorithm to determine how often this user will see your business posts.
Like and See First Following is the most valuable user to your business. When a user selects this option, they override Facebook’s algorithm and choose to see your posts first. More often than not, users will not go out of their way to select this option, and while it might seem like the better option, some fans may be annoyed by constant posts and unfollow altogether.
Like and Not Following is the least beneficial to your business. This user has selected to like the page, but decided they do not want to see any of your posts. This person may have been cleaning up their newsfeed of clutter or maybe just like the company the page represents, but have no intention of engaging with the content.
The last option is Following Only. These users opted to follow the business and its content, but not like the page itself. This can occur for a variety of reasons such as the user does not want Facebook to notify their friends they like that business page, but still wants to see its content. Ultimately, this is not a bad option, but Facebook focuses mosts on likes which typically will include the default settings.
Instagram Followers
Unlike Facebook likes/follows, there’s only one measurement for your audience – followers. Just like Facebook likes, you expect this to go up each month to show growth. While many users and some of your competitors might have hundreds of thousands of followers, we encourage you not to worry. An audience of 300 users who are genuinely interested in your business is far more valuable than 100k followers who don’t interact or engage at all.
Posts Published
Post Published refers to precisely what you’d expect. It shows you how many posts you have published to Facebook/Instagram each month. There is no real golden number when it comes to the “right” number of posts to publish per month, but we always recommend to publish at least three a week if possible. This will show your users that you are, in fact, active on the platform and will respond to their questions.
Page Impressions
Page Impressions are often confused with Reach, but they do represent different measurements. Impressions refer to the total number of times your page has been seen. The thing that separates Impressions stats from Reach stats is that an Impression counts the number of times your page has been displayed which can include the same user seeing it multiple times.
For example, let’s say you see a business page or post in your feed and a couple of days later, you see it again because a friend shared it. This would count as two Impressions. Impressions can give a business a clear understanding of how many times their content has been exposed to people on Facebook, and monitoring this number will help to understand which material can be seen by the most amount of people the most amount of times.
Page Reach
Page Reach as we mentioned is similar to Impressions but refers to the number of unique people who received Impressions on a page or post. As discussed above, the reach number can and will likely be less than the Impressions as a person can see the content multiple times. If you get confused, all you need to remember that Reach is the exact number people who have seen your content versus impressions which is the overall number of times it has been viewed.
Engagement
Engagement refers to the number of reactions, comments, messages, and shares your posts receive. Because social media is all about the conversation, you want people to be engaging with posts as much as possible. Make sure to look at which posts are keeping the people talking and post similar content in the future to entice more comments, likes, etc.
Clicks
Clicks are interesting because it’s a very general statistic. Clicks can refer to a variety of click types including page title clicks that go to your business page, clicks to “see more” which can show more of the text in the post itself, clicks of the links you have shared, clicks to play videos, clicks to blow up a photo, and more. While you might not know exactly which click means what, you can see how often people were intrigued enough with your posts to interact further.
Profile Visits
Profile Visits show how many users have landed on your business page. Unfortunately, you can’t track their interaction once they’ve reached the page itself, but you can quantify how many people took an interest in your business.
Fan Demographic
All businesses want to know more information about their target market and social media delivers. With your Fan Demographics, you get a breakdown by gender and by the age range of all of your audience. Through this, you can see if you’re appealing to more men or more women and see what age range each of these members falls into. You also have access to the top cities these users inhabit.
Top Posts
Sometimes it can be difficult to determine which posts are outperforming the rest. In these situations, you can refer to the Top Post statistics. This will contain the content with the most engagement so you can replicate it in the future. For example, for us here at IDG, our team selfies do the best consistently.
While some things may be platform specific, most of these terms overarch the majority of social media, especially since Facebook owns Instagram. We hope this breakdown of the analytics you’ll encounter while trying to grow your business gives you better insight. You will now be able to use these tools to better your content, increase your following, and engage with the people who are interested in what you have to offer. If you have any questions about your social media presence and are looking for assistance, IDG is here to help so make sure to give us a call today!
