So how does this happen and how does a business know whether its goal is being achieved??
Ah, welcome to the wonderful world of Facebook Insights - the world of post Reach and post Engagement; of Likes, Comments, and Shares. For a Facebook newbie like me, these terms meant absolutely NOTHING until this assignment made me dig further into this Facebook world.....
So I wondered how many other people had no clue either and decided to help by defining these terms in common, non-Facebook, English. (Yes I do appreciate that you, Facebook, want all of us to speak YOUR language. However, there are some of us who still want to live a normal life!)
After this defining work (excuse the pun - this article could be considered a dissertation on Facebook!), I then want to discuss why understanding all these terms must be important to a business...
So....speaking about business, let us continue!
Post Reach - is the number of people who have seen your post. According to Facebook, this number is for the first 28 days after the post's publication. It includes people viewing on a desktop computer AND on a mobile device. Your post is counted as having 'reached' someone "when the post is loaded and seen in News Feed".
O...K.....News Feed?? - a list or a collection of updates detailing 'friends' activity to give a person a quick look at what their 'friends' have been doing.
Hmm. OK, so far so good...
Post Engagement - people engage with your post and become involved by liking, commenting on and/or sharing your post - they actually do an action regarding your post.
Yep, more definitions -
Likes - indicator of how well people like your content.
Comments - these can show how people feel about your content, products and overall your brand.
Shares - when people share content, it raises the exposure even higher to those who see it.
So why is knowing the difference important to a business?
A business needs to engage people, not just reach them. Reach does not expose your post and brand to any other person except the viewer. It does not include engagement. However, engagement does include reach. How many people saw your post and became engaged meaning they were motivated enough to take some kind of action? How many people found your content interesting enough to want to do something?
When people engage, their activity with your brand, such as their comments, appears on their timeline. This is very important. It means your post (and your business brand) also becomes visible to their friends. Post engagement is a major factor in Facebook's EdgeRank Algorithm. This determines which news feeds your posts get displayed in. This will ultimately determine how many people you will be able to reach.
The amount of the engagement with your posts can show the quality of your audience and engagement on certain types of posts can help show what they are interested in.
So how a business can use Facebook Insights to better serve their customers?
Facebook Insights provides page owners metrics about their content. What does this mean? They can see if people are engaging with their content or just looking. If they are, what are the viewers liking? Are they just giving a quick thumbs up, or are they taking time to comment? What content are they commenting on? What are they sharing? What are they talking about?
The business can also discover at what times their audience is on Facebook. Do they respond better to content that is text only or with photos? What content obtains the most reach? What percentage of the reach audience become engaged - the virality?
The business owner can analyse this information and make better decisions about what content they post. They can modify their approach to better suit their engaged audience - their customers and potential customers - so they can engage them even more by providing them the information that they are seeking.
And isn't that what a business is all about - finding ways to provide the answer and benefit to the customer's need instead of our competitors......
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