In all of the new changes that Facebook has made, one of the potentially best for businesses, Churches and non-profit organizations is the new insight program that has received a complete overhaul.
With 800 million people on Facebook, it would be silly to ignore this marketing potential. Yet, how much of an investment of time and money should anyone spend, especially for those that do not have a strong online presence?
The initial concept for Insight was a step in the right direction and necessary for businesses and organizations to take Facebook seriously. The statistics, graphics, colors, and information was valid and saveable. Exactly what’s needed to invest more time, energy, and money into social media’s biggest platform. But as this has become a bigger and bigger part of Facebook, better tools are needed.
For those of you that cannot remember or did not get to see the old insight layout, here is what once was:
The New Tool
With so many putting time into Facebook Pages, flexibility of the data and more information can validate further money. The new Insight tool provides the classic options to export data, total Likes, and colorful graph, but the focus on the data has shifted. Before, it was simply the number of Likes you received and active users who are interacting with your site. Now, the interest lies in how much people are talking about you, how much of a reach your social media material is getting, and what potential there is for new users.
Along with this newly directed focus, there is a deeper look into the data. Below the graph, you have the opportunity to decide what data types to look at, be it All Post Types, Photos, Links, and others. When the data displays, it shows you the number of people that engaged with the individual posts, photos, or links, how many people talked about it, and its virality (The number of unique people who have created a story from your Page Post). As with any great analytic tools, all data is now sortable for better navigation.
Here is a look at Insight’s new design:
Fans, Talking About This, and Reach
All of this data can look nice, but without going deeper into it, you really are just wasting it. Under your Insights button on the left sidebar are three subsections: Fans, Reach, and Talking About This. Each of these subsections have their own personal graphs for better visual data and a deeper look into the specific content of the data.
Fans
The Fans subsection looks at who is seeing your content. The graph is divided up by gender and ages for the perfect marketing presentation for any business owner. Below that shows what countries and cities your viewers are from and what languages they speak, allowing us to know a better understanding of culture interaction and maybe even how shipping of our products could be impacted. This data alone is a vast improvement.
Reach
The new Reach assessment looks at how many total people have posted something about your Page as well as who how much virability that post had. Facebook recognizes that this reach can come from a couple of difference venues, those that directly like your page, paid sponsor advertisements, and viral sharing and comments that friends of your fans see. This raw data will give you the insight you need to know what is connecting with fans and friends of fans to give you more of an impact. Finally, the Reach subsection also looks at how frequently someone has seen your content on your Page.
Talking About This
The new data labeled Talking About This measures user activity related to a Page from people Liking your Page to sharing a link you posted to commenting on your Page’s status. This data is then put into a page views and unique page views graph and a data table showing where referrals came from and were shown (i.e. a Wall or an app).
Conclusion
With all of this data, we can become overwhelmed with it. A solid strategy, consistency, and some time and money can lead to quite a bit of success. But in the end, it is all about engaging the audience. You could throw thousands of dollars at this or put endless hours into it, but if you are not giving people what they want, they will not come.
Ben says
Did I miss the link to this tool? It looks great!
Jeremy Smith says
To get to this tool, you first have to have a Facebook Page and secondly you click the Insight button on the left hand navigation. Enjoy using it!