Get On Target With Your Marketing. Week 5

Facebook Insights: using and understanding them

Reach as a metric shown in Facebook insights will show you the overall exposure your content has.  It is derived from adding up the total number of people that potentially saw your post.  This will include everyone’s feed that follows you and those that they have shared it with through their news feeds.  This is the overall reach that your post has.  Reach can also be expanded through paid placement.

Engagement is a metric that will show you how much of your total Reach is interacting with your posted content.  This is done through comments, likes, clicks or shares of those who viewed your post.  This is what you need to measure how interested your target market is in the content you are posting.  Engagement is important to build. It will increase the likelihood of your content being shared and your reach being increased by those who have already seen it.  Increasing engagement can also require the creation of content that encourages involvement.  Some forms of this content may include surveys, polls, contests or simple asking for feedback.  Most important, your content must be relevant to your audience.

By tracking these metrics carefully businesses can see how well certain types of content proliferate themselves and who they are spreading among. They can also test market areas for new audiences and see what their effectiveness is there.  By watching your engagement levels and intensity you can adjust post content and formats to continually improve your posts to fit what your audience responds too.  This is an extremely valuable tool, as anyone who has spent money on marketing campaigns will tell you.  It is common for businesses to spend money and effort in marketing and have very little feedback to tell you how it is going.  To have direct feedback on a specific stream of advertising allows you to eliminate those things that are not working and builds the confidence to bolster those that are working.