How Engaging is Your Facebook Page?

In the survey conducted by Catholic Web Solutions in November, many respondents wanted to know how to measure their Facebook efforts. Facebook provides real-time statistics about Facebook Pages through a tab on your Page titled “Insights” that can help you answer that question. Insights are available to Administrators of Facebook Pages. If you are using your personal Facebook timeline for your parish or ministry, you will not have access to Insights. This is one of the most important reasons to set up a Facebook PAGE for your parish, religious community or ministry—access to Insights.

Facebook is a social networking website designed primarily to bring people together. Facebook Pages are for “brands” (companies, organizations, churches, etc) who want to share with their followers who can then comment, like, and re-share the brand posts with their friends.

The more engagement a Page has, the more successful it is. Using Insights, an Administrator can tell which posts are the most engaging.

Here are some of the engagement statistics Facebook provides in Insights:

The number of:

• Likes (Facebook tell us how many people have Liked a page and how many Likes have been added over a time period)
• Clicks (on a link, photo, video, etc.)
• Post engagements (likes, comments, shares)
• Unique people who have engaged with your Page during a given time period
• Unique people who could have seen your posts
• Times unique people could have seen your posts

Your engagement rate.

Why is engagement important?

Facebook does not show every post you make to every person who has Liked your Page. Facebook has set up an algorithm which determines whether a post is something a follower wants to see based on how much engagement the post generates and how interested this person seems to be in this content or type of Post.

Facebook reports that on average 16% of followers see a given post. The larger the Page following the lower the percentage. Small businesses, churches, ministries and religious communities tend to have larger percentages, but often they are not anywhere near 100%.

Our goal is to provide content that captures our followers’ attention and moves them to action. Facebook Insights tell us which posts are the most successful in terms of engagement and reaching a larger percentage of followers.

In future posts, I will highlight the information that I have found to be the most helpful in the six areas covered by Facebook Insights: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Post and People.

If you use Facebook Insights, what information do you find the most helpful?

If you do not use Facebook Insights, take a look at the Insights for your Page and see what you can learn.