30 Days to Facebook Freedom – Day 28 – Check your benchmarks
This is an easy day but an exciting day. Remember on Day 4 of the Facebook Freedom program when the task for the day was to write down and record the number of fans that you had on your fanpage. Well, today is the day to see if your new strategies are working to increase your fan base. Today is the day when you get to have a look and analyze the results of your posting, liking, commenting and engagement.
Pull up your recorded benchmark information
This is what was recorded on Day 4 of 30 days to Facebook Freedom:
1. How many likes do you have on your fan page
2. How many people do you normally engage in a week?
3. Which posts have done well for engagement or sharing?
4. If you have website statistics, how many people get from your Facebook page to your website on a daily basis?
Pull the sticky note from the wall, open your excel spread sheet or word document. Wherever you put that information way way way back then, put it in front of you. Have a look at where you started and now pull up the information today from your fanpage.
1. How many likes do you have on your fan page TODAY
2. How many people did you engage with THIS WEEK
3. Which posts have done well for engagement or sharing THIS MONTH
4. If you have website statistics, how many people get from your Facebook page to your website OVER THE PAST TWO WEEKS
Write the new numbers beside the old numbers. What are you seeing?
More insight about your fanpage insights
You can dig deeper into your insights than just the graph that shows up on your admin panel.
If you look at the top right hand corner of the insights image that is on your admin panel you can click on the See All link and get more detailed statistics for your fanpage.
The first image that appears once you click on See All, is the larger image of the graph that shows up in your admin panel…the more interesting information is shown when you scroll down to the next image, the results of your posts.
The full information that you will see is for your detailed post information is the Date of the post, the Actual post that was created, how many people saw this post (reach) how many users actually clicked on the post (engaged users), how many people liked or commented on your post (talking about this) and finally virality which is the percentage of total of engaged users and those talking about your post to the total amount of those reached. Lets elaborate on that one as it is hard to explain. Add your engaged users and those talking about your post, to make it simple lets say there were 12 engaged users and 28 people talking about your post. In total for this one post 100 people were reached. The virality is then 12 + 28 = 40 people out of 100 people reached so your virality should be 40%. 40% of the total people reached actually commented, shared, liked or clicked on your post.
Here is an example of a full stats page with the posts hidden to protect the privacy of this persons fanpage:
each post for the last 28 days will have statistics in your full blown insights. This will show you which posts were most popular, which posts provided a reaction and which posts seem to engage your fans. You may find there is a trend on a fan page, where photos get the most virality, or a particular topic gets increased virality. Look at your stats each month so you can draw some trend conclusions and use more of these post types, or include more information on a subject, or focus on what people are not liking and commenting on by wording your posts differently. If fans are liking photos on your posts but are not liking another type of post, lets say……local information or event information for your destination, then add a photo to the posts that are not getting high virality percentages and see if you can increase the engagement on less popular posts through the addition of a photo.
How are you doing now that you have compared your benchmarks?
I have to admit, I pull up my benchmarks each month. In my calendar I have placed a reminder to pull the numbers from these four areas so I can see how I am doing. Insights only shows 28 days worth of information so a month, every 30 days is enough to gather the information that you need to view your success and draw conclusions from your data.
Are there more conclusion that you can draw from your data? Are you willing to share those conclusions?
Why measuring your success is important
If you are trying to reach a goal, how will you know if you reach that goal without looking at the little successes or pitfalls along the way. If you are dieting and want to lose 10 pounds, the first thing you do is step on the scale. The second thing you do is decide when and how often you are going to weigh yourself. The third thing you do is look at how much you weigh now and set a date, a reasonable goal, as to when you will shed your 10 pounds. Depending on your weight loss strategy you could say one month to reach your goal or 3 months to reach your goal. What you eat and how much exercise you decide to do will determine the time frame of that goal. Got it….switching out of the metaphor, if you have 30 fans and you want 1000 fans, set a goal for when you think you will have those fans, and build the strategies that will help you meet your goal in the time frame you have set out for yourself. If you want to have an addition 970 fans in one month, your strategies will need to be very very aggressive. If you say you want 970 more fans in 6 months, your strategies will need to be less aggressive but still on the mark. If you give yourself a year to add 970 fans your strategies will be good if not great and consistent but not aggressive. You decide how hard you want to work, and find strategies that match the aggressiveness of your goal.
If you don’t know where you started and you not sure where you want to end up, then how will you ever know if you are successful? In anything you do…..
Check back to Day 4 on our 30 Days to Facebook Freedom. If you forgot to do your benchmarks, it is never too late. Start today and review in the next 30 days.
