Facebook: Insights for Reaching and Engaging Your Target Market

Facebook is a digital monolith. It seems like you cannot surf the World-Wide-Web without seeing a Facebook icon on a computer screen somewhere. Do a quick search-query online for an important product or a business need, and you will most likely find a good business-website that will have a prominent link to a Facebook webpage. 

Like your Branded Business Webpage. Your Branded Facebook Page can act as a business card for your organization online. Digital Savvy People - your current and prospective customers - will expect it.  It also presents a way to stay connected to consumers, and to increase your Brand Reach and Engagement. 

With Facebook you can build a Customer Community - where you can create your own content and try to control the conversation; as well as follow your current customers or potential consumer’s comments and interactivities. Facebook calls this “Fan Engagement;” which is done by creating your own business pages and posts, as well as through your fans related page or post activities, including their own “post clicks” - “likes,” “shares,” and “comments.”  

Facebook has also become a great target marketing and advertising tool, and they are getting even better with an internal software tool called “Insights” - which provides a business owner a dashboard to analyze their Facebook Pages. Insights starts with a general analysis of your total fans who “liked” your page, and then moves on to other deeper metrics like “total people reached,” “post reach,” and “post engagement,” to name just a few. You can learn more about these analytical tools and metrics with Facebook Insights at the Facebook Help Section online.

Facebook Insights can provide your business a way to learn how to better serve your customers online as well as off, through monitoring your Facebook Fans activities and timelines; where you can see their conversations (posts, clicks, shares, and comments); which Facebook also calls “stories.”

Stories are generally the interactions that are going on between you - your page - and its visitors and their Facebook friends (fans and non-fans). They are spread to others through the virility of their timelines and comments to your posts, which then can be seen on other Facebook member pages or timelines throughout the Facebook community.  Essentially the more Fans you make who engage with your page or posts – the more viral your posts and engagement can be - to grow your Facebook business page and you brand awareness.  

 

It is important to know the difference between these metrics particularly with Total Reach, Post Reach and Post Engagement:

The Overall Total Reach for our Facebook Business Page is defined as “the number of unique people (fans and non-fans) who saw any activity on your page; including your posts, posts by other people, page like ads, mentions, and check-ins.” In contrast “Post Reach” is described as “the number of Unique Fans (people who have already liked your page), who saw your post, which has showed up in their personal news feed.”  

Whereas Engagement or Post Engagement is when anyone clicks on your page at all (fan or non-fans) – and makes an action with your page/posts (which is considered engagement) either through their liking, sharing or commenting.  

While getting a lot of “likes” for your page can indicate increased awareness of your business – when you get more “Fan Engagement” you have more opportunities to interact with your page visitors; especially through your business related posts, which show up in your Fans News Feeds. These posts will be seen further by their Facebook friends – creating virility – and giving your Business Page/Posts more reach out into the Facebook Community.