To get to your Insights click on the "Insights" link on the left hand side of your fan page

If you manage a Facebook page for a company, entity or personal blog you are probably aware that Facebook has rolled out a new Insights tool. Instead of the bare bones metrics from the old Insights tool, the new tool offers more data than most folks truthfully need.

If you aren’t into crunching numbers, the main Insights page for your brand is probably more than enough as you can see where new fans are coming from, reach of your wall posts and people talking about you. However if you want to go under the hood and pull up some custom reports simply plug a date range into the export box and download page or post-level data. The page level data has over 50 tabs for you to sift through. With all that data in place, it is easy to get lost and wonder what is really important to you. While I can’t give an exact answer to this question as everyone’s key performance measures are different, I can offer some that I find useful.

Click the export data box to get the full Insights for your page

Overall Reach – this shows you how many impressions your posts are seen in a given month. This can be broken down by organic (impressions generated from fan page posts), viral (impressions generated by people sharing or interacting with a brand’s content) and paid (impressions generated by ads). To get this metric you can tally up the total number of impressions for each category in the Key Metrics tab (columns R, U & X) on the data export. You can also do a daily average by looking at the 28-day numbers.

People Talking About Your Brand – these metrics show you how many people are actively talking about your brand. When I look at the numbers, I break these folks into two buckets. The first are the content creators; these users are proactively creating content on a brand page. Now while this might sound like a good thing as people are generating content on your page, it can also be a bad thing as these fans might be coming to your page for support. If you aren’t offering social support or are trying to dedicate additional resources it would be smart to track the amount of support calls coming in compared to other types of user generated content. The second bucket is content participants, these users are engaged with your content and offer comments or likes to the posts you tirelessly prepare.

Opt-out Rate – to get this metric you look at the amount of new fans added in a month in comparison to the fans who have decided to “unlike” your page. You can pull these numbers from the Key Metrics tab in columns I and J. While it doesn’t tie to specific users opting out of your page, you can still take a look at the percentage of users churning out of your community compared to those opting in. If I were a betting man, I would wager that you should see the number of opt-outs at a much lower clip than that of your email marketing list.

New Fan Drivers – you can find this data in the export sheet, but it’s much easier to look at it in the main Insights dashboard. Sure the metrics are basic, but at the end of the day it is always great to show the business where your new fans are, especially if you are pushing for prominence on your company’s site.

Post Efficiency – this data is great to see what content resonates with your audience. You can pull this data from the post-level data export. Once downloaded be sure to look at the talking about, reach and engaged users for each post and then look at the top performers. What time were they posted, what kind of content was it, etc. From there it is all about optimizing and testing so that you can get the maximum bang for your buck in the content space.

While it might not seem like much, looking at these five metrics each month can really assist you in keeping an objective eye on your program and giving you data that is sure to resonate with your executives. I know that there are many other metrics that can be gleaned from Facebook’s insights aside from these; I’d love to hear what you are measuring.

To get to your Insights click on the "Insights" link on the left hand side of your fan page

If you manage a Facebook page for a company, entity or personal blog you are probably aware that Facebook has rolled out a new Insights tool. Instead of the bare bones metrics from the old Insights tool, the new tool offers more data than most folks truthfully need.

If you aren’t into crunching numbers, the main Insights page for your brand is probably more than enough as you can see where new fans are coming from, reach of your wall posts and people talking about you. However if you want to go under the hood and pull up some custom reports simply plug a date range into the export box and download page or post-level data. The page level data has over 50 tabs for you to sift through. With all that data in place, it is easy to get lost and wonder what is really important to you. While I can’t give an exact answer to this question as everyone’s key performance measures are different, I can offer some that I find useful.

Click the export data box to get the full Insights for your page

Overall Reach – this shows you how many impressions your posts are seen in a given month. This can be broken down by organic (impressions generated from fan page posts), viral (impressions generated by people sharing or interacting with a brand’s content) and paid (impressions generated by ads). To get this metric you can tally up the total number of impressions for each category in the Key Metrics tab (columns R, U & X) on the data export. You can also do a daily average by looking at the 28-day numbers.

People Talking About Your Brand – these metrics show you how many people are actively talking about your brand. When I look at the numbers, I break these folks into two buckets. The first are the content creators; these users are proactively creating content on a brand page. Now while this might sound like a good thing as people are generating content on your page, it can also be a bad thing as these fans might be coming to your page for support. If you aren’t offering social support or are trying to dedicate additional resources it would be smart to track the amount of support calls coming in compared to other types of user generated content. The second bucket is content participants, these users are engaged with your content and offer comments or likes to the posts you tirelessly prepare.

Opt-out Rate – to get this metric you look at the amount of new fans added in a month in comparison to the fans who have decided to “unlike” your page. You can pull these numbers from the Key Metrics tab in columns I and J. While it doesn’t tie to specific users opting out of your page, you can still take a look at the percentage of users churning out of your community compared to those opting in. If I were a betting man, I would wager that you should see the number of opt-outs at a much lower clip than that of your email marketing list.

New Fan Drivers – you can find this data in the export sheet, but it’s much easier to look at it in the main Insights dashboard. Sure the metrics are basic, but at the end of the day it is always great to show the business where your new fans are, especially if you are pushing for prominence on your company’s site.

Post Efficiency – this data is great to see what content resonates with your audience. You can pull this data from the post-level data export. Once downloaded be sure to look at the talking about, reach and engaged users for each post and then look at the top performers. What time were they posted, what kind of content was it, etc. From there it is all about optimizing and testing so that you can get the maximum bang for your buck in the content space.

While it might not seem like much, looking at these five metrics each month can really assist you in keeping an objective eye on your program and giving you data that is sure to resonate with your executives. I know that there are many other metrics that can be gleaned from Facebook’s insights aside from these; I’d love to hear what you are measuring.

To get to your Insights click on the "Insights" link on the left hand side of your fan page

If you manage a Facebook page for a company, entity or personal blog you are probably aware that Facebook has rolled out a new Insights tool. Instead of the bare bones metrics from the old Insights tool, the new tool offers more data than most folks truthfully need.

If you aren’t into crunching numbers, the main Insights page for your brand is probably more than enough as you can see where new fans are coming from, reach of your wall posts and people talking about you. However if you want to go under the hood and pull up some custom reports simply plug a date range into the export box and download page or post-level data. The page level data has over 50 tabs for you to sift through. With all that data in place, it is easy to get lost and wonder what is really important to you. While I can’t give an exact answer to this question as everyone’s key performance measures are different, I can offer some that I find useful.

Click the export data box to get the full Insights for your page

Overall Reach – this shows you how many impressions your posts are seen in a given month. This can be broken down by organic (impressions generated from fan page posts), viral (impressions generated by people sharing or interacting with a brand’s content) and paid (impressions generated by ads). To get this metric you can tally up the total number of impressions for each category in the Key Metrics tab (columns R, U & X) on the data export. You can also do a daily average by looking at the 28-day numbers.

People Talking About Your Brand – these metrics show you how many people are actively talking about your brand. When I look at the numbers, I break these folks into two buckets. The first are the content creators; these users are proactively creating content on a brand page. Now while this might sound like a good thing as people are generating content on your page, it can also be a bad thing as these fans might be coming to your page for support. If you aren’t offering social support or are trying to dedicate additional resources it would be smart to track the amount of support calls coming in compared to other types of user generated content. The second bucket is content participants, these users are engaged with your content and offer comments or likes to the posts you tirelessly prepare.

Opt-out Rate – to get this metric you look at the amount of new fans added in a month in comparison to the fans who have decided to “unlike” your page. You can pull these numbers from the Key Metrics tab in columns I and J. While it doesn’t tie to specific users opting out of your page, you can still take a look at the percentage of users churning out of your community compared to those opting in. If I were a betting man, I would wager that you should see the number of opt-outs at a much lower clip than that of your email marketing list.

New Fan Drivers – you can find this data in the export sheet, but it’s much easier to look at it in the main Insights dashboard. Sure the metrics are basic, but at the end of the day it is always great to show the business where your new fans are, especially if you are pushing for prominence on your company’s site.

Post Efficiency – this data is great to see what content resonates with your audience. You can pull this data from the post-level data export. Once downloaded be sure to look at the talking about, reach and engaged users for each post and then look at the top performers. What time were they posted, what kind of content was it, etc. From there it is all about optimizing and testing so that you can get the maximum bang for your buck in the content space.

While it might not seem like much, looking at these five metrics each month can really assist you in keeping an objective eye on your program and giving you data that is sure to resonate with your executives. I know that there are many other metrics that can be gleaned from Facebook’s insights aside from these; I’d love to hear what you are measuring.

To get to your Insights click on the "Insights" link on the left hand side of your fan page

If you manage a Facebook page for a company, entity or personal blog you are probably aware that Facebook has rolled out a new Insights tool. Instead of the bare bones metrics from the old Insights tool, the new tool offers more data than most folks truthfully need.

If you aren’t into crunching numbers, the main Insights page for your brand is probably more than enough as you can see where new fans are coming from, reach of your wall posts and people talking about you. However if you want to go under the hood and pull up some custom reports simply plug a date range into the export box and download page or post-level data. The page level data has over 50 tabs for you to sift through. With all that data in place, it is easy to get lost and wonder what is really important to you. While I can’t give an exact answer to this question as everyone’s key performance measures are different, I can offer some that I find useful.

Click the export data box to get the full Insights for your page

Overall Reach – this shows you how many impressions your posts are seen in a given month. This can be broken down by organic (impressions generated from fan page posts), viral (impressions generated by people sharing or interacting with a brand’s content) and paid (impressions generated by ads). To get this metric you can tally up the total number of impressions for each category in the Key Metrics tab (columns R, U & X) on the data export. You can also do a daily average by looking at the 28-day numbers.

People Talking About Your Brand – these metrics show you how many people are actively talking about your brand. When I look at the numbers, I break these folks into two buckets. The first are the content creators; these users are proactively creating content on a brand page. Now while this might sound like a good thing as people are generating content on your page, it can also be a bad thing as these fans might be coming to your page for support. If you aren’t offering social support or are trying to dedicate additional resources it would be smart to track the amount of support calls coming in compared to other types of user generated content. The second bucket is content participants, these users are engaged with your content and offer comments or likes to the posts you tirelessly prepare.

Opt-out Rate – to get this metric you look at the amount of new fans added in a month in comparison to the fans who have decided to “unlike” your page. You can pull these numbers from the Key Metrics tab in columns I and J. While it doesn’t tie to specific users opting out of your page, you can still take a look at the percentage of users churning out of your community compared to those opting in. If I were a betting man, I would wager that you should see the number of opt-outs at a much lower clip than that of your email marketing list.

New Fan Drivers – you can find this data in the export sheet, but it’s much easier to look at it in the main Insights dashboard. Sure the metrics are basic, but at the end of the day it is always great to show the business where your new fans are, especially if you are pushing for prominence on your company’s site.

Post Efficiency – this data is great to see what content resonates with your audience. You can pull this data from the post-level data export. Once downloaded be sure to look at the talking about, reach and engaged users for each post and then look at the top performers. What time were they posted, what kind of content was it, etc. From there it is all about optimizing and testing so that you can get the maximum bang for your buck in the content space.

While it might not seem like much, looking at these five metrics each month can really assist you in keeping an objective eye on your program and giving you data that is sure to resonate with your executives. I know that there are many other metrics that can be gleaned from Facebook’s insights aside from these; I’d love to hear what you are measuring.