Facebook Metrics That Measure Performance

Facebook insights and metrics allow you to have a clear and detailed analytics of your page. With this, you have the ability to track and understand what works the best on your page, how people interact with your content, and overall improve results over time.

Facebook audience insights on the other hand, allow you to be more knowledgeable about your Facebook audience in order to better target ads and create more relevant content that will appeal towards your target audiences.

Overall, Facebook provides you with a lot of data that may be difficult to understand at first. Facebook provides you with so much information ranging from performance of your posts, audience demographics, and campaign tracking.

All of this data is only useful if you understand which data points tailor to your specific business. So,  let’s take a closer look at Facebooks most important metrics that your brand needs to track and understand in order to grow and succeed.

Facebook Metrics

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Facebook Metric Engagement 

Facebook Engagement measures the number of times someone took a specific action on your posts. That could mean clicking a link, sharing your post, making a reaction, liking the post, saving the post, or leaving a comment. You can find your pages engagement levels through Facebook insights.

Facebook’s metrics algorithm works in a way in which it favors posts that are getting more attention, therefore posts that tend to do well get more exposure so more people will see it. The overall purpose of the algorithm is to surface posts that users are most likely interested in and want to engage with. If one of your posts receives a ton of engagement, that signals to Facebook that it’s popular, so they’ll be more likely to surface it to your followers.

So, why should you measure your profiles engagement levels? Engagement is one of the most important Facebook metrics you can track on your page. One reason being, engagement is a sign that people actually like the content that you are sharing. Another reason engagement is so valuable is it may give your posts more exposure to your audience.

Facebook Engagement

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Facebook Metric Reach

Facebook reach refers to the number of unique people who have viewed your content whether it is an article, update post,  image or a video post. It affects every other metric that you have the ability to track such as: engagement, likes, comments, clicks and negative feedback. Page reach also refers to the number of people who saw any of your post content during a given time period whether is it daily, weekly, or monthly.

Due to Facebook’s algorithm, over the years many businesses have seen drastic drops in the amount of people their content reaches organically, so this means that even if you have been able to build up a large audience basis on Facebook, this does not mean that everyone will be seeing your posts, and this is where reach comes into play.

While Facebook’s organic reach for many brands has decreased over time, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t measure the reach of your page. Not every single one of your posts will receive the same level of success and this clearly illustrates why tracking reach is so important in the success of your overall brand. By measuring reach, you can better learn and understand what your audience likes, and why certain posts outperform others. You can see an overview of your reach by navigating to your page insights.

Facebook Reach

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Facebook Metric Impressions

Facebook Impressions are the number of times your contents displayed on someone’s feed, no matter if someone clicked on it or not.  However, an impression means that content became delivered to someone’s feed. A viewer doesn’t have to engage with the post in order for it to count as an impression.

While the Facebook metric reach tells you how many people saw your posts, impressions measure the number of times your posts became seen. That even includes if one post had views multiple times by the same user. You can measure impressions under the “Campaigns” tab of Ads Manager. When running Facebook ads, your impressions metric may rise and fall.  Rising impressions indicate that a Facebook has been optimized for the platform and the audience.

Impressions can overall give you a good idea and better understanding of if your content is able to go viral. One person may become exposed to one of your posts multiple times. For instance, if they saw it once in their feed and then again when a friend shared it, that’s two impressions per one singular post. With all the content being displayed to consumers on a daily basis, especially on Facebook with the way the algorithm works, getting your content seen multiple times is necessary to get people to take specific, desired actions on your page.

Facebook Impressions

Facebook Metric Referral Traffic

Google Analytics is one platform that is able to measure people coming to your website from Facebook as a referral. Facebook Referral Traffic is overall the amount of visitors your website gets from Facebook. That includes traffic from people clicking links in your posts, traffic from other people sharing your posts or articles, or visits from clicks on your profile link. You can discover your Facebook Referral Traffic in Google Analytics under “Acquisition” then by clicking “Social” and lastly, “Network Referral.”

Facebook overall is a very great platform when it comes to building a community with your target audiences. Eventually, you will want your audiences to navigate away from your Facebook page and onto your business website in order to complete some sort of desired action.

In order to truly measure the success of all the content you share on Facebook, you need to look at your referral traffic. This Facebook metric means that people felt so compelled by your headline and description that they took the time to click through and read it. If you begin to notice your Facebook referral traffic is declining, it could be a sign that:

  • Your audience doesn’t like the content you’re sharing and it does not appeal to their needs and wants
  • You’re getting less reach
  • Your headlines or descriptions aren’t pulling in people
  • Your content is not engaging enough or creative

Google Analytics Network Referral

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Facebook Metric Click Through Rate

CTR stand for Click Through Rate and it is s a Facebook Ads metric that measures the ratio of clicks, which means how often someone clicked on your ad, to impressions which means how many times views your ad received on the platform, for individual ads. It shows how often people click through to your landing pages.

If your CTR is low, then this means people are seeing your ad, but aren’t taking a desired action on your page. If your CTR is below average, try changing your ad copy and image to make it more relevant to your target audience and engaging. Tracking this metric is important because it directly impacts your ad’s relevance score! In order to calculate CTR on Facebook, you have to divide the number of link clicks on your Facebook ad by the number of ad impressions (x 100% to get a percentage).

When Facebook notices that your ads are getting impressions but no clicks, it will logically assumes your audience doesn’t find the ad relevant and important to them. This can result in paying more per click and overall poor performance. So, that it is why it is very important keep a close eye on your Facebook CTR.

Average CTR across all industries

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Facebook Metric Cost Per Action

In Facebook Cost Per Action allows you to pay money only for the actions that people take due to  your ad. This is useful if you want to control how much you pay for specific, desired actions For example, you can use CPA to monitor how much you pay on average for link clicks instead of impressions (CPM).

Cost per action (CPA) answers the question that many people tend to ask, are my Facebook Ads paying off? Are they working? Instead of just paying for a click or impressions, cost per action measures your costs based on a desired action. For instance, an app download, email subscribe or even purchase. By measuring this Facebook metric, you can have a better understanding the ROI (return on investment) of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Average CPA across all industries

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Facebook Metric Likes & Follows

At times, people consider Facebook follows to be more valuable than Facebook likes. When someone chooses to click “follow” on your Facebook Business Page, your posts will appear in their News Feed when they are browsing. People can either opt to follow your page without actually liking your page, or they can automatically begin following your page once they like your page. You can almost think of these people as fans or subscribers to your page.

You can see your total number of Likes or follows directly on your Facebook page. So, why is it so important to measure your page likes and follows? Well, Facebook page likes are a vanity metric. They don’t represent how successful your Facebook marketing efforts are compared to other metrics such as engagement rate, reach, impressions or other metrics. However, Page Likes show your audience size on Facebook. Over time, that number should be growing as you begin to learn what time of content your target audiences want to see. If you’re stuck with around the same number of likes for months, it means one of two things:

  • You’re losing the same number of likes as you’re gaining
  • New people aren’t following you
  • You need to market your content
  • You need to create more engaging content.

Ideally, you want to be able to retain your current followers and add on new ones. A platform that you can use to create engaging content for your brands Facebook page is Canva. Canva is a completely free graphic design tool. This platform makes customizing templates easy and fast. It even offers a wide array of features and tools that are easy to use without having any extensive photo editing knowledge to help create content for your Facebook page.

Likes & Follows

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Need Assistance With Understanding Facebook Metrics?

Understanding all of Facebook’s metrics is not simple. If you need assistance or guidance with your brands Facebook page or overall social media presence, reach out to Digital Task Force today! Interacting with your target consumers on social media is an important marketing strategy and aspect for businesses growth. By having a clear understanding your Facebook page metrics, you can better market your brand! We are here to help you build brand awareness, increase your customer base, and connect with all target consumers. Contact us today! We can’t wait to connect with you.

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