The internet has become a real game-changer for the business industry.

The rise of social media platforms where your potential customers are spending most of their time online led for businesses to turn into digital media to promote their brand, services, and products. Business owners can start and boost their business for just a few clicks while at the comfort of their homes.

One of the most popular social media platforms is Facebook with 2.27 billion users worldwide. From a social media site meant for people to socialize virtually, it eventually grew into a platform for media, marketing, and technology. Here’s a quick guide on how to use Facebook to your business’ advantage.

Who and where is your target audience?

Before you jump into creating Facebook marketing strategies for your business, you first need to identify who is your target audience and where you can find them? Fortunately, regardless of the age, gender, and location of your target audience, almost all of them utilizes Facebook in their everyday life.

How to get started in promoting your business through Facebook?

There are various ways that you can use in promoting your business through Facebook:

1. Create a Facebook page. Definitely, the first thing you have to do is to create a Facebook page. Similar to your Facebook profile, your business’ Facebook page should serve as a place wherein prospect clients may find relevant information about your brand – from products and services to testimonials and a hub for responding to customer inquiries and concerns.

Advantages of creating a Facebook page

• When a customer likes and follows your page, they’ll be automatically updated of any posts you’ll put in your page. 
• Unlike in promoting your services and products to your personal profile, there’s no limit as to how many people can like and follow your page.
• While creating a Facebook page is free, you can also utilize Facebook paid ads to reach out to the target market who aren’t yet aware of the existence of your page and business. With Facebook Ads, you can customize your audience reach to make use of your budget effectively.

How to create a Facebook page

• Visit facebook.com/pages/create and choose the type of your page.
• Fill out the required information then click Create Page.
• Upload your page’s profile photo and cover image.
• Add information about your business in the “About” section.

How to effectively utilize your Facebook page.

• Post relevant information. While the main goal of your Facebook page is to post interesting articles, new products and services, announcements, and testimonials, it’s also important to post materials that are helpful to your audience.
• Study Facebook Insights. Insights shows you data results that you can utilize in maximizing your page – from identifying what time your users are most active to the type of posts your users find most interesting.

2. Utilize Facebook groups, the marketplace, and jobs. Facebook has recently added new features that should help business owners in boosting their brand – Facebook groups, the marketplace, and jobs.

• Facebook Groups - Groups aren’t new, but its brand-based groups are relatively new on the platform. To create a Facebook group, you first need to have a page and from there create a group for your brand. 
  
  The good thing about this feature is that it allows you to directly reach out to prospect clients and at the same time network with relevant business industries that you think can help in boosting the brand and profit of your company.
  
• Facebook Jobs – Another feature of Facebook is the ability to post jobs. This should help you in looking for potential individuals to hire for your business – may it be for a full-time, part-time, or freelance job vacancies. Remember, Facebook is a platform where you may find a pool of talented individuals. 
  
• Facebook Marketplace – This is like the e-commerce platform of Facebook where you can sell your products. You may see this as virtually setting up a shop on Facebook where you can list your products and it’ll be searchable on Facebook.

How to use the Facebook marketplace

• Upon entering Facebook, click the Shop icon.
• After this, add a photo of the product you are selling. It’s ideal to add high-resolution images to gain the trust of your potential clients.
• Once photos are added, you may now add a title to your product. Make sure that it’s concise and it clearly states the product you are selling.
• After the title, you should now add relevant information such as size, color, and the like. Then you should also add the price of your product which you may change now and then.
• One more step before launching your product is adding the location and category for more precision and ease of reference to your prospect clients.
• Once you’ve filled out the necessary information, Facebook will make your product active and visible to the public. The Facebook marketplace will also allow you to communicate with your clients and edit information on the products you’ve previously posted.

How to effectively utilize the Facebook marketplace.

• The marketplace is a good start to test the waters of your business – to assess if you’re in the right platform and prospect clients.
• Budget-friendly. Since there’s no cost in adding products, the marketplace is a good place for a start-up to promote products and services.
• It’s the fastest way to offer your clients with business deals, promotions, and new products. Once you’ve posted your products, it can be easily searched by anyone using Facebook.

Conclusion

Indeed, Facebook is a powerful social media platform for its flexibility to cater to the various needs of its users. You may find the platform intimidating as there are a lot of competitors – from small to large companies, but it could never hurt to try and utilize the advantages of the platform.

And while it may take some time and effort to get used to its features, it’ll be a worthwhile path as it’s considered to be the most efficient and cost-effective way to start and boost your business.

A special report published by We Are Social and Hootsuite revealed that more than half of the world total population now uses social media for the first time in history. The report showed 3.96 billion people use social media today, accounting for an estimated 51 percent of the population globally.

"This milestone is all the more impressive when we consider that most social media companies restrict the use of their platforms to people aged 13 and above. In fact, the latest numbers indicate that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the world's total 'eligible' population now use social media," We are social writes on their special report blog post.

"And adoption is still growing rapidly. Worldwide user numbers have surged by more than 10 percent over the past 12 months, with an average of more than 1 million people starting to use social media for the first time every single day since this time last year," they added.

Additionally, the report revealed the latest data on the state of digital around the globe and it will give you insights that will help you adjust your strategy on social media which grows at a pace unlike any before.

In the report, you'll learn what digital consumer habits are a product of the moment and which ones might be here to stay even after the pandemic ends. It also gives insights on rapidly changing consumer behavior that you can adapt to your strategy.

If you notice a bubble type Facebook Messenger icon floating on the lower right corner of your favorite websites, then you know what I'm talking about because that's what you called "Facebook Chat Plugin".

Facebook rolls out a major update to that chat plugin for business websites to allow it to be used by non-Facebook consumers. The chat plugin no longer requires users to use their Facebook account which will let businesses reach more customers through their website than before.

Additionally, a more intuitive and brand new design of the plugin makes conversations easier.

Connect With More Customers than ever before

In 2017, Facebook Chat Plugin was introduced as a tool for businesses to reach customers outside of Facebook.

However, the chat plugin still required users a Facebook login to start the conversations.

Here are some reasons why requiring users to log in was a critical factor:

• Some people don't use Facebook.
• Some people who use Facebook occasionally will not remember their password.
• If users are using a shared device, entering their login credentials might a hassle for them.

Aside from those reasons, some people would prefer to remain anonymous when sending a message to a business.

The chat plugin update will no longer hinder users from messaging businesses. Users can still log in and a “continue as guest” option is available with the new design.

How to Setup Facebook Chat Plugin

1. On your Business Facebook Page, click Settings, and choose Messaging.
2. Scroll down to Add Messenger to your website section and click Get Started.
3. To continue, click Next.
4. Customize the plugin by creating a greeting message, changing appearance to match your brand or website colors, and with an option to allow people to chat as guest (new feature) or not.
5. Enter the website domain you’d like to add Messenger to.
6. Facebook will automatically generate a snippet of code that you can copy/paste to your webpage.

In 2019, Facebook and Bain & Company released a study "Riding The Digital Wave" where they introduced us to a new consumers called "digital consumers". Digital consumers are consumers who purchase goods or services online at least once a year which purchases behavior are hugely driven by inspiration and their openness to switch and try other brands discovered both online and offline.

Facebook and Bain & Company released a follow-up report entitled "Digital Consumers of Tomorrow, Here Today". According to the report, 7 in 10 consumers in Southeast Asia* will go digital by end 2020. This digital transformation was supposed to happen in 5 years but took place in one.

This change at an accelerated pace includes the number of digital consumers, online spending, size of the retail market, and the number of categories purchased online.

* Southeast Asia refers to the six markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.)

Think you know enough to reach your customers on Facebook?

Social media is gradually becoming the biggest window of opportunity for businesses to target their customers.

And Facebook is one of those opportunities.

In case you’re not fully aware yet, Facebook is the King of Social Network (no pun intended). In fact, there are roughly 71,310,000 Facebook users in the Philippines as of September 2019 which account for 65.2% of our entire population.

Pretty impressive, right?

The large chunk of the Facebook ecosystem is Pages. A Facebook Page lets consumers connect with businesses in real-time through its cool features.

Without a Facebook page, the owner won’t be able to advertise on Facebook or boost a post.

Let’s assume you already have your Facebook page set up.

You already have a few posts there complete with the caption, creative, and call-to-action.

But you’re wondering why your engagements are low, inquiries are close to none, and your page growth is steady as a rock.

Let me tell you this:

Having a business page is like a baby learning how to stand up for the first time. While optimizing your content according to data is for adults!

So how does a business owner or marketer transition from learning like a baby into an adult?

You can start by attending EmergeLocal’s 1-Day Facebook Marketing Course!

Last October 19, 2019, a diverse group of participants from different industries including Hotel, Real Estate, Photography, and BPO joined our hands-on workshop with EmergeLocal’s experts: Jimmar Merino, Account Manager and Carissa Coles, Head of Digital & Operations.

The workshop was divided into two sessions. The morning session led by Jimmar, covered the basics of creating and planning content and how to utilize the data provided by Facebook Insights, as well as measuring the metrics given. While the afternoon session with Carissa focused on Facebook Ads, busting myths and learning the ins and outs of Ads Manager.

One of the dynamic activities in the workshop is the creation of a Halloween-centric social media plan.

Want to join the next session? Register here and take advantage of the early bird rate.

Real estate is one of the strongest verticals in the country.

In fact, it’s a multi-trillion business. Out of the three categories (residential, industrial and commercial), residential real estate requires more effort for agents and brokers to close a unit.

Gone are the days where you’ll see real estate agents out in the field, handing out flyers, and encouraging prospective customers for a site tripping, which is physically exhausting.

But we are now living in the digital era where Facebook even has its own feature for people to buy and sell items - the Marketplace. However, selling a house proves it isn’t too easy, is it?

Last October 5, 2019, members of Northpine Land, Inc. Sales Network attended EmergeLocal’s 1-Day Facebook Marketing Course. A hands-on workshop where learners will gain in-depth knowledge on business social media, marketing tactics, facebook advertising strategies, how to set social media goals, and most importantly how to achieve them. Present on the event were EmergeLocal’s experts: Jimmar Merino, Account Manager, and Carissa Coles, Head of Operations.

It was divided into two sessions. The morning session covered creating and planning Facebook Page content and how to utilize the data provided by Facebook Insights. While the afternoon session focused on Facebook Ads, mainly breaking the belief that “boosting” and Facebook Ads are the same. 

The participants went on to various activities like creating their own contents starting from the concept of creating their own creatives. Then, they presented their outputs to everyone and receive real time feedback from the experts and their peers.

All things considered, the Hands-on Workshop was an overall success. 

Want to join the next session? Click here and join our digital training programs today!

In the recent Facebook webinar Get Holiday Ready: How to Build and Test Creative for Holiday Success, there’s one slide that caught my attention.

Quoting the webinar, the slide said:

Ad sets that have both static and video assets see a 17% lift in conversion volume compared to ad sets that have static assets alone. 

It means that running both static and video in conjunction would result in better performance than running one over the other.

Yes, Facebook emphasized that one.

As you can see, there are several territories where your ads can be shown, including:

They didn’t have a statistic for percent lift in conversion volume compared to ad sets that have video assets alone. It is possible that most people don’t run video alone.

To give you a proof with the statement above, I’ll give you some history. My client, a B2C in the automotive vertical, has been running Facebook campaigns to drive brand awareness for the services they offer. 

As an agency, we know that 2019 is the year of the video so we make it to the point that we create videos for our clients. We “make our ads move”. We develop both static and video ads. We bought into a video so much that we paused static assets once we had developed enough video to have many variations for each product’s ad set.

After pausing our static assets, we started to see a performance slump. 

Slightly fewer reach and impressions, and slightly higher costs per page likes. Even we are not running tests with dynamic creative and CBO. Could those be dragging down CPL? Maybe the impressions dip was because our static assets were performing historically?

After the Facebook webinar, we asked ourselves, “Might it be worth a test? Could the static assets help bump up performance?”. We reintroduced static assets for one of our ad sets. We immediately saw improvement in our likes volume, and cost per page like decreased. 

A/B test is very crucial and most of the time, we need to go beyond it. Even though in an A/B test, a video may surpass static, yet we can’t pause all static. We need to consider the whole, rather than the sum of the individual parts. 

How does an ad set perform when there is video and static creative as opposed to one ad format alone?

As a digital marketer, we used to A/B test everything and that’s not bad. We can trust the algorithm of Facebook to show the right assets to the right person at the right time, but we can still test. 

This strategy is going to have a larger impact on overall Facebook Ad campaign success. We have to learn how to ask new questions - If I change a certain element, what would be the effect of this in the entire campaign?

Photo by JESHOOTS.com from Pexel

Are you looking to improve your ad performance? Wondering which Facebook ad placements you should choose?

In this blog post, you’ll find a guide to some of the Facebook advertising placements we used in our client’s ad accounts and discover how to edit your placements to deliver the best results for your campaign.

What Is Facebook Ad Placement?

Facebook Ad Placements are the places where you run your ads. You can manually choose where you show your ads or let Facebook show them in places where they're likely to perform best (automatic placements).

The placement is set at the ad set level of your campaign and your ads can appear on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and/or Messenger under a specific campaign objective.

They are also known as platforms and within each platform are a series of placements.

Currently, you can choose from 15 different placement options. All of them are grouped together according to the platform so they are easier to understand.

As you can see, there are several territories where your ads can be shown, including:

• Facebook’s mobile and desktop newsfeeds
• Instagram
• The Audience Network
• Messenger

So, let’s take a look at the placements that I frequently use for our clients.

Facebook News Feed Placement

If you choose to place your ads on news feed, your ad will appear on the desktop news feed and/or mobile news feed. As we all know, the news feed is the section of Facebook where posts by your friends and family appear. Your ads will appear on news feeds accessed through desktop and mobile devices, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

When you hover over this option at the ad set level, you’ll see an example ad to give you an idea of what ads look like using this placement.

This placement option is the most popular and effective among marketers. It can be also expensive in terms of cost per mille (CPM), which is a measure of how much it costs per 1,000 ad impressions.

Instagram Feed Placement

The next placement is Instagram Feed. Using Instagram as your placement means your ads will appear on Instagram’s feed both desktop and mobile, amongst the posts of other Instagram users. Note that Instagram does not support all of Facebook’s ad formats. While single image, video, and carousel ads are eligible for placement on Instagram, canvas and slideshow ads are not.

Instagram has more than 1 billion active monthly users which makes it the second most effective placement option if you want to target the people who are active on Instagram.

Instagram Explore

This Instagram placement is the newest addition to the ad platform. The Explore page is where users go to discover new content that lines up with their interests. For a long time, it’s the more untouched digital real estate so it would make sense Facebook decided to make this available in the ad placements. Plus, users don’t pay to use Instagram, so they are paying in the form of their attention to brands’ content.

Facebook Video Feed Placement

Facebook changed the Facebook Suggested Videos and Facebook Watch Feed to Facebook Video Feed to categorize video placements in one. With this campaign placement, your ads appear in the video feed on Facebook—specifically, the suggested videos feed and the Facebook Watch feed.

Since it’s the year of the video and I’m still positive that it will be for the coming years, video is the most effective content type to gather low-cost, high-quality engagement and build a warm audience of people you can then remarket to with new ad campaigns.

This is a great placement option when you’re running brand awareness ads in the form of video content to people who don’t know or heard about your brand alongside Facebook and Instagram feed placements.

Messenger Inbox Feed Placement

This is by far the most expensive ad placement that I tried for our clients. It’s also the last in the feeds category. Placed in the Messenger home, Messenger ads are essentially banner ads that are served in the home menu.

The good thing about the Messenger home placement is it shows your full ad with your call-to-action (CTA) button, which directs users to the link destination you set when creating your ad.

Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger Stories Feed Placement

Before we go to the next placement. Let’s take a look at the difference between Feed and Stories.

• Feed - Looks like a standard Instagram post, except it’s an ad.
• Stories - A disappearing ad that appears between user stories.

The Stories placement has three platform options: Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger Stories.

The recommended optimal ad creative dimension is full-screen vertical images or videos (9:16), which appear when switching stories from one user to another.

According to Brandon Doyle, founder of Wallaroo Media, said about 40% of his digital agency’s budgets are going toward Stories ads, though Instagram feed still is the biggest placement for usage, followed by Instagram Stories, Facebook feed, Facebook Stories, and Messenger.

Messenger Sponsored Messages Placement

Do not get confused with the Messenger Home placement in the feeds category, the Sponsored Messages Placement are ads that are shown in the form of messages delivered directly to users you’ve already had a past conversation with.

This placement is ideal for any brand that has already connected with a prospect on Messenger, either through a bot or live chat support.

It is an effective way to re-engage the people who currently have an open chat with your Facebook Page and to nurture those relationships by providing relevant content, promotions, and updates.

Again, in my experience of running Messenger ads, this placement is expensive and has a minimum bid to get delivery because of high CPM for a warm audience. To work this out, it is advised to run previous campaigns to build up your Messenger list using chatbot or custom bot. If not, your budget would be better spent on other campaign types using different placements and objectives.

How to Choose Your Placement

First, create a new campaign using either the Quick Creation workflow or the Guided Creation method. Choose your objective and name your campaign. Then, click on Save.

Then, create an ad set. This is where you can choose your placements. Click on the name of the campaign and it will automatically take you to the ad set level. To check that you’re at the ad set level, look for Ad Set highlighted in blue in the left-hand pop-out menu.

Next, once you’re at the ad set level, click Edit to see the audience targeting, and bidding optimization, and select your placements.

Objectives Eligible for Placements

If you’re running a campaign with a specific objective, you want to use the placements that will gain results. So, we list below the objectives that will match the placements.

• Facebook Desktop News Feed: Clicks to Website, Desktop App Engagement, Desktop App Installs, Event Responses, Local Awareness, Page Likes, Page Post Engagement, Offer Claims, Video Views, Website Conversions

• Facebook Mobile News Feed: Clicks to Website, Event Responses, Local Awareness, Mobile App Engagement, Mobile App Installs, Offer Claims, Page Likes, Page Post Engagement, and Video Views

• Instagram Feed and Stories: Clicks to Website, Mobile App Engagement, Mobile App Installs, Page Post Engagement, Video Views, and Website Conversions

How to Measure Placement Effectiveness

Facebook is capable of showing which placement delivers the best results in your campaign. To do that, navigate to the ad set level of a campaign in Ads Manager.

Then on the far right, click Breakdown to see a drop-down menu of different ways to segment your data. Click on Placement under the By Delivery section.

Now you’ll see rows of your metrics via each placement that you’re running in your ad set.

Conclusion

It’s helpful if you familiarize yourself with each of Facebook’s ad placements. With 15 placement options and growing as Facebook introduces ads into WhatsApp next year, keep in mind that you can choose more than one placement at a time. Doing so is highly recommended because it allows you to reach a wider audience.

Although Facebook recommends Automatic Placement all the time, it’s always a good practice to A/B test and analyze your results. Some brands may find more success on Instagram and less on Facebook. Test and see what works for you.

Was this guide to Facebook’s ad placements helpful to you? Do you have any tips to offer for selecting placements? If so, share this link with friends. If you have any questions, comment below and we’ll respond to you as soon as possible.

Is your ad spend wasted because you are showing the wrong message to the wrong audience?

If your goal is to reach the right audience and achieve great results using Facebook ads, continue reading below.

Facebook advertising is by far the most powerful medium to target your market due to the fact that 2.89 billion people are using Facebook on a monthly basis and they are checking their FB App 8x on average daily! 

Also, Facebook have done an awesome job finding Facebook users who searched for something in the internet using cookies and your IP Address.

Cookies are your info in a form of a text file that you gave to a website when you enter their domain together with your IP Address, these two components help Facebook AI to be more accurate whenever marketers perform Facebook Retargeting in their Ads.

Facebook Exclusion Targeting in a nutshell

Imagine you’re organizing a party, you probably included all your friends, relatives, and even your classmates.  Trying to include everyone was stressful even for a grown-up! You don’t want to exclude anyone! So what do you do?

Things are different now (at least they are for those in the marketing field): If you’re advertising on Facebook, excluding people from seeing your ads is a borderline mandatory strategy to succeed.

Facebook Exclusion Targeting will exclude people on seeing your ads and will give more emphasis to those target audiences that have the real intent of buying your products or services. 

In today's blog post, I am going to show you how to use exclusions to refine your Facebook audiences (that we use in our agency).

Why Facebook exclusion targeting is important?

1. Excluding Current Customers

Current customers are the people who already bought a product or service from your brand. There’s always a time and place to re-target a current customer.

However, you generally don’t want to be marketing your product or services to somebody who has only just bought in, as chances are they won’t be ready to convert again for a determined time frame.

Although, this may vary depending on the product or service you offer (e.g. people may eat out at least once a week, people who may buy food supplies on a weekly basis, and a new stuff every x number of years).

This exclusion method that can be applied here to exclude current customers from seeing your ads.

2. Pixel Based Exclusion Audiences

Let’s say you have a pixel installed on a website (a small snippet of code installed on every page of your website that allows you to track conversions and activities of website visitors), you can easily create an audience of users who have completed certain actions on your site within a pre-determined time frame.

You can choose between including or excluding the people who have purchased or subscribed within the last 30 days without sacrificing the people who have added to a card or visited your site but not converted with your ads.

In terms of the lookback window, it’s limited to 180 days which is perfect for excluding past customers if your product or service's lifespan is such that these customers may return within that time span to potentially convert again.

This is great if you have a business in the eCommerce space, food delivery service, or retail.

You can choose between including or excluding the people who have purchased or subscribed within the last 30 days without sacrificing the people who have added to a card or visited your site but not converted with your ads.

In terms of the lookback window, it’s limited to 180 days which is perfect for excluding past customers if your product or service's lifespan is such that these customers may return within that time span to potentially convert again.

This is great if you have a business in the eCommerce space, food delivery service, or retail.

3. Demographic exclusions

Demographic exclusion is based on demographics. It’s the second useful exclusion method in which Facebook allows you to exclude users from your targeting based on their gender, relationship status, age, and location.

Facebook show ads based on demographics, interest, and user activities. In terms of demographics, it’s crucial because you don’t want to show your ads to people who aren’t stating facts on their profile.

For example, serve a 40-year-old man a Facebook ad for an Air Max sneakers aimed at teens just because they’ve liked Kanye West or Steph Curry on Facebook (most probably by mistake!).

4. Interest exclusion method

Another valuable exclusion method is based on conflicting interests.

To avoid negative feedback on your ads or making sure you’re not targeting people who lead a certain kind of lifestyle, interest exclusions is very important.

Let’s say you are promoting ads with meat or dairy products, you might want to exclude vegans, vegetarian, or pescatarian from your targeting.

Alternatively, if you’re promoting confectionary, you may want to exclude people who are interested in weight loss and dieting. Same goes with people who are buying Korean cosmetics, you wouldn't want to show your products to people who love drugstore brands.

5. Excluding people who have messaged your page

It’s clear to brands that social media is an avenue for frustrated customers who have received less than perfect service.

If you’ve found your Facebook page has become subject to such displays, it may be worth excluding certain audience groups from your ad targeting.

You might be receiving negative messages from your fans or other Facebook users. If you’d like to limit the number of dissatisfied customers leaving negative comments on your ad, one way to go about this is to exclude an audience of people that have messaged your Facebook page within a set number of days.

5. Excluding people who have engaged with your ads

Next, another one that is a great exclusion method is in a more stringent manner.

Excluding dissatisfied customers from impacting your campaign’s performance is to exclude anyone has engaged with your ads in the past

This method could, of course, result in excluding people that have left positive comments on your ads.

What if those users have clicked to site with high purchase intent? Don’t worry, they will find them within a remarketing list anyway, and you can engage with them further from there.

Wrapping up

Exclusion marketing: it’s as easy to implement as Step 1, 2, 3! Save money and have fun doing it–use an exclusionary marketing tactic to boost your overall ROI.

Having a budget for Facebook Ads is great, but a campaign needs cost efficiency and a large margin for Return of Income in order for it to work in the long run.

You should try implementing Facebook Exclusion Targeting Strategy into your campaign to see its impact rather than doing a shotgun approach or targeting the wrong people with the wrong "intentions". 

At EmergeLocal,  exclusion, audience intention and proper implementation are our top priority when it comes to Facebook Ads targeting.

If you’d like some help with your social audience or FB Ads strategy, be sure to get in touch.

Are you wondering why you’re not getting leads or sales from your Facebook ads?

Or do you have any idea where your fans are coming from?

Having a Facebook Page for your business is a great opportunity to connect your brand with your audience. It gives your business a great amount of exposure in front of your target audience.

But why Facebook is still not working for you?

Maybe you got the wrong target audience.

Maybe your posts do not connect or are not relevant enough to your audience.

If you think showing irrelevant posts to your audience is okay, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Posting without understanding who your audience is or their preferences is like riding a bicycle with your eyes closed - nonsense and dangerous.

Why Use Facebook Insights?

According to Statista, there are about 44 million Facebook users in the Philippines this year and we are at the top spot on social media usage around the world.

Taking this into consideration, having a Facebook Page for your brand is a giant leap for your business already.

However, with recent big changes in its algorithms, Facebook now prioritizes showing posts from your friends and family more than posts and articles from different brands.

This makes it harder for us to reach our audience and get their attention.

That’s where Facebook Insights comes into the picture.

With this completely free tool, you get to know the Page’s performance along with useful metrics to make sure that you are presenting the right content on your audience’s screen.

So in this blog, I put together a guide to Facebook Insights for business owners or marketers like you to explore the key areas of your Facebook page and help you understand that each metric is important to your social media strategy.

Comprehensive Guide to Facebook Insights

Before anything else, go first to your Facebook Page and click “Insights”.

If you don’t see “Insights” at first, click More. See the image below.

Now that you are on the Dashboard, here are some key points to remember:

Overview

The Overview section is where you can find the overall performance of your Page from yesterday up to the last 28 days if you want to drop by for a quick glance. You can also track:

• How many people liked your Page over the last 7 or 28 days;
• The estimated number of people who saw all the posts (contents) you posted over the last 7 or 28 days; and
• How many people have engaged with your contents through reactions, comments, and shares over the last 7 or 28 days.

Yes, the data available in the overview section is only limited to 7 days (or 28 days) and the estimated numbers that you can check from time to time. For a more deep-dive observation, each section breaks down every detail that you need.

Tip: If you go to the bottommost part of the Overview section, you’ll find “Pages to Watch”. In this area, you can add Facebook Pages that are similar to yours or your direct competitors for you to monitor their performances as well. This includes checking their performances based on likes and engagements.

Page Likes

The Page Likes or Likes section allows you to see your Page’s performance according to the number of likes and where those likes came from. It is broken down into three subsections which are:

• Total Page Likes: You can find the total number of Page likes where you can also adjust the date range to see the number of likes your Page got from a specific time period.
• Net Likes: You can find the number of new likes minus the number of unlikes on a specific day. You can also find your average number of unlikes, organic and paid likes in this area.
• Where Your Page Likes Happened: You’ll be able to know where your page likes came from such as from visiting your page directly, a page suggestion, from a search, or how many came from your page likes campaign ads.

Tip: Find the highest peak in the Net Likes and Where Your Page Likes Happened, then click it. There, you will see the specific date and the source of likes and unlikes. Backtrack to what was posted on that date and use the data gathered to continue having that peak.

Reach

In the Post Reach or Reach section, you can see how many people saw your posts and how they interacted with them. It’s broken down into the following:

• Post Reach: The estimated number of people where your posts appear on their screen which is also divided into organic & paid reach so you’ll know how your ads performed in relation to its organic activity.
• Recommendations: People, in general, would click “Recommend” if they like their experience with the business itself, not the Page, but you’ll see how many people recommended your Page or business whichever the customers perceive.
• Reactions, Comments, and Shares: In this area, you’ll see the number of people that clicked the three buttons below your post which means that they engaged with it.
• Reactions: See how your fans specifically react with your post now that Facebook introduced five other ways you could react to content. These are Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, or Angry.
• Hide, Report as Spam, Unlikes: Considered as negative engagements, you can see how many people decided that they don’t want to see your posts as well as those who took back their like from your Page.

Posts

The Post Section is divided into two key areas. The topmost area is subdivided into three metrics:

• When Your Fans are Online: You can find out which day of the week your fans are online the most and the number of fans online per hour of the day. The data is only based on the most recent week, so it’s ideal to check this part every day to know the best time and day to post your content.
• Post Types: You will see how your different type of posts performed in this part. Generally, the options are photos, videos, and links.
• Top Posts from Page you Watch: The posts from the Pages that you added in the Overview part under “Pages to Watch” will appear here. You will be able to compare your Page’s performance from the other at the same time.

The bottom half of the section is one of the most important to check - All Posts Published. In here, you will see all the contents you posted on your Page and see how well they performed in terms of reach and engagement.

This section gives you a powerful range of metrics like the combined amount of reaction, comments, shares and the negative engagements like Post Hides.

Tip: Review and check what was the most engaging content of the week/month and then make adjustments to your future contents by continuing to give people what they want to see on your Page.

Stories

If you haven’t checked how many people viewed your story from the past 24 hours or more, you can do it here.

We all know that photos and videos posted on the Story feature will disappear right after 24 hours but all that and its performance will remain visible in this section.

For now, the data and collection of stories you posted only last for 28 days so make sure to check this part every day.

People

This is also one of the most important sections in Facebook Insights that you should keep an eye on.

It will help you to get to know your audience better with these metrics:

• Your Fans: You’ll find the accumulated demographic data of people who liked your Page by means of gender, age, location, and language that they provided in their Facebook profiles.
• People Reached: You can see the demographic data of people where your Page or your content appeared on their screen whether they’ve given you a “Like” or not.
• People Engaged: You can see the demographic data of all people who interacted with your contents from reacting, commenting, or sharing your posts.

Tip: Once you find out which fans you have the most in terms of age, gender, location, and language, you can start conceptualizing the perfect social media campaigns fit for your audience. This is also the first step in creating your Facebook Ads strategies as you accumulate fans and get to know them even more.

What You Should Remember

After understanding all the different sections and the metrics, it’s time to step up and leverage on them. So here are some tips and tricks that can help your business using your Facebook Page.

• Daily Routine. Make it a habit to check more often on your Facebook Insights, preferably every morning. You might be able to see developing patterns as Insights is constantly updating, so be alert.
• Post Targeting. If you only want to show content to a specific audience who matter to your brand, it’s now possible. You can gather more engagements since you targeted your content to people who prefer what you show them.
• Update your Details. This should be a no brainer for all business owners who have their Facebook Page, make sure that your customers can reach you by putting the right and updated phone number, address and other information.
• Simple Facebook URL. Part of being an easy-to-find Facebook Page is having an easy-to-find username and URL. For instance, if the name of your business is Flora’s Flower Shop, your Facebook URL should be facebook.com/florasflowershop. Keep it simple and concise.
• Plan in Advance. This is the most important tip that I can give you. Plan all your social media contents in advance, at least for one month, then prepare the descriptions and creatives (video, static image, GIF, etc). Having enough time creating your content will allow it to be more engaging because it was well thought-out.
• Schedule your Posts. No more worrying that you forget to post in the morning when you can schedule your posts ahead. Facebook Insights helps you determine when your fans are most online so you can decide on the perfect time and day of posting.

If you want to know more about the best practices on Facebook marketing, this article from our friends at Mobile Monkey might help you formulate your next strategies this 2021.

Conclusion

Managing your business is already a tedious task, but managing your Facebook Page requires critical thinking and being updated to what is trending and the latest happenings - both offline and online.

If you need assistance in building your online following and managing your business online, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us today to discover how we can help with your social media marketing needs.