Slides from a training course on using Facebook Insights - what the various metrics measure and how to use them to evaluate and improve your page. Looks at the new Insights Dashboard, and how to export data and manipulate it in Excel. This was taught in two sessions. Session 1 covered basic metrics, the Insights Dashboard, and how to apply critical thinking and the scientific method towards rigorous decision-making. Session 2 covered how to export data and manipulate it in Excel, including useful Excel skills like performing calculations and using pivot tables.

1. Using Facebook
Insights to Improve
Your Page

2. You will learn
• Which metrics you should be looking at
• What those numbers do (and do not) tell you about your
page
• How to use the metrics to develop and test hypotheses

3. The goal of using data
Why even bother looking at Facebook metrics?
To figure out what works and what doesn’t, and then do
more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
It’s as simple as that.

4. The goal of using data
If you know what works, you can work smarter – stop
wasting time and effort on things that aren’t effective and
concentrate on what works.
Insights can help you learn what to post, how to post and
when to post in order to get the most out of your Facebook
efforts.

5. Just remember…
The ultimate driver of success on Facebook is great content
that strikes a chord with your audience. Without that, none
of this matters.

6. Evaluating Basic
Metrics
Does “people who saw this” tell you how many people saw this?

7. Which page is “better”?
PAGE
ONE
PAGE
TWO
Likes
5,000
Fans reached per post
500
Engagement per post
10
Likes
30,000
Fans reached per post
1,200
Engagement per post
12
Example 1

8. Which page is “better”?
PAGE
ONE
PAGE
TWO
Likes
5,000
Fans reached per post
500 (10%)
Engagement per post
10 (2%)
Likes
30,000
Fans reached per post
1,200 (4%)
Engagement per post
12 (1%)
Example 1

9. Which page is “better”?
PAGE
B
Likes
10,000
Fans reached per post
500 (5%)
Engagement per post
10 (2%)
Likes
10,000
Fans reached per post
1,500 (15%)
Engagement per post
8 (0.5%)
PAGE
A
Example 2

10. Metrics matter
Common metrics such as “likes” don’t tell the whole story.
Facebook Insights can give us a more complete picture of
how our pages are doing, and allow us to assess our
performance with respect to specific goals.

11. What “likes” DO tell you
Likes tell you: How many
people pressed this button
Likes are a one-time action that display brand affinity or
brand recognition.
People who like your page are agreeing in theory to
receive content you may post.

12. What likes DO NOT tell you
Likes do not tell you: Anything about what your fans did
after that single moment when they clicked the like button.
Likes do not tell you: Whether fans have ever seen anything
you posted, clicked on anything you posted, or interacted
with anything you posted.
Likes illustrate content potential, but you need other
numbers to know if that potential is being realized.

13. Reach/People who saw this

14. Reach/People who saw this
The number of people who received your content in their
newsfeed.
Note: Here’s how Facebook decides who receives your content:
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/08/06/facebook-tweaks-news-feed-algorithm-to-g

15. The dirty secret of reach
“People who saw this” does not tell you how many people saw a
post.
Well, more accurately, it does not tell you how many people read
it or consumed it. It does not measure the size of your audience.
Reach measures DELIVERY of content.
Higher reach means a higher potential for people to see and
engage with your content. It is correlated to what Facebook sees
as the RELEVANCE of your posts.

16. Engagement
The most accurate measure we can get is ACTIONS. When
people do something with our content, we can tell.
Engagement – Likes, comments, shares
Link clicks – Measurable through bit.ly and other link
shorteners

17. Your basic metrics
Likes – Brand recognition, content potential
Reach – Delivery, maximum viewership
Engagement – Interactions, observable audience
These three numbers impact each other:
•The more likes you have, the higher your potential reach and engagement.
•The higher your reach the larger the pool of people who might engage.
•The more engagement you get, the more frequently Facebook delivers your
posts (higher reach).

18. Exercise #1
Write down your primary goal for your own Facebook
page.
What metrics would you look at to measure how effectively
you’re reaching that goal?

19. How to improve your page
Each month, collect your basic metrics and your goal-
specific metrics.
Take some time to think about whether they met your
expectations. Are you growing in the right direction? Are
you growing as fast as you’d like to grow?

20. Facebook Insights
Dashboard
How to get aggregated data and info about your page

21. How to get there
Click here

22. Overview tab

23. Overview tab
Make observations, notice patterns.
What’s different than you expected? Are there obvious
spikes or troughs? Did your metrics go down when you
thought they should go up (or vice versa)?
Do you see any posts that did unusually well or poorly?

24. Overview tab
Look at changes or patterns and ask yourself:
Why?
Why is this metric going up or down? Did I do something
differently this week? What might this say about what my
audience wants?

25. Past two weeks
reach/engagement was
higher on Monday. Are
we doing something
that day that could be
replicated?
Photos get higher
reach/engagement, but
this photo did poorly. Is
it because we didn’t
write a description?
Reach and engagement
dropped this week. Did
we do something
differently? Was the
news different?
Reach and engagement
spiked last Thursday.
What did we do
differently that day?

26. Exercise #2
Look through your Overview tab. Write down two
observations you might use to make and test hypotheses
about how to improve your page performance.
How would you test these hypotheses?

27. How to improve your page
This gives you a rigorous and accurate way to determine what
works and what doesn’t...
Step One: Observe. Pick out unusual changes or regular patterns.
Step Two: Hypothesize. Make an educated guess about what might
improve your page performance based on what you observed.
Step Three: Test. Make a single change to how you post and
implement it for 2-4 weeks.
Step Four: Evaluate. Look at whether your performance changed how
you expected and decide whether to continue or abandon the change.

28. Posts tab
Is there an obvious pattern in when your posts were delivered this week? Try using the
scheduler to time posts in accordance with this pattern and see how it changes your outcomes.
Posts tab  When Your Fans Are Online

29. Posts tab
You will likely see a pattern similar to this one for your posts. Choose the
format of your posts based on what you want them to achieve.
If you want:
•Reach use a Status update
•Engagement use a Photo
•Clickthroughs use a Link
Posts tab  Best Post Types

30. How to improve your page
Optimizing your post timing and post types are two of the most
straightforward ways to make gains in the performance of your page.
Example:
Observation: Photos seem to get the most engagement
Hypothesis: If we post more photos, we can generate more discussion
on our page
Test: Each day for two weeks, we will take one item we normally
would have posted as a link and post it as a photo instead
Evaluation: If the hypothesis is correct, during those two weeks we
should see a higher average engagement per post compared to the two
preceding weeks, and since the goal is discussion we’d particularly like
to see a higher average comments per post

31. How to improve your page
Example:
Observation: Our audience seems to be online in the late morning
Hypothesis: I can get more return for the same effort by taking the post
I usually do at 6am and putting it up between 9am and noon
Test: Each day for two weeks, when I compose my post at 6am, I will
schedule it to go out between 9am and noon
Evaluation: If the hypothesis is correct, during those two weeks I
should see a higher overall average reach per post compared to the two
preceding weeks, and the average reach on those scheduled posts
should be higher than the average reach for other posts

32. Exercise #3
Look through your Posts tab. Write down two observations
about your content and the corresponding hypotheses you
would want to test.

33. Page tab
Keep an eye on negative actions as well as positive ones.
Try to keep these low. If they spike, investigate why. Was there a specific
post people reacted negatively to? Did you post more items that day, or in a
different format than usual?
Page tab  Post Reach

34. People tab
Think about:
Are you reaching
your target
audience?
Are you providing
content that serves
the needs of the
audience you have?
Are there major
differences between
who your fans are
and who you’re
reaching or
engaging?
Why or why not?
People tab  Your Fans

35. Remember…
The goal is always to figure out what works and what doesn’t, so
we can do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
Step One: Observe. Pick out unusual changes or regular patterns.
Step Two: Hypothesize. Make an educated guess about what might
improve your page performance based on what you observed.
Step Three: Test. Make a single change to how you post and
implement it for 2-4 weeks.
Step Four: Evaluate. Look at whether your performance changed how
you expected and decide whether to continue or abandon the change.

36. Takeaways
1) Likes don’t tell the whole story about a page’s
performance. Come up with specific goals for your page
and focus on meeting those.
2) Keep an eye on your basic metrics. Know what normal
looks like so you can recognize when things change.
Make sure you’re growing rather than stagnating.
3) Start making observations that can help you identify
what works and what doesn’t. Use those observations to
run little experiments – replicate what works, eliminate
what fails.

37. Exporting Insights
Data
Going beyond the Dashboard

38. Why export?
Facebook actually collects much more data than is available
on the dashboard.
Exporting your Insights gives you access to all this data and
lets you manipulate it in more ways.
You can get a more nuanced idea of how your page is
performing and more accurately test how making changes
impacts your outcomes.

39. How to export data
1. Click Export Data
2. Select Page data or Post
data. Page data is overall for
your entire page, Post data
gives you data for each
individual post. Choose Post
data for now
3. Pick a date range. If you’re
looking to make general
observations you’ll want a
fairly wide range (3-6 months)
4. Click Download

40. Try this…
Take a few minutes to flip through all the tabs and get a
sense of what data is offered.

41. Pivot tables
In order to get more out of the data, we’re going to use
“pivot tables.” Excel pivot tables make it easy to
manipulate and filter your data.
For example, if I have this data and want
to know the total sales for each region…
I can use a pivot table and generate this
data to get the answer.
I could also have looked at aggregate data
for any of the columns – Month, Year,
Type, Salesperson, etc.

42. Creating pivot tables
Click anywhere inside your data table.
Select the “Insert” tab and
then click “Pivot Table.”
Your entire data range should be
automatically selected. Place the
pivot table in a new worksheet
and click OK.

43. Creating pivot tables

44. Creating pivot tables
Drag and drop fields from the top to the bottom to
create your table.
“Row Labels” defines your rows. Each value
becomes a new row. “Values” defines your
columns. Whatever variable you place there will be
calculated for each row.
In this example our rows are the type of post. For
each type, we are calculating the total number of
impressions (sum) for all posts of that type.

45. Creating pivot tables
Change the calculation being
performed by clicking the arrow and
selecting “Value Field Settings.”
In this example:
Sum = the total impressions for all
posts of this type
Count = the number of instances of
this type of post
Average = the average number of
impressions for a post of this type

46. Be careful…
Not all values can be accurately summed.
Example:
Reach = the number of people who received a post.
If one post had a reach of 100 and another had a reach of 50, is the total
reach 150? NO.
You have no way of knowing whether some of these people are the
same people. Adding the numbers together overcounts.
Use impressions instead. Impressions are the number of times a post
was delivered. The duplication problem does not exist.

47. Manipulating the
Data
Basic use of pivot tables

48. Building a basic pivot table
Task: use a pivot table to find out what types of posts get
the most negative feedback (hides, unsubscribes, unlikes,
etc.).

49. Since you want to compare types of
posts, put “Type” in the Row Labels
box.
Since you want to compare them based
on how much negative feedback they
receive, drag Lifetime Negative
Feedback from Users into the Values
box.
Set the “Value Field Settings” to
calculate the average in order to look at
the average negative feedback per post.
Notice: We used Lifetime Negative
Feedback from Users instead of Lifetime
Negative Feedback. Lifetime Negative
Feedback describes unique users rather
than total actions.

50. Why look at the average instead of the sum?
Since sum is an overall total, its value depends on how many of that type of post
exist.
Here’s an example, looking at impressions by type of post:
Photos have generated the most total impressions, followed by links. But
when you look at the averages you can see that on a per post basis, status
updates actually generate the most impressions. It’s just that there haven’t
been as many of those.
Averages are useful when you want to compare categories, because they
smooth over differences in quantity. Sums are a better measure of overall
performance.

51. Photos generated the most negative feedback per post, followed by video, then
status updates, then links.
Does it matter? If your primary goal was to reduce negative feedback, it would
matter quite a bit.
Otherwise, the differences aren’t that large, so it’s probably not that significant.
But there is something interesting here: you’d expect negative feedback to
correlate to reach – the more people receive your post, the more likely it is that
someone will react negatively to it. However, status updates get the most reach
of any post type, and they ended up down the list in terms of negative feedback.
Our pivot table of negative feedback by post type:

52. Exercise #4
Create a pivot table for the Lifetime Post Stories tab in your
spreadsheet, and use it to determine which type of post gets
the most likes, which gets the most comments, and which
gets the most shares.

53. Columns and
Calculations
Adding new values to your data

54. Adding columns
Click Insert and select Insert Sheet
Columns.
Excel will insert the column to the left of
whatever column is currently selected.
Facebook gives you certain categories and numbers, but
you can insert your own categories and do your own
calculations to make other types of comparisons.
To insert a column:

55. Adding columns
You can use your new column to categorize posts according
to any variable you might want to use to compare them.
Other examples:
Breaking news v. feature news
What country the story is about
Posts where you asked a question v. ones where you didn’t
New
variable: Did
this post
have a
Soundcloud
link?

56. Doing calculations
Open a new Excel spreadsheet.
In the first blank cell type the following: =2+4
When you hit enter, Excel should replace that with the value “6”
The equals sign lets Excel know you want it to perform a calculation,
and it will follow your instructions in the rest of the cell.
If you click on that cell, you will still see your original formula up at
the top of the screen, letting you know how Excel arrived at the value.

57. Doing calculations
Now type the value “2” in the first cell and the value “4” in the second cell, like
this:
You probably noticed that each cell can be described by a letter and number
combination. The “2” is in cell A1, and the “4” is in cell B1.
You can perform calculations using the names of cells instead of entering
values directly. In the third cell over, type: =A1+B1
When you hit Enter, you should again get the value “6”

58. Task: On average, what percentage of the people who
receive your posts engage with them, and does this differ by
post type?
Exercise #5
(we’ll do this together)

59. First we have to calculate the percentage of people reached
who engaged for each post.
% = People engaged/People reached
People engaged = Lifetime Talking About This (column Q)
People reached = Lifetime Post Total Reach (column H)

60. Create a new column in your spreadsheet and title it “% Reached who
Engaged.”
To calculate that value for your first post, click in the
first empty cell and type: =Q3/H3
Click the little box in the lower right and
drag it down to fill the entire column. Excel
will automatically adjust the formula to give
you the correct calculation for each row.
Tip: Right click and select “Format cells” to change how
many decimal places display, or to automatically convert
the values to percentages

61. Since you already have a pivot table created, you just need
to update it to include the new column of data.
From your pivot table tab, select Options and then Refresh.
Set up
Result

62. Exercise #6
On which day of the week do your posts generate the most
engagement?
Hint:
Excel can calculate the day of the week based on the date,
using the formula =Weekday(CELL)
Each day gets a number, starting with 1 for Sunday

63. WHY? WHY? WHY?!?
Take a break and remember why we’re suffering through
all this Excel stuff:
To figure out what works and what doesn’t, and then do
more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
It’s as simple as that.

64. Final Challenge
When more posts are created in a day, does it impact the reach of each
individual post?
Hint 1:
Use the Text to Columns function to separate the date and time into two
separate columns
Hint 2:
=Countif($D$3:$D$100,D5) counts the number of times the value in
cell D5 appears in the entire range of cells from D3-D100. For example,
if D5 contained a date, you could count how many times that date
appears in the entire column