10 Key Facebook Metrics To Track for Better Social Media Marketing

Part 4 of our Key Metrics Series

Among all of the social media platforms out there, Facebook still rules when it comes to marketing. An active presence on Facebook helps you attract new customers and grow your business. But how do you know if the content you’re posting is gaining any traction? And why do some posts seem to do well, while others completely tank?

Facebook offers a ton of information on the performance of your posts, audience demographics, and more. To understand how well your content is performing on Facebook, keep an eye on the following key Facebook metrics.

(Note that Facebook Ads have a whole different set of metrics to track beyond the ones listed here…we’ll discuss Facebook Ads metrics in a future post.)

1.) Impressions

The impressions metric tells you how many times your content has been seen. It is broken down into two categories:

• Organic: the number of times your posts have been displayed for free
• Paid: the number of times your posts have been displayed for a fee (i.e., from an ad or boosted post)

To get the most out of this metric, it’s best to use it as a comparison tool, comparing your posts with one another over time. Look at your impressions over the course of a month or a quarter, watching for ups and downs as well as the overall direction your impressions are trending toward.

2.) Reach

Reach refers to the total number of people who have seen your post. Contrary to what you might think, just because someone follows your Facebook page doesn’t mean that they will always see your posts in their newsfeed. This is because Facebook has an algorithm-based feed: 

Rather than displaying every post from every person and page a person follows, each person’s newsfeed will show the posts they are most likely to engage with.

Tracking your reach helps you understand what your audience likes and why certain posts perform better than others. And, like impressions, reach is split into two categories: 

• Organic Reach: how many people your posts reach for free and 
• Paid Reach: how many people your posts reach due to ad spend

3.) Engagement

Engagement is the percentage of people who saw your posts and interacted with them using likes, shares, clicks, or comments. 

To improve engagement:

• Pay attention to what your followers like: track which of your posts get more engagement and create more like them
• Research current content trends in your industry — what are others doing that is working?
• Publish original content, focusing on quality, not quantity
• Start conversations by posting questions or polls
• Go live: live videos can significantly increase your engagement rate per post

4.) Page Follower Growth

The number of followers you have, in and of itself, doesn’t matter as much as whether or not your follower count is growing. Keep an eye on your growth by tracking not only how many new followers you get, but also how many followers you lost in the same period.

To attract new followers, try the following:

5.) Follower Demographics

Understanding who your followers are and where they come from can help you customize your content to your followers’ needs and wants. Facebook allows you to track follower demographics like gender, age, and location (city, state, or country).

Tip: Notice what demographics make up the bulk of your followers, and direct most of your content to those demographics. 

However, occasionally you may also want to create content that’s more attuned to other demographics. For instance, around a quarter of all Facebook users worldwide are between 18 and 24 years old, so it would make sense to occasionally direct content toward that demographic, even if the bulk of your followers skew older.

6.) Post Reactions

The more reactions (likes, hearts, etc) your post has, the more people it will be shown to. To increase your post reactions:

• Create unique visual content in the form of photos, videos, and infographics
• Determine the best time of day and best days of the week to post by using an analytic tool to determine when your followers are most likely to be online
• Tell your story. People love a good story, so sharing your brand’s story can earn a lot of reactions. “Behind-the-scenes”-type posts and videos are hugely popular as well

When tracking post reactions, take them with a grain of salt — the number of reactions you get on each post can be affected by many factors, not only whether or not your followers enjoy the post.

Tip: If your reactions on a post seem low, check your reach and impressions for the post to see if they track with your typical numbers for those metrics.

7.) Post Comments

Getting more reactions is great, but getting more comments on your posts is even better. Increase your post comments by:

• Creating question posts. Invite followers to share their thoughts and opinions on your product or service, or to answer a question (a brand-related question or just something fun to get conversation rolling)
• Creating Facebook polls. Ask your audience’s opinion on something, whether it’s your new company logo, their preferences on something related to a product or service, or what they’d like to see from your company in the future.

When people take the time to comment on your post, that’s a good sign that the content is something that interests them. Keep an eye on what kinds of posts people comment on the most, and use that information to inform your future posts.

8.) Post Shares

When your followers share your posts, it gives you the chance to reach more people and be seen by a bigger audience. You’ve likely heard of posts “going viral” — well, sharing is how that happens.

To increase shares:

• Create shareable content like infographics that include statistics, tips, and so on
• Create short video tutorials. People tend to spend more time watching videos on Facebook than reading articles — tap into this trend by creating video tutorials for your products or services

Sharing has a domino effect: When viewers see that your post or article is being shared a lot, it’s a signal to them that your content has value, and they’re more likely to engage with it themselves.

9.) Facebook Click-Through Rate (CTR) or Referral Traffic

Facebook CTR (also known in this case as “referral traffic”) is similar to the CTR we talked about in our key SEO metrics blog. When it comes to Facebook, your CTR tells you how many of the people who saw your content clicked through to your website.

You can calculate your Facebook CTR as follows:

10.) Video Retention and Engagement

Video is huge in today’s social media strategy, especially live video. Going live on Facebook allows you to connect with your followers in an interactive and engaging way. It is cost-effective, easy to use, and doesn’t require any production time. You don’t even need any special equipment to record live videos — your mobile phone will do. 

If you’re not already using video to promote your business (live or previously recorded), consider adding it to your content mix. Even adding a monthly live video will do wonders for your overall Facebook engagement.

If you are using video, you’ll want to track a couple of key metrics specifically related to video: 

• Video retention. This metric tells you what percentage of your video people actually watch. For instance, if your video is 5 minutes long, but most people drop off after 2 minutes, the video retention metric will show you that.
• Video engagement. Just as in non-video posts, video engagement includes reactions, shares, and comments. It also includes “clicks to play” — the number of times people click on your video to play it rather than just allowing it to autoplay in their feed.

Keeping track of these video metrics will help you see how many people are viewing and engaging with your videos, which videos are more popular than others, how much time people spend watching your videos, and so on. These details can be used to make your future video content more engaging for your followers.

Track Key Facebook Metrics To Know How Your Content Is Performing, and Partner With Wild Fig To Improve It

Once you start tracking these key Facebook metrics, you’ll have a better idea of how well your content is doing. If you find that it’s not performing as well as you’d like, the team at Wild Fig Marketing can help. We can plan, write, and design engaging content, then post it to your business’ Facebook page for you. 

To learn more about how we can help you create content that performs better on Facebook, schedule an exploratory call today!