Facebook analytics are like a crystal ball for your business. They provide valuable insights into how your page is performing, what content resonates with your audience, and how you can improve engagement.
The key to harnessing these analytics is choosing the right Facebook analytics tools. While the OG, native Facebook Analytics platform was discontinued in 2021, there are still tons of smart, user-friendly tools to help you tap into your Facebook page’s performance.
Bonus: Get a free social media analytics report template that shows you the most important metrics to track for each network.
What are Facebook analytics?
Facebook analytics are the data and tools you need to track your page’s performance and understand your audience. They use data from your Facebook page to provide valuable insights into the behavior of your followers, content engagement, and overall page growth.
Reviewing your Facebook analytics regularly is crucial in developing an effective social media strategy. It allows you to better understand your audience and tailor your content accordingly, leading to higher engagement and growth for your page.
The best Facebook analytics tools will also help you run, create, and share Facebook analytics reports, making it easier to track your progress and prove the results of your efforts.
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3 top Facebook analytics tools
Facebook used to have a native analytics tool called, appropriately enough, Facebook Analytics. Even though the app was discontinued in 2021, there are still plenty of ways to access your Facebook analytics data. Here are the best tools to do it.
1. Meta Business Suite
Meta Business Suite has replaced Facebook Analytics as the native tool to access analytics for Facebook. Here, you can see metrics, trends, and visual reports to help you gain insights about your Facebook page or individual posts.
Here’s how to find your Facebook Analytics in Meta Business Suite:
1. Open Meta Business Suite and click on Insights. On the overview screen, you’ll see top-level insights for Facebook. You can also access Instagram insights by choosing Instagram from the dropdown menu on the right.
2. Click on any categories in the left menu to get more details of your Instagram and Facebook metrics.
3. To look specifically at Facebook content metrics with no Instagram data to distract you, click on Content in the left menu. Then, open the Ads, Posts, and Stories drop-down menu and uncheck the Instagram options.
2. Facebook Page Insights
Facebook Insights is now part of the Meta Professional Dashboard. Here you can review basic insights about your page, posts, and audience. The data here is quite basic and does not go back very far in time (from a max of 28 to 90 days) but can provide a good quick overview of what’s happening with your Page.
To access Facebook Page Insights:
1. From your Facebook Business Page and click Insights in the left menu.
2. Here, you’ll see a quick overview of your page, including metrics like Post reach, Post engagement, New page likes, and new followers.
3. You can also click the Content or Ads boxes to see how recent posts or ads perform.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool with advanced (but super easy to use) Facebook analytics.
Hootsuite’s Analytics tracks your Facebook data in detail alongside your results from other social accounts. This simplifies your social media analytics work and makes it easy to compare aggregate results across networks.
Fun fact: Most people who use WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram also use Facebook. You’ll find 77.4% of Instagram users and 50.2% of TikTok users on Facebook.
Comparing results across social media platforms is the only way to understand what your audience expects from you on each platform. Or, how best to connect with them in each context.
Hootsuite Analytics allows you to see how your audience responds on each platform so you can better understand where your Facebook and social media marketing efforts fit into the bigger picture.
That said, if you prefer to focus specifically on your Facebook results, you can also use Hootsuite Analytics to dive deep into all the Facebook metrics that matter most to your business.
Create, export, or schedule a custom social media report to automatically deliver the data to your inbox. Then, use the sharing options to share with colleagues and stakeholders throughout your organization automatically.
Hootsuite’s Facebook Analytics also shows you a heatmap that tells you exactly when your audience will most likely be online and provides custom recommendations for the best time to post based on your engagement goals.
Here’s how to find your Facebook analytics in Hootsuite:
1. Go to your Hootsuite dashboard and click the Analytics icon in the sidebar.
2. Click New report from the left hand menu.
3. Then, choose Facebook Overview (if you haven’t already, follow these steps to connect your account). On this screen, you’ll see a full picture of all your Facebook analytics, from engagement to link clicks to the sentiment of your inbound messages. There are also plenty of pre-built Facebook report templates for you to dive into more detail.
4. Use the Export button in the top right to share data with your colleagues or export the metrics and charts into a custom report in PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, or .csv. You can also schedule your report to go out on regular basis using the New scheduled report feature.
Important Facebook analytics metrics
Now that you know where to find your Facebook analytics data, let’s look at some of the most important metrics to track.
Facebook page analytics
Your Facebook page analytics can provide valuable insights into your page’s performance and audience demographics.
Here are some key metrics to track:
Reach: This includes people who saw content posted on your page as well as people who saw content posted about your page by other social users.
Visits: The number of times people visited your Facebook page.
Link clicks: This metric shows how many people clicked on any links or buttons in your posts.
New likes: The number of new people who liked your Facebook page.
Follower growth rate: How quickly your page is gaining or losing followers.
Virality rate: The percentage of times content from your page was displayed as a result of reactions, comments, and shares (available in Hootsuite Analytics).
Facebook audience insights
Facebook audience insights help you get to know your audience better by providing information about demographics, interests, and behaviors. This can be used to create more targeted and relevant content for your followers.
Here are some key metrics to track:
Age & Gender: The breakdown of age groups and percentage of women and men (no statistics for non-binary folx at this time, unfortunately).
Location: You’ll see the top cities and countries for your audience, so you can understand just where the likes and followers are coming from.
Language: The primary language of your audience. Good to know if you’re running multilingual campaigns! (available in Hootsuite Analytics).
Potential audience: Just as important as the audience that is already following you, knowing your potential reach can help you better target your content and ads.
Facebook post analytics
Facebook post analytics give you insight into how individual posts perform, which can help inform your future content strategy.
Here are some key metrics to track:
Post reach: The Content Overview screen indicates the number of people who saw at least one of your posts at least once. This is an overall metric, but you can also dive into the reach numbers for each specific post by clicking on the Content item under the Content heading. While the overall metric provides a good sense of trends in your post viewership, the per-post metrics are more useful in terms of understanding what’s actually resonating with your audience.
Post engagement: The number of reactions, comments, and shares. Again, you can see both the total number for all Page posts and the details for each specific post.
Facebook stories analytics
If you’re using Facebook Stories to engage with your audience, it’s important to track their performance.
The metrics here are the same as for Facebook posts. Once in the Content tab, choose Stories from the drop-down menu in the top left, under All content.
Here, you’ll see your stories with the highest reach, sticker taps, and most replies.
Facebook reels analytics
Oddly enough, Meta categorizes Reels as Posts in the Insights interface.
To access your Facebook Reels Insights in Meta Business Suite, go to Insights, then Content, then choose Posts from the drop-down menu, under All content.
For each reel, you can track:
Reach: The number of people who saw your reel at least once.
Engagement: As for other post types, this is broken down into reactions, comments, and shares. Add them together for the total number of engagements, or track each individual metric based on what matters most to your business.
Facebook ads analytics
Rather than Meta Business Suite, the best native tool for viewing your Facebook ads analytics is Meta Ads Manager. You can also see Facebook ads analytics reports alongside your organic reporting in Hootsuite Analytics.
Reach: The number of people who saw your ad at least once. This number is important to compare to the actual number of click-throughs or engagement—if they’re seeing it but not following your CTA, what may have gone wrong?
Impressions: This is the number of times your ad appeared on screen. This number will likely be higher than reach, as the same person might see your ad more than once.
Cost per result: To measure the ROI of a campaign, this piece of data is key to revealing just how much bang you got for your buck.
Facebook group analytics
Facebook Groups are an amazing way for brands to build fan communities—and an even better way to collect data on who your most passionate followers are through your group’s Admin Tools. You can only see insights for Groups with 50 or more members.
Top contributors: Reveal who the most involved members of your community are—and possibly tap them for influencer or partnership opportunities.
Engagement: Understanding when your members are most active can help brands understand when and what to post for maximum reach.
Growth: Track how many members are joining your community, and what the catalysts to surges have been. This might give you insight into possible future promotional opportunities.
Facebook live analytics
You can find Facebook live analytics by clicking on the live video you want to see the metrics for.
Peak viewers: Track the highest number of simultaneous viewers at any point during your video when it was live.
Views: The total number of views your Live video has experienced.
Engagement: Add up the total number of reactions, shares, and comments.
Facebook video analytics
Video has been a hot topic for Facebook, and thus they’ve rolled out a lot of features to make it more native, immersive, and easier to track.
Video retention: A measure of how many people made it to each point in your video. You can see the average 3-, 15-, and 60-second views. Like other forms of Facebook posts, you can also dive into the specifics of each video to see what resonates best with your audience.
Average view duration: This statistic is helpful for determining just how your content is hitting. After all, if someone is tuning in and immediately leaving without watching the video, how much does their “view” actually matter?
Video engagement: Compile reactions, comments, and shares for a clear picture of just how engaging your video content is. For reference, the average Facebook video post engagement rate is 0.08%.
Keep in mind that not every metric will be equally important for your business. When you’re first getting started with Facebook analytics, focus on a few key metrics that align with your business goals and social strategy. Over time, you can start tracking more detailed metrics to get a more in-depth picture of your success on Facebook.
Facebook pixel analytics
Facebook pixel, now called Meta pixel, is a piece of code that you can add to your website to track conversions and run remarketing campaigns. By understanding how people interact with your website, you can better optimize ad targeting and user experience.
Some key metrics include:
Page views: The total number of times the pixel was loaded on your page.
Conversions: How many times someone took a desired action after viewing your ad. This could be buying a product, filling out a lead form, registering for an event, and so on.
Cost per conversion: The average cost of each conversion from your ads. You can use this to compare how much you’re spending with how much profit translates into. If your cost per conversion is higher than the amount of money you make from each customer, you’re losing money on your ads.
FAQs about Facebook analytics
How do I check Facebook analytics?
The most basic option is to click See insights and ads under your Facebook posts. This gives you a high-level snapshot of the success of that post. For more detailed analytics, reports, graphs, and comparisons, you’ll need to use Meta Business Suite, Facebook Page Insights, or Hootsuite Analytics.
What do Facebook analytics show?
What you see when you check your Facebook analytics depends on which tool you use. Clicking on insights for any individual post from your Facebook page brings up a pop-up with quick stats for impressions, reach, and engagement.
Facebook analytics tools can provide much more information than that, from your overall Page metrics to comparing the success of your Facebook efforts to those on other platforms.
Does Facebook Insights still exist?
Facebook Insights does still exist, but it’s now accessible directly from your Facebook Page itself. Or, from the Professional dashboard. So, the Facebook Insights tool no longer exists as a standalone, but the information is still available.
Does Creator Studio exist?
Yes, Meta Creator Studio does exist! Meta Creator Studio is a platform that allows users to manage their content and insights across Facebook and Instagram, making it easier for creators to publish content, engage with followers, and track their performance. You can access Creator Studio through Meta Business Suite.
What is Facebook Audience Insights?
Facebook Audience Insights is a powerful analytics tool, available within Meta Business Suite, that helps businesses understand their Facebook audience better. It provides aggregate information on three groups: people connected to your Page, people in your Custom Audience, and people on Facebook. This data can be used to create more targeted and effective content and also help find new audiences within the platform.
Use Hootsuite to schedule all of your social media posts, engage with your followers, and track the success of your efforts. Sign up today.
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The post 3 Tools to Use Instead of Facebook Analytics [2024 Edition] appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.
Facebook analytics are like a crystal ball for your business. They provide valuable insights into how your page is performing,…
The post 3 Tools to Use Instead of Facebook Analytics [2024 Edition] appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.
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