What have I learned so far?
If you’re new here to my experiment or just want to get caught up – this was last month’s post about how I discovered how to use Facebook Groups and put the social back into social media on Facebook.
And then there was this one about how I learned what’s working for my fan page and what’s not.
As my year long experiment rolls on, I’m still amazed how I continue to uncover something new every month about how to grow my Facebook fan page.
I thought by this point in the experiment, I’d have this Facebook marketing thing worked out. I’d know what content to post, what time to post my messages and what days of the week would get the most reach.
I thought I’d have this whole thing locked down so I could schedule my posts in less than hour. I saw myself doing that “Get in, get out and get on my day” process and my Facebook fan page would just continue to grow.
If there’s anything that this year long Facebook experience has taught me is that “Just post something and run” isn’t a Facebook strategy. You need to constantly be monitoring your messages, posting content that resonates with your fans and connecting with other folks in Facebook groups.
This social site is just like any other marketing program that we handle in our business – it works when you work it.
Insights into what’s working and what’s not
One of the best tools to monitor what’s working with your Facebook fan page is the Insights section. Basically, it’s Facebook’s free analytics feature that allows you to see which posts are being liked, shared and what posts your fans are actually seeing when they log into Facebook.
When you first click into the Insights tab at the top of your fan page, it might seem a bit overwhelming. There’s so much to see, read and scan like your Page Likes, Post Reach and Engagement { oh my! }.
So just take a deep breath and we’ll walk through these sections together. I’ll show you which areas you should spend your time with every week to see what’s working with your fan page and what’s just not connecting with your fans.
The first thing you’ll see when you click the Insights tab is the Overview. This gives you a quick recap of what happened with your fan page this week compared to last week.
The Overview is broken up into these three sections:
Page Likes –This section lets you know how many new people Liked your fan page compared to how many clicked the Like button last week.
This is a good number to track for your fan page and not just because you’ll be cool if you have a lot of fan page Likes. Watching these weekly trends are a good reminder to ask yourself what changed this week for me to see an increase or a decrease in my page’s Likes.
Post Reach –The Post Reach numbers lets you know the unique number of fans or friends of fans { if a fan shared a post } who have seen your post that week. I added the word UNIQUE in there to let you know that if someone sees your post multiple times, they’re only counted as one view.
This number is different than the Impression number that you’ll see as an admin under each post directly on your fan page. Unlike Reach numbers, if a person sees your post 3 times, they count one person seeing that post as three impressions.
Engagement – This is the section where you can find what’s really working with your fan page. You’ll see if people are connecting with your content by liking, sharing or commenting on your stuff.
But to get more specific post-level details about what’s really going, scroll down a bit on that page to the section called Your 5 Most Recent Posts and click on the See All Posts link.
See All Posts equals Crunchy Facebook Goodness
When you click that See All button, a magical thing happens. You’ll get a full picture of how your fans are engaging with Facebook.
The first two sections show you the top days your fans log into Facebook and what time of day they’re online.
I use this information to plan what days and times to schedule my Facebook posts. As my fans continue to increase, the days and times have changed so I’ve learned to make slight adjustments to ensure that I’m posting when most of my fans are online.
And then I take my time to review the All Posts Published section.
You’ll see how many people clicked on your post, Liked it and those who shared it with their connections. I use to think that because I wasn’t getting any comments that no one saw my posts BUT this breakdown shows me just how many people are really seeing what I’m posting to my fan page.
Not every post can be a winner – I totally get that. But it’s good to see what content my fans are interested in seeing and learning more about when they click over to my fan page.
Reviewing this section in my Insights has given me direction into what type of content is working and what’s not.
I’ve tried posting tips on how to use Twitter and ideas to help you grow your presence on Facebook. The Twitter ones hardly got any attention but when I post Facebook content, it consistently shows up as a top post that week.
So I dropped the Twitter tips and added in more posts about Facebook. I’m even testing out different times of the day and different days of the weeks when I post the Facebook tips to see if that makes any difference to the level of engagement.
Another thing I discovered was my fans love of free printable planning worksheets. I made this confession on my fan page and was amazed at the response:
I am absolutely and completely addicted to organization and printable planners. I love the feeling I get when I have a new plan and I find a cool graphic filled planning sheet to work out my plan. So look what I found … for my other printable planner lovers, ENJOY!
The post was linked to a download page with a bunch of weekly and daily planners in different designs — all for free!
It was great to see that my fans loved printable planners as much as I do and now I’ve added a post every week to share another printable that I’ve found. So far I’ve posted links to Goal Binder printables to how to sort your ideas to this really cool checklist printable.
My Facebook Lesson
It feels like every month of this experiment, I’m learning a new lesson about Facebook and how to use this marketing tool. And this month was no different!
As I did my weekly review of my Insights, I was reminded about what I had learned from the Facebook Group post – the more you connect the right content with your fans, the more your posts will show up in their home feed.
But just because they hit that Like button once or twice doesn’t mean that they’ll keep seeing your posts. It’s important to make sure that your content continues to resonate with them.
Your posts should mean something to them.
Is your post helping them do something to make their world flow easier? Is it giving them something useful they can use to grow their business? Or is it something as simple a pretty printable planner sheet to help them organize their weekly to-do list?
The more you get to know your fans and their needs, the more you’ll know how to post valuable content that they’ll want to click on and read. You’ll earn the right to show up in their Facebook feed.
Because really when it comes right down to this whole Facebook thing, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that Facebook is really all about your fans experience, not what you think it should be.
PS What if you could find a way to grow your presence in your social sites? And what if it didn’t add hours to your already crazy day? What if it took just 30 minutes a few times a week?
Click here to learn more how to manage your social sites with the 30 Minute Social Sessions workbook.
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