Many public relations professionals are tasked with monitoring and managing the numerous social media accounts for the different clients they work with. Since clients need their brands to be seen by their targeted audience in order to do well against competition, it is up to the PR professionals to make sure that the social media platforms utilized are being used to the best of their abilities. For all social media sites, there is a way to track the metrics of the reached viewers in order to analyze the progress or demise of many accounts. For Facebook, it is not just another social media platform that uses posts to reach their targeted audiences; it is a real tool that has built-in analytics for PR professionals to view and make sure the company is on track.
But as students we aren’t typically asked to view these metrics and analyze the numbers, so not many of us would know how to do that. When I was given the task of looking over the Blue Hen Says page for the Office of Communications and Marketing, I was unsure of the best way to go about analyzing the data I gathered and a little confused on terminology. But with a little help from Google, I learned ways to make the data search and analysis a little bit easier.
Below are some terms and tips to keep an eye out when monitoring a Facebook page specifically.
When you manage a Facebook page you will be able to click on page insights to find metrics on Likes obtained, Post reach (or the number of people your post was served to), Visits to the page, and information about your Posts such as which is liked most by viewers or even when your viewers are online to reach them at opportune times.
For the Blue Hen Says account, I was interested mostly in the Reach section to see where our engagement with viewers needed work. Reach shows how many unique people saw something about the Page and Impressions show how many total times something was seen about the Page. These are then split into three different groups.
1. Organic Impressions:
These come from people seeing your content in their newsfeed. According to PageLever, “when you publish a new photo or status update to your Page’s wall and someone sees it, this number goes up. This is by far the most common way you’ll reach your Fans and their friends.”
2. Paid Impressions:
This is where sponsored stories and other ad units can be found. PageLever notes that understanding both paid content and original content are extremely important to the success of the page.
3. Viral Impressions
Viral Impressions are impressions on “stories” that get created when someone engages with your Page somehow.
Fan Story: This means that someone became a fan or liked your page
User Post: This means that someone else wrote on your Page’s Wall
Page Post: This means that someone commented, liked or shared one of your Page’s posts
Mention: This means that someone mentioned your Page or tagged it in a photo
When viewing the Reach section of the page, exporting all of this information is vital to organizing the content and analyzing the data. It’s a great idea to keep these terms in mind when analyzing those metrics to determine where your Page is successful and where it needs more work to truly benefit your client’s brand or company.
For more information regarding analytics, check out this link: http://pagelever.com/understanding-insights-reach/
By: Nicole Sullivan
Nicole Sullivan is a Mass Communication Major with Advertising and Journalism minors. She is the Vice President of External Affairs for the Public Relations Student Society of America as well as a Senior Reporter for the University of Delaware’s independent student-run newspaper, The Review.
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