Today we’re continuing our series on measuring social media where we’ll look at the biggest and still leading social network—Facebook. With 1.35 billion monthly active users to date, Facebook is instinctively the first social media channel that marketers latch on to.

Facebook has practically covered everything when it comes to reaching your target audience. From the launch of that cover photo to recommended ads or related posts, they have made social media marketing relatively easy at first glance. Except that it’s not. Reaching your audience is not the same as engaging your audience. Likes do not guarantee increase in traffic especially when the content links back to your website. So how do you successfully measure your Facebook engagement?

Let’s define the basics first. You need to know that Facebook looks at engagement at post-metric level. Meaning they look at each post’s performance. They define engagement as the “number of people who clicked anywhere in your post.” Based on Facebook Insights, your audience’s interaction with your brand can be seen in the following metrics:

• Likes – refers to the number of likes your page got
• Reach – refers to the number of people who saw the posts in your page
• Visits – refers to the number of times your page is visited and where the visits came from
• Posts – refers to the breakdown of the stats for each post which shows the total reach and engagement of the post
• People – refers to the summary of all your engaged fans broken down by location, age, and location

When you click on Insights at the top of your Facebook page you will see an overview of your posts’ performance as seen in the screen shot below. You can check the more detailed breakdown in the succeeding tabs.

To compute your Facebook engagement, simply add the following:

Likes + Comments + Shares + Post Clicks = # of People Engaged

In case you’re wondering what POST CLICKS are, they are the clicks that your post received outside of the likes, comments, and shares. Some people play your video but don’t share it. Others read your content but forgot to click the like button. Those clicks are also counted as interactions.

To measure your actual engagement rate simply use this formula:

Engaged users

___________________            X             100

Reached users

If we’ll compute the figures using the above example, the brand gains 20.7% engagement rate. For a Facebook page with more than 100K followers, the average engagement rate is 19%. The brand’s result is well above the average, showing that they’re doing better than similar businesses with the same number of fans. Here’s an overview of what your ideal engagement rate should be based on your followers.

FACEBOOK AVERAGE ENGAGEMENT RATE PER PAGE SIZE
Number of Fans	Post Engagement Rate	Page Engagement Rate
1 – 9,999	0.65%	0.94%
10,000 – 99,999	0.34%	0.52%
100,000 – 499,999	0.19%	0.35%
500,000 – 999,999	0.13%	0.29%
1,000,000 +	0.11%	0.28%

• Data: Facebook Data (43,645 pages)
• Data Range: January 16 – February 16, 2014

So How Do I Start?

You need to check your Facebook Insights page and see your current engagement. From there set your KPIs (key performance indicators) and set targets like how many likes or shares you’re aiming for. You also need to create a reporting process that will constantly monitor your posts’ performance on a weekly basis. Review your stats monthly and see which posts performed really well and which ones performed poorly. Make adjustments based on your audience’s behavior toward your content. Another good thing to do would be to check your competition’s stats and see how they’re faring. You will see Facebook pages that are similar to yours at the bottom of the Overview page. It looks like this:

Check out what kind of posts work for them and adopt it. In the same way, veer away from posts they made that had low engagement. We’re pretty sure they’re checking your posts’ performance, too!

Facebook basically does the measuring for you. They provide you with the figures then give you the freedom to do what you want with it. The analysis of these stats and effective social media execution will come from you. You need to have a strategic plan to ensure that your posts are cohesive, consistent, and compelling enough to prompt engagement. Getting the numbers is just the first part. Your end goal should be to make those numbers rise. When you maximize your Facebook engagement, you can make the most of your time and resources, which ultimately results in successful social media campaigns.

In case you missed the first part of our Measuring Social Media series, you can check it out here:

Overview: Measuring Social Media

About Pepper Social Media

Pepper Social Media is an online marketing firm that specializes on social media management, content marketing, SEO, PPC, social media marketing, copywriting, and targeted blogging. Our creative team consists of experienced marketing strategists who can fortify your brand identity and amplify your reach.

About Pepper Social Media

Pepper Social Media is an online marketing firm that specializes on social media management, content marketing, SEO, PPC, social media marketing, copywriting, and targeted blogging. Our creative team consists of experienced marketing strategists who can fortify your brand identity and amplify your reach.

About Pepper Social Media

Pepper Social Media is an online marketing firm that specializes on social media management, content marketing, SEO, PPC, social media marketing, copywriting, and targeted blogging. Our creative team consists of experienced marketing strategists who can fortify your brand identity and amplify your reach.