Some people are stat crazy when given the option. The numbers, charts, and comparisons can give a wealth of information for people to analyze and formulate their next move with. The very opposite can also be true as some have no interest in seeing the minute details of how something works and prefer to just know the basic details or a well call it, "the 30,000-foot view".
When it comes to social media and specifically, your businesses' Facebook page, you might be wondering just how important looking at your stats are. Is simply posting on a schedule two to three times a week sufficient or does looking at the numbers really give away that much useful information?
Learn Stats, Learn Your Audience Imagine owning a business where the exact age group, gender, and area of your biggest potential customers was at your fingertips. Through your Facebook business page, all the essential information based on how your posts are performing, who is viewing them, who is clicking on them and who is engaging with them can be seen through the "insights" tab. This information updates regularly and can be downloaded into an Excel sheet to print out and share with others. This information provides invaluable data that tells you what posts are the most popular and what posts people clicked on the most.
What to Do with This InformationSo now that you can see what posts do well (those funny GIFS on Friday are a huge hit!) and what time people are viewing them, you can plan your posts out with more information and foresight to maximize their reach. By doing this and keeping in accordance with a suitable number of posts per week (2 to 3 every week), you can start pushing posts that truly show off your business at your client's peak hours that they are online. Want to push a new product or service and make sure your fans see it? The numbers hold the answers.
Numbers Change, So Should YouOnce you have found the idea posting time and developed a rhythm of what kind of content you want to talk about, it's important to check back in on those insights regularly. Once a day is too frequent to get accurate stats, so we recommend checking them once a month or every two weeks to get more detailed information. While it may seem that the numbers don't really change in the beginning, keeping in mind the seasonal shifts, changes in schedules and more will influence what ideal posting times should be.
A recent example we experienced was one client whose primary audience was women aged 25 to 44. During the summer months, the time they were on Facebook the most was from 9 am to 12 pm. Once summer came to an end, the times completely changed, with 8 pm through 9 pm being the time they were online and most active. If we didn't check and stuck with the original schedule, our posts would have most likely gone to waste.
ConclusionWhen getting into the fine details about Facebook stats, one could easily spend an entire year writing about the nuances and the ins and outs getting the most out of your Facebook page. As we said in the beginning, stats aren't for everyone but taking a few moments of your time every month to look at a few pieces of information can have a huge impact on who you reach and who gets your message.
If you want to get more information on reading your Facebook stats and what they mean or how you can take your business to the next level, shoot me an email, I'd love to talk to you!