How To Measure Facebook Success

Here’s a question. Would you judge the success of your apple orchard by how many oranges are growing? Of course not. You’d judge it based on how many apples it’s growing, as it’s an apple orchard. A few oranges might be nice, but they’re not the goal.

Here’s another question. Would you judge the success of your Facebook Business Page based on how many Likes each post gets? The answer might not be as obvious, but it’s the same – you should not. You should judge it by how much ‘reach’ it’s getting, and overall engagement rates, not merely by post Likes.

Facebook underwent a massive change several years ago. Before this, post Likes were the main measurement of a Facebook Business Page’s success. However, in 2014, Facebook began using an algorithm that filters content and shows a Business Page’s posts to only 2% of it’s overall Page fans. This move nullified the Like as the main indicator of Page success, but many casual Facebook Business Page operators have not caught on to this change even to this day, and are still judging the success of their Business Pages by outdated metrics. This presents an extremely incomplete picture.

So what should you be measuring to accurately judge the success of your Facebook page? Glad you asked.

Facebook Insights. Go to your Facebook Business Page and click on ‘Insights’. You’ll be greeting with a Page Summary detailing Page Views, Post Reach, Engagement Rates, and much, much more. This will paint a significantly more detailed picture of your Facebook Business Page’s return rates.
Reach. Directly from Facebook itself: Facebook reach is the number of unique people who saw your content. It affects every other metric you can track: engagement, likes, comments, clicks and negative feedback. And that’s not all. There are different kinds of reach: post, page, organic, viral and paid. Everything on Facebook boils down to reach.
Likes and Shares. We’re not trying to suggest that post Likes don’t count anymore. They do count as engagement, as do post Shares. These just aren’t the singular measurement of success anymore.
Have faith, Facebook Business Page users. A lot of benefit your business gets from Facebook just can’t be measured. Brand recognition, new customer retention rates…you can use Facebook Insights to get a solid idea of your success, but nothing is written in stone. It takes commitment and a bit of faith for a business to be successful on Facebook. So we implore you, don’t judge an apple orchard based on the amount of oranges it’s growing, and don’t judge your Facebook Business Page based solely on the number of Likes your posts get. Use Facebook Insights and get a better picture!

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