There are countless ways to digest Facebook Insights data, and if I could write a post about all of the problems associated with so much data, I would probably end up writing an entire book. Instead, I thought I would try to break down the FB insights information that we track, as a data-centric company, that I think can help many of you get started. In this post, we’re following a framework that we first saw proposed by Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-social-media-metrics-conversation-amplification-applause-economic-value/) that we automated and slightly modified it to fit our orgnaization needs.

This framework helps us measure success using the metrics that actually tell us whether we are participating in FB in an optimal way. That way, we can move away from our vanity metrics (ie, clicks) to something actionable. Think about this question, what matters to you in Facebook?

You might think it’s about your strategy. In our case, it’s not about Fans, not the number of posts, not the number of followers, not even the numbers of likes. What matters is how we learn from our activities after we post. Did we increase your engagement so that users undertake an activity? Did we grow your community by enabling more people to share? Did we direct participation gain more user leads and increase your economic value?

Below are the three FB media metrics that we all should measure regardless of our specific strategy:

1. Conversation Rate

Conversation rate gives us a very good sense for who is following us. With Factivate, we can measure if what we are saying (or posting), connects to our users in real time. And, unlike other vanity measures, this KPI is really contingent on our ability to talk, listen, follow-up, and discuss. As you can see, it can really lead to better community engagement, customer support, or even community growth. Here is how we measure it:

Conversation Rate = # of Audience Comments Per Post

So now that you have a great Facebook KPI, how should you be looking at it?

Aim for a high conversation rate. A high conversation rate will instruct you to take a deeper look at who your audience is, what you are good at, what value you can add to your followers and even what areas of discussion are important to your engaged audience. This is why I love this metric. It really helps companies focus on a concrete message that works.

2. Amplification Rate

Facebook’s network effect can be used to your advantage if you know exactly what you should be measuring. In our case, we not only can take advantage of our own network, but every node in our network that has a network of its own. If you’re posting something with a high “conversation rate” as we suggested above (relevant, of value), then these posts can help you break out of your own network into a massive audience. I’m not talking about reach here; we’re being actionable. We measure Amplification as the rate at which your followers take your content and share it through their network.

Amplification Rate = # Shares per Post

As you are sharing information (with good conversation rates) you should measure what pieces of content they consider to be of such incredible value that they actually share it. This is how you know what your audience loves). You can use Factivate to measure your Amplification Rate for FB Insights (as you see from the image above) and even across social media channels.

3. Applause Rate

If amplification helps you understand what your audience truly loves, your applause rate will give you a much deeper understanding of what your audience likes so much that they will allow for that to be shown on their own Facebook timeline. Think about the difference between Applause Rate and Amplification Rate like this:

If someone likes this blog post, I will not understand its quality as much, but when someone in our extended social network does a search on Google for the top three Facebook Insights Metrics, our audience’s endorsement will show up in the search results. That’s reassuring to our social graph but it’s even better because the endorsement will make this post stand out over others and will help us gain relevant visitors and potential customers. This is how we measure Applause Rate:

Applause Rate = # of Likes per Post

So now that you’ve got these important KPIs and are tracking them on a daily basis, what can you do? How can it help you get a bigger budget? Can it even help you get promoted?

Measuring your Facebook Strategy’s Economic Value!

For businesses, it’s all about bottom line. Sadly, many company leaders still view social media efforts as a way to stay relevant without really understanding how it adds to your bottom line. This is where you will come in and amaze them your your Factivate spreadsheet!

You cannot just show your team Conversation Rate, Amplification Rate, and Applause Rate and hope that they show you their eternal gratification for your efforts (and increase your budget). If you want that, you need to show how Facebook drives business outcomes, meaning, you will need to show the direct path to sales from your efforts. In other words, you need to be able to showcase conversions from your Facebook strategies. This is what we call, Economic Value and we measure it by following the formula below:

Economic Value = Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings

If you’re really good at data, you can even add lifetime value of a recurring subscription customer to your economic value!

How do you show the link between Facebook and Economic Value or ROI?

Remember, economic value is all about tracking conversions. If you have not already set up your landing pages, pixels, and goal conversions through Google Analytics, you should do so now. If you don’t know how to do so, there are hundreds of Google posts to help you get started.

Once you’ve done so, your data results should be able to show you: visits, conversions, goal conversion rates, and per visit goal value from your source/medium (in this case, you’ll want to track referrals from facebook.com and m.facebook.com).

You can view this information on Google Analytic’s acquisition section or simply download the Factivate spreadsheet template that combines Facebook Insights and Google Analytics in real time for you.

Facebook participation, if tracked correctly, adds value to your company,  showcases your value, and will likely help you never have to beg for more investment in Facebook.

Here’s a tip: On our company, we have a Factivate tab (similar to the one above but showing daily KPIs instead of monthly) that is displayed on a big monitor (24×7) so that everyone can see how our social media efforts are driving Economic Value. If you do this, I promise, you will not just impress those in your department, but anyone who cares about your company’s bottom line. In our case, we combined our Facebook data with our other social media channels, Google Analytics, and Stripe to show the direct value of our marketing efforts.

Using Factivate to Track your Facebook Insight KPIs

The challenge in tracking KPIs (prior to Factivate) has been that platforms usually make it difficult to pull information from different sources into one place where you can then customize to fit your needs. This is why users keep doing their analytics in excel. With Factivate, however, you can view your Facebook data in real time, edit formulas and graphs as you see fit, and even add triggers to your data so that your KPIs are alerting you whenever something important happens (ie, send me an SMS when my conversation rate exceeds my goal). If you are ready to get started tracking the Facebook insights metrics, you can use any of the Facebook insights KPI spreadsheet templates for marketers and have a real-time reporting tool that will help you showcase your Facebook marketing strategies throughout the organization.

Are you tracking any other KPIs that we should be aware of that could help other companies? Should we include them in our spreadsheet template? Feel free to let us know!

About Factivate:

Factivate is a software company part of the Google for Entrepreneurs community in Durham, NC. Factivate provides business users with a cloud-based data analytics platform that can sync with different online tools to create automated, real-time spreadsheet reports and web dashboards with just-in-time business reactions. The result of our intelligent spreadsheet is accurate data analysis that drives better business decisions while reducing manual spreadsheet report time and errors by a factor of 150+ hours/employee/year. Factivate requires no learning curve or programming knowledge. In sharp contrast to the complex and expensive business intelligence tools on the market today, if you know spreadsheets, then you know 95% of what you need to use Factivate–we’ve got the rest covered.