Now, more than ever, social media strategies are taking over by storm and are beginning to play in the same arena as large-scale marketing and advertising campaigns. It’s arguable that social media networks are even more powerful for your company because they trigger conversation about your brand and what’s better publicity than that? However, your social strategy doesn’t stop after one Facebook post. You’re going to want the data behind it too.

This post will cover some marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) that help you understand what Facebook content you push is working for your company and what you can tweak to make even better.

Getting started, three of the most significant KPIs for all social media include amplification rate, applause rate and conversion rate. Below, I have broken down what these mean in terms of Facebook.

Applause Rate is the average number of times one of your posts is “liked”. This number also represents other expressions now offered on Facebook including “love”, “haha”, “wow”, “sad” and “angry”. Applause rate essentially tells you the percentage of people who have some sort of public reaction to your post. Unlike other social media sites, on Facebook now allows you to see the type of emotion associated with the reaction. 

Amplification Rate refers to the average of times a post on your timeline is shared. All too often do people get caught up in the number of page likes their business has, when in actuality, your reach goes far beyond that. Amplification rate factors in your 1^st level audience (the people who have liked your company’s page and will see your posts directly) will see the post, as well as your 2^nd level audience (friends of the people who like your page and will see your posts after being shared by their friend). This rate is always changing as your company’s awareness grows. The goal is to continuously evolve your 2^nd level audience to 1^st and so on, exponentially increasing the amplification of your content.

Conversation Rate reports the average number of times one of your posts is commented on or replied to. Essentially, this number tells you if people are actually engaging and interacting with the content you post. If you find that your conversation rate for the week is elevated, you then should take a look at your top posts and what people are saying about them in order to expand on those topics to keep the chit-chat going. After all social media is about being social!

As discussed in a previous post, its important to understand that some KPIs offer more meat than others, especially when it comes to the specific goal you are trying to achieve. You want to look for the metrics that give you more than their name value. KPI’s and other data points that provide rather obvious information are called vanity metrics. In terms of Facebook, an example of vanity metrics would be the number of people who like your company’s page. This number alone doesn’t give you any further insight, whereas others provide further context and actionable data.

If you are just getting started with Facebook metrics, Applause Rate, Amplification Rate and Conversation Rate are the strong bones of your measuring. To add some meat and get an even better understanding of your numbers, consider KPIs like network growth, total reach, activity ratio, and engagement rate.

Network Growth presents the number of new fans or likes that come to your company’s official page over a period of time. Although there are many reasons for a person to like a page, the bottom line of this metric is the positive growth by people interested in what you are talking about.

Total Reach refers to the total number of people who have viewed your post(s). This metric is a bit bare on its own, but is great to cross-reference with other KPIs like micro-conversions or macro-conversion credited to that post.

Engagement Rate (for Facebook) is an aggregate of all likes, comments and shares on your company’s page over a given period of time. Many people seek just a basic breakdown of this metric to get a clear image of what the Facebook activity looked like for over a given amount of time. This includes basic data points like how many times the marketing specialist or team posted to Facebook and the number of times posts were liked, commented on or shared.

Conversion Rate (for Facebook) is calculated by the number of conversions credited to a Facebook post divided by your total conversions. Keeping track of this number and comparing it to the conversion rates of other social sites helps you identify your strongest (and weakest) avenues for pushing content and connecting with your audience.

So your next question might be: How can I get these metrics for myself?

Here at Factivate, we have created a cloud-based spreadsheet template that operates on real-time data from your company’s Facebook. It’s easy to understand, easy to use, and absolutely awesome for displaying and understanding your data. Get started with your Facebook Insights template here!