I feel like I should be writing something really daft today – at least as it is still pre-midday (April Fool) but, instead I’m going to try to make simple something that has many of us scratching our bald patches…
Facebook Insights. What do all those numbers actually mean?
Reach.
This one is fairly simple. It’s the number of people who have seen something that you have shared or posted. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? But when you look at what Facebook considers to be seen along with how quick information passes through the ticker and timeline, you soon realise that the reach figure is somewhat exaggerated. After all, we don’t actually “see” everything that shows up in the “newsfeed” (ticker, timeline) as we glance to see what our friends have been posting.
Reach is basically telling you how many people, if they have been watching the ticker non-stop, would have seen your post. It also takes into account the number of people who have shared what ever you posted and anyone who liked the post after it was shared along with the number of people who might have “seen” the post in your “fans” friends newsfeeds. As you can imagine, the number can be extremely high compared to the amount of “likes” your page actually has.
Engaged Users
This should also be fairly straightforward. Whenever you post something on your page it appears in your “fans” newsfeed and,in most cases (as with a text post), it doesn’t need clicking on to go and read the full post (unless you wrote a lengthy text post), but, if the user does click on the post (the title of the photo or video, etc) and actually goes to the post then it is considered to have been “engaged” with.
I know, you are probably surprised that “likes”, “shares” and “comments” are not counted as engagement. Me too. I think the wording is a little bit peculiar.
Talking About This.
This is slightly different to the number of people who engaged. Talking About This is when somebody “likes”, shares or comments on something that you have posted or shared. It doesn’t mean the number of people who have actually read what you posted or watch the video you shared (that would fall into the “reach” category). Talking About This is only increased when somebody else actually does something with the thing you posted.
Clear as ditch water? Yep. Thought it might be.
Just make sure you post good stuff and if nobody is “engaging” with it you know that you are posting the wrong stuff. If what you post gets loads of “likes”, “shares” and “comments” and, in doing so, your page gets “liked” more, then you know you are doing something right…
Is that better? Surely that bit makes perfect sense?
In a nutshell (I know, I have a squirrel issue)…
Reach is the number of people who “saw” or could have seen your post.
Engaged Users is the number of people who clicked your post (the titke to view it or a link within it, etc).
Talking About This is the number of people who “liked”, “commented” on or “shared” what you posted.
Virality is the percentage of the people who saw your post and then talked about it – yeah, grab your calculator – I did.
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