Every quarter ICUC hosts a month long series dedicated to one topic in the social media space. This month we are featuring Insights Month, and dedicating ourselves to educating the online community about the ins-and outs of social media insights, what they are, how they effect your brand and strategy, as well as providing some real life examples and interviews. We hope you’ll stay tuned throughout the month, and take away a few new ideas, tips and examples of success.
I’m a huge Timeline fan, through and through – for oodles of reasons. I won’t bore you to death and get way off topic, but just to lay some background down, I really love the visual story that Timeline allows us to show one another. More photos can be seen at a glance with the two-column viewing, the cover photo is really powerful. The overall branding and customizations that come through Timeline are just great.
As a social media geek and marketer, I really love what Facebook has done for brand pages in terms of the dashboard and the analytics that we get. They’ve really been able to understand important metrics and page management, providing a great collection of data, displaying it well, and giving all of us page admins solid at-a-glance insights.
The Insights section of Facebook gives us a ton of info: likes, comments, reach, check-ins; all with the ability to compare data over various periods of time and for specific posts. For brands using social media, this kind of information is super valuable. Finding out which pieces of content get “shared” or “liked” more than others is telling. By identifying traits of successful content, social media marketers can cater to the audience and make to post what works. Why bore folks when you can figure out the type of content that’s fun, interesting, and catches people’s attention? That’s what marketing is all about.
So Facebook has made this whole process easier than it’s ever been. The Insights window gives users a lot of information just at-a-glance. Once you start changing the settings and looking through the various different tabs and types of metrics, you get a very thorough understanding of how visitors are responding to the content affiliated with your page.
Edgerank is the cornerstone of Facebook’s insights. Edgerank being the famous algorithm that determines the newsfeed – what content makes it, who sees it, how long it stays at the top, and so on. Many brands on social media make an effort to understand how to appeal to Edgerank in attempts to get more exposure to users via high-up and long-lasting Newsfeed placement.
Check out some resources to learn more about Facebook’s specific Insights and Edgerank:
