Putting Facebook Insights to Good Use for Your Small Business

With roughly two-thirds of the adult U.S. population logging on daily, according to Monica Anderson and Andrea Caumont of Pew Research, there’s no denying that keeping track of all the latest trends and developments within Facebook’s user base can tell your business quite a lot about its targeted demographics. Thanks to the emergence of Facebook Insights, this endeavor is easier than ever to pull off. To help keep your small business in the loop, here’s a crash course on how this social media tool works and how it can help you maximize your digital presence.

What Is Facebook Insights?

Before going any farther, if you’re unsure what exactly Facebook Insights is, let’s spend a few minutes covering the basics of this tool. As Emil Protalinkski of The Next Web points out, Facebook Insights provides brands and marketers with real-time data related to current and potential customers who utilize this social network.

The statistical breakdown offered by Insights includes a wide range of categories. In terms of consumer activity, page “likes,”  session frequency, and preferred devices all make the cut. Additionally, location, primary language, age, gender, and even prior purchase behavior all have a spot on the Insights tab. Essentially, if your target demographic offers up any info on this public social network, Facebook Insights can harvest it.

Gaining Access to Your Data

So now that you’re up to speed with how Insights works, how can you access this analytic tool and put it to good use for your small business? According to the Facebook Help Desk, the whole process starts with clicking the “Insights” button at the top of your brand home page. From here, you’ll notice several sections (ex: “Likes,” “Reach”) that correspond to the related data. If you’re looking to view the selected Insight material on another platform, Facebook offers an export function located in the top-right corner of the page.

Unfortunately, there is one hurdle you’ll need to overcome before accessing this consumer data. To ensure an acceptable sample size and an accurate overview of your related audience, Facebook does not allow businesses to utilize the Insights tool until the associated brand page receives 30 likes.

Optimizing Offerings Moving Forward

Once you’ve hit the requisite amount of likes, it’s time to put your audience data to good use. As Francisco Rosales of Social Media Examiner explains, incorporating the stock data offered by Facebook Insights into your digital marketing strategy is nice, but to truly develop a winning strategy, you’ll need to dig a little deeper.

As part of the advanced metrics offered by the Insights app, your small business can adjust and tweak the variables that go into your target audience based on relevancy and effectiveness. One of the most powerful variations of this process is the comparison between your highlighted demographic and the “all Facebook” designation.

By comparing the actions of your audience to the greater Facebook population, as well as putting to use the rest of what you’ve learned about data allocation via Facebook Insights, your brand can optimize and improve its ad spend and overall content development strategy significantly. For small businesses, especially those working off of a tight marketing budget, having access to this powerful tool can help keep you competitive when squaring off with the bigger names in your industry.

About 4 Step Studio

4 Step Studio is an online marketing agency that specializes in website design and redesign, SEO, social media and more. Our team of experts focuses on helping small business get found online, while educating them on what will make them successful in the digital world. To learn more about what we can do for you, visit our website at www.4StepStudio.com