August 13, 2015
Categories: Social Media

If you’ve never visited your animal organization’s Facebook analytics page, you don’t know what you’re missing.

No, not the abject terror of looking at data. You’re missing vital and easily understood information that will help you reach more people with your adoption, fundraising and volunteer recruitment messages.

If you want to know when is the best time to post, what type of posts do best for you, basic demographic information about your followers and how you stack up against similar Facebook pages, you’ll find all that in the Insights section of your page.

Where to start

To locate your Facebook page’s Insights, be sure you’re logged into an account that has admin status on your organization’s page. Then click on the word “Insights” in the navigation bar just above the cover photo:

Insights1

When you get there, you’ll see data in snapshot form for the previous seven days. It will show you your absolute numbers, as well as how much they’ve gone up or down from the week before.

Below that, you’ll see how individual posts are performing. You can see how many people see each one, plus how many likes, shares and comments they received. You’ll also be able to tell what kind of post — photo, link, video, plain update — does the best.

Keeping an eye on other pages

If you keep scrolling to the bottom of the Insights overview page, you’ll see “Pages to Watch.”

Originally intended to help businesses keep an eye on their competitors, it’s a great way for your organization to compare itself to other organizations, to give you an objective standard to see if you’re doing better or worse than similar pages.

You’ll probably want to ignore Facebook’s suggested “Pages to Watch,” as they don’t seem to have a grasp on what nonprofits are looking for when monitoring other pages. Instead, enter in pages of animal shelters and rescue groups of around the same size as yours.

Check this page weekly, and you’ll be able to make much better decisions about what and when to post to your page. When you try something new, be sure to monitor how it does, before deciding whether or not to do it again.

When to post

What about figuring out the best times of day to post?

Scroll back up to the top and click on “Posts.” You’ll see a graph that looks like a blue whale:

Insights2

This will tell you when your page’s followers are on Facebook; time your posts to just before the numbers hit their highest level, and a couple of hours before the (usually very abrupt) drop.

(If that sounds like we’re saying you shouldn’t post more than twice a day, we are. Find out why here.)

Who follows you?

Finally, learn the ages, locations, and other very basic information about your page’s followers by scrolling up to the top again and clicking on “People.” This can help you understand your audience, and enable you to tailor your messages more effectively to who they really are rather than who you assume they are.

This only scratches the surface of what you can learn from Insights, so if you’re intrigued, don’t hesitate to keep on investigating. Do it for the animals!