Last week we discussed how to get more ‘likes’ on Facebook, one of the more challenging social platforms for small business owners to gain traction in. But today, we want to talk about how to use the statistics Facebook provides you to improve your popularity and presence there even more.

With a constantly changing algorithm, succeeding on Facebook is often a challenge for small businesses. We get it — it’s hard enough already trying to reach the people who have already liked your page … trying to reach the ones who haven’t even seen it yet, forget about it!

So what’s a business owner to do?

The truth is, Facebook really can be a tremendous resource for businesses and it can be a powerful tool to gain more customers, more exposure, and a positive momentum for your brand — as long as you learn to use it right.

And we’re here to help you do just that.

First, you’ll need to understand what motivates Facebook. Then, you’ll need to understand the statistics it provides so you can measure, test, and ultimately see improvements in your growth and engagement.

Here’s how:

What Motivates Facebook?

While it can be easy to forget this (because our newsfeeds are filled mostly with images of family and friends) Facebook is ultimately a business, and like (almost) all businesses, it exists to make a profit. As many people know, advertising revenue is one of the main ways in which they make their money. In simple terms, when you pay Facebook to run one of your posts or ads, you’re guaranteed that a subset of its users will see it. If you publish a post to your page for free, you get no guarantee.

But Facebook’s revenue model isn’t as simple paid advertising, though. Facebook wants to make profit that grows with each year, but it can’t do that through paid ads alone. Perhaps you can relate — Facebook has to continually gain new users, and keep their existing users logged in as much as possible. And if non-business users only ever saw business ads like yours, they’d stop signing in. And at the end of the day, if people stop using Facebook, Facebook stops making money.

The way Facebook keeps people interested is by showing them content on their timeline that will interest them — and the majority of the time, this content comes from friends, family and other social connections they know.

So how do you create a business page that they’ll be equally as interested in seeing? The answer is simple: You have to get the content right.

Knowing What’s Working (and What’s Not) On Facebook

The very first step in your Facebook marketing strategy should be to just start posting! Try a bunch of ideas, so you can build a hub of content to analyze. Once you’ve got enough posts to compare, you can evaluate the engagement levels of each post within the Facebook “Insights” tool, which can be found in the navigation bar at the top of your business page. Within the tool, you’ll find statistical information relevant to your account, the content you post, and the followers you engage.

The first thing you will see is headline information about your page:

Reach and engagement refers to how many people have seen and/or interacted with your posts over the past seven days.

• People reached – this is the unique numbers of people who have seen your posts
• Post engagement – this involves interactions that occurred between users and your posts (i.e., clicking on a link, liking the post, sharing it, leaving a comment)

Other stats provided are “Page Likes” which keeps a tab of the growing likes on your page. “Actions on Page” indicate how many people have looked at your contact information. If you have a call to action button, clicks on that will be counted too.

Reach

When looking at Facebook engagement, reach really is the crucial metric that you should be keeping an eye on. And you can get more detailed information on the reach of your page by clicking on “Reach” in the menu on the left.

• Post Reach – this shows you a graph of how many people saw your posts over a period of time. You can hover over the graph to get detailed information for a particular day. As you can see, the data is split into organic reach and paid reach. Organic reach looks at the posts that you put onto your page, while paid reach covers ads and boosted posts. By examining this graph on a regular basis, you can see days that your posts were successful, and days when they were not.

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• Reactions, comments and shares – this looks at how people interact with your posts. Reactions include likes plus the new Facebook reaction buttons.

• Hide, Report as Spam, and Unlikes – this section shows you any negative reactions that people have taken to your posts.

• Total reach – this graph looks at all the interactions on your page so it includes your posts but it also includes posts on your page by others, ads, mentions, etc.

Like we said, evaluating these statistics regularly will begin to teach you the types of posts that are working, and the types that are not. You’ll start to see patterns in your reach and engagement numbers that can tell you a great deal about your audience and what they’re interested in seeing.

Once you’ve got a good handle on the Insights tool and how to use it, you can then begin to experiment and run tests by trying new styles of posts, varying the type of content, the time of day that you post, the wording you use, etc.

Soon, you’ll be able to strategically and intentionally cater content that you know will be relevant and interesting to your viewers. This means higher reach, more exposure, and ultimately more conversions!

We know navigating the vast sea that is Facebook can be a mysterious and discouraging journey. But start using the Insights tool as your compass, and your business can begin to find success on the platform.

Here’s to many Likes and a record-high Reach,