Well, truth be told, they do.
Why the confusion?
Business’ often get fixated about getting more and more likes on their Facebook page and then wonder why their Facebook campaigns are failing, they are missing out on a very important metric.
The likes on your page are indicative of a potential reach that the contents of the page have and it is indicative of the popularity that the page, in a personal way, they help you identify common interests with your Tinder dates. That’s about it.
The metric that is more important is the likes comments and shares on the posts on the page. They tell us about how many people have interacted with the content we share and that is a better measure of brand salience.
Hence, in the case of page likes, bigger isn’t always better and it is quite possible to have a lower engagement rate and a larger audience. That is what Tania Yuki discussed in her article about measuring what matters. Like in all things of life, quality of the quantity matters.
But what sort of engagement are we looking for? Here is a simple guide to follow, broken down into its simplest form.
Now that we have a clue on what we should be measuring, here is what we need to identify before we even start.
1. Identify the Business Objectives – What is the plan?
2. Identify Goals for each Objective – How will we execute the plan?
3. Identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – What will we be measuring?
4. Identify the Targets – What will be our benchmark?
5. Identify valuable Segments for analysis – Who will we be analysing?
On an end note, the metrics tell a story, to successfully understand the metrics we need to decipher the story.
Now, As an example here are the statistics from my blog and the story behind them.
February to June 2016: The visitors and views are at the peak. The cause: I quit my job and was preparing to come to Melbourne, to pass my spare time I was blogging, there was a lot of content and the activity did bring in some visitors.
July 2016 – July 2017: Low views, I moved to Melbourne and did not blog a lot, was busy with uni (let that be the story). The views were mainly because of the people I spoke to and told them about my blog.
August 2017: Blogging for the social media class and friends in the class viewing commenting and liking the blog, sincere thanks, continue the commenting on the blog and the blogs to come.
“Quality of the quantity matters” – That’s a very important quote every business needs to keep in mind when they plan their campaign and also efficiently detail the five steps you mentioned. I really enjoy reading your blogs, they are light hearted and at the same time you convey an informative message. The example of your personal blog which you mentioned, clearly gives an idea how metrics tell us a story.
Engagement is what makes a brand succeed in the digital space now. As you have pointed it out, getting likes is not the key metrics and especially for SMBs, Initial bunch of likes are usually through friends and family which truly never can be your target audience. The really challenge starts after you have exhausted all your inner circle likes.
Liked how you have used your own blog to monitor the metrics based on the behavior and situation you were in. Makes it quite relatable. All in all, a good topic that truly gives some take away points after reading this.
I also liked the fact that your personal blog example made me understand the topic in a jiffy. I think the second step of executing is the difficult one and may be most of the businesses go wrong in that. but yes engagement can also be subjective so a particular thing posted by a business many not be as interesting to one person but might be to other so how do we deal in those scenarios? 🙂 do let me know
It requires research and understanding the audience. But you must know that you cant please everyone, as long as you please most people, it is ok.
I strongly agree that the likes on the Facebook page don’t matter.
Weather Facebook fans matter or not is only directly related to of they could help your business achieve larger goals.
So it is great if you toward your real goals by using your audience on Facebook.
But if you get lost to see your fans on Facebook as your goal, consequently you would waste your time.