How do your set your targets on Facebook ? What are your monthly goals in your social media strategy ? It is not as easy as it seems. I have struggled with this for the last months, not finding any return in our Social Media campaigns, so I decided to set up some guidelines for myself. I asked myself what it is that I want to achieve with the effort. Social Media – especially Facebook – can be a great way to keep your customers close and ‘engaged’ as they say, but it might just as well be a waste of energy when not well focused.

Let’s take a closer look at Facebook and determine the KPI we can measure before going on to broader goals in our strategy. There are different goals we can target but once we have set eye on one or more, we have to make sure that all our efforts aim in that direction. All publications, colaborations with other pages, comments, contests or even apps used have to be chosen in order to attain these goals. Let’s go!

1) The number of Fans

The most obvious indicator of our performance is the number of Fans. Is our community growing in Fans? This is an easy metric and thanks to the Insights of Facebook very easily measurable. There are different reasons for us to chose this metric as a goal but the most common is in order to gain confidence from the user and to show yourself as a big brand. When you land on a website you have never heard about you might me sceptical and hesitant to buy – Facebook and the so called ‘social validation‘ can do the trick and deliver confidence. Upon seeing that this unknown website has a Facebook community with thousands of Fans and plenty likes you rest assured. You are not the first to land on this page – behind this website there are people with experience and a secure presence on the web…Pouuh, thanks to Facebook you have gained one user!

2) The talking about you

Having a lot of Fans is good, but you will not be able to influence all of them or – not even to reach out to them. Facebook’s edge rank is tricky! Therefore, other than the number of Fans the ‘Talking about you’ metric is useful. This is a metric that Facebook spats out for us and indicates how many people are actually interacting with you. Those people do not have to be your Fans but they are friends of friends of friends of Fans. This way you can see how far your publications and shares go! This metric is especially useful on a publication level as it lets you determine which kind of publication gets you the most virality. What is it that people share and comment on ? Knowing that let’s you focus more on ‘viral’ publications in order to reach more people and eventually those friends of friends of friends might become your Fan and let you get in contact directly.

3) The engagement of your Fans

The ‘Engagement’ metric is similar to the Talking about you – it lets you determine how well received your publications are, but in difference to the talking about you, the engagement is not an absolute number but a percentage. How many of your Fans are actually engaging with you? How many of your Fans are seeing your publications, comments or shares and actually interacting with you? 

The Engagement metric is a somehow made-up and make-do thingy as Facebook does not help us much. I like things to be easy and quickly accesible – that’s why I simply take the number of people who talk about me and divide them by my current number of Fans. I am aware that this is not correct – that the number of people who talk about me include people who are not Fans – but for the sake of simplicity I just ignore this. Sometimes it is better to have an actionable but imperfect metric rapidly than to have to spend hours calculating it. The goal is to have an orientation for future campaigns and in this way Engagement is just perfect. Just like Talking about you, you should look at it on a publication basis and not on page level as it gives you a better insight.

4) The reach your publications have

Another easy indicator of the effectiveness of your Facebook campaigns, is the reach your publications have. You might have thousands of Fans but only a fraction of them are actually seeing your post. Right below your publication or in the Insights panel you can check out how many people are actually seeing on their Home-Feed what you are publishing. Why is that ? Say hello to Facebook’s edge rank.

5) The traffic your Facebook page is generating for your homepage

Having a big community on Facebook is nice: your brand is present, you gain information about your users and you have an additional channel for customer support. But you have to make sure that your Fans are not just there because of the pictures of little kitties or the funny ski videos you are posting, but because they know who stands behind that page. They know your brand, your product, your service and gave you the thumbs-up for that. Make sure you lead those Fans to your real website from time to time.

Don’t forget that Facebook should work just like any other marketing channel as a traffic source to your website. Yes, it is important to take good care of your community on Facebook, Twitter & Co, but it is substantial to generate traffic to your website and to convert…

6) The conversion or the conversion rate of your Facebook traffic

Is the traffic you are leading to your website converting? Are your Facebook Fans your customers or are you growing two different communities? We all know that Facebook traffic does not have the highest conversion rate – nevertheless, this is not a reason for you to give up. From time to time show your Facebook fans what you do, talk about your products and be proud! Use all possible links to lead to your site, integrate the blog with fun content in your mainsite and make use of hip apps for Facebook to create traffic to the page. Whenever you are promoting a new service or making a crazy summer sale, include your Facebook Fans and encourage them to convert on your site.

With all that’s said, enjoy creating content and community on Facebook but don’t let the KPIs slip your attention. Set goal on one or two and see how that works for you!