25 Helpful Facebook Insights Definitions

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Web Marketing Today. Practical Ecommerce acquired Web Marketing Today in 2012. In 2016, we merged the two sites, leaving Practical Ecommerce as the successor.

Facebook Insights offers metrics to analyze your audience beyond age, gender, country, city, and language. You can discover what your audience likes about your page, where the visitors were before they came to your page, and otherwise monitor reach, virality, and more.

These metric definitions will help you understand how to navigate Insights, to use Facebook much more effectively.

1. Total Reach

Total Reach is arguably the single more important Facebook Page metric as it measures the number of unique individuals that have seen any content related to your page. That means content you’ve published to your page, as well as Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories that lead people to your page.

2. Organic Reach

Organic reach measures the number of unique individuals who saw a specific post from your page on their News Feeds, tickers, or directly on your page.

3. Paid Reach

Paid Reach measures the number of unique individuals that saw a specific post from your page through a paid source like a Facebook Ad or a Sponsored Story. Contrasting Paid Reach with Total Reach can reveal how effectively your money is being spent on Facebook’s advertising.

4. Viral Reach

Viral Reach is the number of unique individuals who saw a specific post from your Facebook Page through a story published by one of their Facebook friends. This is a metric of “secondary reach.” In other words, this metric describes the virality of your posts once they leave your direct control.

5. Friends of Fans

This is the number of unique individuals who are friends with the people who Like your Facebook Page. These people represent the total potential reach of content you publish to your Facebook Page.

6. Story

A story, by Facebook’s definition, is an entry in a news feed produced by one of the ways people can interact with a Facebook Page, such as:

• Liking your Facebook page;
• Liking, commenting on, or sharing a post from your Facebook page;
• Answering a question you asked on your page.
• Responding to an event you posted on your page.
• Mentioning your page within their own posts.
• Tagging your page in an uploaded picture.
• Checking In to or recommending your Facebook Place.

7. People Talking About This

The “People Talking About This” metric is the number of unique individuals who have created a “story” about your Facebook Page during the time period you select. I addressed this metric in detail previously, at “7 Keys to Facebook’s ‘People Talking About This.'”

8. Active Users

This measures the number of people who have viewed your Facebook Page or interacted with it in some way. This is the number that shows you how many of your Likes stick around or revisit the page.

9. Daily Active Users

This metric shows how many individuals have viewed your Facebook Page on the day you select, and it categorizes them by the type of action they perform.

10. Monthly Active Users

This measures the number of people who have viewed your Facebook Page or interacted with it during the previous 30 days. This metric lets you discover the degree to which your Facebook influence fluctuates monthly, seasonally, or within the calendar month.

11. Engaged Users

This is the number of engaged individuals who have clicked anywhere on one of your Facebook Page posts. They could have Liked your post, commented on it, shared it, or engaged in it in any other way.

12. Impressions

Impressions measure the number of times a post from your Facebook Page is displayed, ignoring how it’s displayed or who sees it. In other words, the same person viewing the post multiple times can boost the Impressions figure.

13. Page Views

This is the total number of times your Facebook Page was viewed during the time period you select.

14. Tab Views

This measures the total number of times each tab in your Facebook Page was viewed when people were logged in to Facebook, during the time period you select.

15. Post Views

This is a measure of the number of times a story published on your Facebook Page News Feed was viewed during the time period you select. By nature of its specificity, this metric allows you to contrast rising and falling overall viewing figures against individual posts, to see which ones are drawing more interactions.

16. Media Consumption

This is the number of times a piece of media that you posted to your Facebook Page is clicked and viewed on a specific day. That includes video, photos, and audio clips.

17. Like Sources

This is the number of times your Facebook Page was Liked, categorized by where the Like occurred during a date range that you select. This will let you see whether the Likes mostly come from your Facebook Page itself, from your website, or from other sources.

18. External Referrers

This is the number of views your Facebook Page received from website URLs that are not part of Facebook.com. This shows you a different kind of reach — the number of external URLs that refer users to your page.

19. Page Content or Post Feedback

This is a measure of the number of Likes and comments on Stories published in your Facebook Page News Feed during the time period you select.

20. Daily Story Feedback

This breaks down the ways people responded to your Stories by engaging with them through Likes or Comments, or by unsubscribing from them, which means your Page stories don’t appear in their News Feeds any more, within a time frame that you specify.

21. Daily Page Activity

This is a breakdown of the ways people engaged with your Facebook Page other than by commenting on or liking your posts, on the specific date you select. This metric shows when fans post on your Facebook Page, upload photos or videos to your page, write reviews, participate in your page’s discussion board, mention your Page in updates of their own, or mention your page to friends.

22. Net Likes

This is the difference between the number of people that have Liked your page and “unlikes” over a specific period.

23. Total Likes

This is the sum of all the people who have clicked the Like button to Like your Facebook Page. It’s not time sensitive, so it’s sometimes referred to as “Lifetime Likes.”

24. New Likes

This is the number of individuals who have Liked your Facebook Page during a set time period that you select.

25. Unlikes

This is the number of unique individuals who have unliked your Facebook Page during the date range you select.

Summary

By learning more about who your Facebook Fans are and what kind of content and conversations they engage with, you can plan your Facebook marketing strategy more effectively. Facebook provides several metrics that allow you to “triangulate,” measuring general and specific aspects of the same thing. Learning to use them effectively can mean a far higher degree of control and understanding of the performance of a campaign or strategy, allowing you to tweak it for maximal results as you go.