Care for a little insight?

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are great tools for any business.  Not only do they offer a means of free advertising, but it can also provide your customers with a sense of community which builds brand loyalty.  But how can you make sure you're getting the most out of your accounts?  This is where analytics come in to play.

If you have a business page for your Facebook account, you have access to Insights which provide you with almost any information you could wish to have about those who like your page and are interacting with you.  Once you decide to delve into your insights you're likely going to feel a bit overwhelmed with all of the information it can provide you with.  The most important information, however, can be accessed fairly easily.

The first thing you'll see when you access the insights page will look something like this:

This page shows your total likes, friends of fans, people talking about this and your weekly total reach.  Though you can't see it in the photo, you can also see all of the posts you've made during the month and the individual statistics for those posts.  

The total likes number is the actual number of people who like your page while the friends of fans number represents the number of people connected to your fans--this is important as this is the number of people you could potentially reach through your fans.  For instance, if you ask your fans to share your page with their friends, this is the number of people who could possibly see your page.  

The people talking about this number is the number of people who have interacted with your page; either by liking a status, commenting on your wall/status or shared something you posted.  When someone is talking about you, your page is likely showing up in their friends' news feed; again, free promotion of your company and your page.  

The last number you see is your weekly total reach, or the number of people who have seen any content related to your posts.  As you can see from the example above, they had a reach of almost 4,000 people, but only have 125 page likes, which means that most of their reach came from others interacting with their page or if they had some kind of ad, that would also contribute to this number.  From the graph, you can see which posts had the most interaction by scrolling your mouse over the points on the graph.  

This is only the beginning of the information you can find on your page.  Insights can also provide you with extensive demographic information so that you might know your audience better.  Your online audience may vary extensively or it may be very specific, but knowing this information can help you better determine what kind of content to post for more interaction.  If you're not already familiar with the basics of these insights, consider taking a few hours to look through them.  Once you get past the intimidation factor it's fairly easy to navigate and will certainly help you understand your audience better.