Facebook Analytics Tips for your Vacation Rental Business Page

A business page’s Facebook analytics provide valuable data that you can use to improve your Facebook marketing.  There are numerous charts and graphs in the Facebook analytics tab. 

Some of these metrics contain information about your Facebook audience and how they are interacting (or not) with your Facebook posts.  Other analytic charts contain information about your competition.

In this post, we are going to take a look at two specific Facebook analytics charts that you should be watching.  You can use the data to adjust your Facebook posts’ type and content, days of the week, and timing. 

Facebook Analytics – Fan Utilization

Wouldn’t it be cool to know exactly which day and at exactly what time to post something on your business page so more people would see it?  That is precisely the information you can find in your Facebook Analytics.  

Let’s take a look at the screenshot from my vacation rental business page and analyze the data to figure out how it can be useful in your Facebook marketing.

But first, we have to find it.

1.  Go to your Facebook business page.
2.  Click on the “Insights” tab near the top of the page in the Facebook toolbar.
3.  On the left side of the screen, click on “Posts”.

The top graph defaults to the tab “When Your Fans Are Online.”  This graph contains data for the last seven days.  The time frame is not editable.  In this graph, you’ll see the number of page fans who were online each day of the week. 

NOTICE:  Insights for the time of day are shown in Pacific time zone!

In my example, there isn’t much differentiation in fan utilization between the days of the week.  However, the graph below the days of the week shows the time of day those fans were online.

As a result, I schedule the majority of my Facebook posts between 3:00 PM and 10:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time).  By using the data from my analytics, I can be sure my posts are available in the Facebook news feed while my fans are active on Facebook.  Therefore, they are more likely to be fed my posts based on Facebook’s algorithm. 

You’ll see from this graph, my audience is not as active from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM or after 10:00 PM (EST).  Therefore, these times would not be ideal for post reach or engagement.

Take a look at your own analytics to determine if you are posting during the peak days and times for your audience.  Consciously schedule your posts according to the data and see if your metrics improve.  I’m willing to bet they will.

Facebook Analytics – Post Type Data

The next graph contains data about the various types of posts.  You’ll see analytics for shared video, uploaded/live video, photos, links, and text-only posts. 

1.  Go to your Facebook business page.
2.  Click on the “Insights” tab near the top of the page in the Facebook toolbar.
3.  On the left side of the screen, click on “Posts”.
4.  Click on the second tab “Post Types”.

Let’s take a look at what the analytics’ terms mean and what this data is telling us.

Reach

“Reach” is the number of Facebook users (not just your page fans) who had the post served to them in their news feed.  Meaning, the post showed up on their screen as they were scrolling through their news feed.  

Here is how “reach” works.  Your Facebook fans are going to be the first people to see the post in a news feed.  Once your Facebook fan likes, comments, or shares your post, it gets served to their Facebook “friends”.  And if the fan’s “friend” likes, comments, or shares your post, then Facebook begins sharing it to others.  And on and on it goes.  That is how posts become “viral” (thousands of views).

Engagement

Engagement is the activity and interaction a Facebook user has with a post.  The engagement can be likes, emotional reactions (sad, angry, laugh, wow) comments, shares, watching a video, pausing to read a post, clicking on a link, etc. 

The more engagement a post has, the more people Facebook serves it to in the news feed.  Yes, Facebook is smart.  The algorithm knows who, when, how often, and what type of reaction a post is getting.  It’s a little (ok, a whole lot) scary, but that’s the world we live in.

Notice how the video posts do MUCH better than all of the other types of posts.  In Facebook’s recent changes, the new algorithms favor video content above all other types of content posted to Facebook.   

As I’ve mentioned in this post, one way to increase your social media reach is through destination marketing.  Capture some video and photos of local attractions, events, and activities.  Take short video clips (normally less than one minute) to use in your Facebook posts.

More Facebook Analytics

The third tab has even more useful information.  “Top Posts from Pages You Watch” contains data on your competition. 

You can study your competition and peers to get ideas for posts that are performing well in your destination and your same target audience.

But first, you have to set up the pages that you watch.  

The next section down this page of Facebook analytics contains data that is specific for each of your posts.  This data is useful in knowing what is working well, or not so well with your Facebook audience.

In each tab on the left of the page, you’ll be able to get “Insights” (Facebook analytics) for numerous data elements of your Facebook marketing strategy and your target audience.

In my Social Media Facebook and Instagram Course Exclusively for Vacation Rental Owners, one of the things I teach you is how to set up “pages to watch”.  I explain how this data is not only interesting, but how it will be useful for planning your own marketing strategy.  

The course takes a deep dive to walk you through several more of the Facebook analytics tools that are available.  You’ll learn how to analyze these metrics in a way that improves your Facebook marketing.  You can then outperform your competition, and generate leads and bookings from your Facebook business page.

To find out more about the course, read through the section below and on the course page itself.  More Facebook’s analytics info can be found here.