Week 13: Insights

Up to this point I feel as though I have been a little apprehensive about exploring Facebook Insights. Part of my apprehension is related to the fact that I know I haven't yet mastered many of the basic tools of social networking, especially when it comes to creating informative engaging posts on a consistent basis. I admit that another part of me hasn't gotten into it because any type of analytics appear, at first glance, as though it would take a major time investment to learn the intricacies enough to make it a useful tool. Here is yet another reason why this class has helped so much, since it would most likely have taken me a lot longer, if at all, to delve into the Insights feature on Facebook. Having said that, I found that a tutorial isn't at all necessary to begin, since just a little clicking around has already provided me quite a bit of "insight".

The first thing that I noticed in the last week is the spike in page likes. I had a total of 10 likes since last Sunday, bringing my total to 77, and the majority came in the middle of the week. I wish I could say this was the result of the reach of one of my posts, but I think credit is owed to this assignment and the requirement to "like" any pages that we haven't previously done. With an extremely busy week, I unfortunately didn't post anything, so I was unable to take away much from the "reach" feature. However, I did revisit some old posts side by side to see which had the best reach and engagement. Looking at which posts which had the most impressions and engagement, I saw a few patterns which would be worthwhile to explore. The first thing that I noticed is that our the post highest on the list had been a simple repost from our Instagram account showing our weekly drop-in schedule. This was also true of our second most popular post. The two of these were posted on different days, but the post times were within 30 minutes of each other. At first, I thought that this may have played a role in the popularity, until I saw a few posts lower on the list which had been posted at similar times. I'm sure I could research deeper into this with the feature that allows me to see the behavior of when my are online. This seems like it would be very worthwhile for those selling products that don't depend on any seasonal changes in popularity or need. With that said, I believe that the major factor is a result of the hills and valleys in regard to demand for our department and services throughout the semester. We may have the same post content on the same day and time of the week, but if we are near an enrollment period or a drop deadline we will certainly see a rise in office and phone traffic. This, I'm sure, will play out in social media as well.

Aside from these areas, I'd like to explore more of the "people" feature in Insights. This would be information that I can really begin to hone in on the demographics that we have historically reached most. Since our goal is to provide information to students with a more convenient alternative to coming in or calling, we can begin to tailor our posts and content in a way that better targets our followers. No matter your use and need of Facebook, it's obvious that Insights is a valuable and necessary resource for a business if you are serious about growing and increasing your web presence.