Are you trying to prove your credibility to management? Or just hoping everyone on your team finally lands on the same page? I’ve been there: staring at a jumble of metrics, wondering how to turn them into a story people actually care about.

Instead of just random social media metrics inserted here and there, a good social media report helps guide decisions and prove social media ROI. And trust me, when you understand how to frame the data right, people start listening a whole lot faster.

In this guide, I’ll share how to build a social media report, backed by tips from Teddy Abdelnour, Head of Integrated Marketing at TEAM LEWIS.

What is a social media report?

A social media report is a structured summary of how your social channels performed over a specific period. It collects key metrics, highlights important trends, and explains what those numbers actually mean for your brand.

A good report shows how your content performs, how your audience behaves, and how your efforts support bigger business goals.

It answers questions like: Are we growing? Are we reaching the right people? Are we spending our time on the right content?

What to include in a social media report?

What you include depends on the story you want to tell. Select the elements that support your goals and highlight what matters most. 

Teddy had a valuable insight into how to do that. He said:

Keep it simple by starting with the big picture, highlighting what moved the needle, then diving into platform breakdowns, content pillars, and audience behavior.

Always end with insights and next actions. At TEAM LEWIS, we treat it like a story, not a spreadsheet. We also include a quick ‘what we learned’ recap. It’s where we connect dots.

For example, for OPPO, we noticed UGC-style posts performed better when tied to photography features, not influencers.

Here’s a quick run-through on the sections you can pick from:

How to create a comprehensive social media report in just 6 steps

Creating a social media report does not have to be challenging. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create an effective social media report.

Step 1: Define the goal and audience

Before I pull a single metric for my report, I decide why I am creating the report and who will read it. This choice shapes everything that comes next. 

The goal and audience determine which metrics you include, what story you tell, and how much detail you go into.

Here’s how the audience changes the content:

• Executives/top management: They care about impact. Include revenue contribution, pipeline influenced, cost efficiency, brand visibility trends, and clear insights tied to business goals.
• Marketing managers: They want the ‘how and why.’ Include engagement metrics, content performance, audience shifts, platform breakdowns, and campaign efficiencies. They need enough detail to optimize future work.
• Social media specialists: They need the granular view. Include post-level stats, creative insights, publishing patterns, content pillars, and tactical recommendations.

Here’s how Teddy does it for his clients —

Different audiences look for different wins. For example, I have seen that OPPO and Nokia’s regional leads often care about business outcomes through social media. In comparison, social teams want creative insights. I keep the data consistent and shift the lens depending on who’s reading.

Step 2: Determine reporting frequency

Once you know the goal and audience, decide how often you need to report. 

You can choose from weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, or campaign-specific reports. The right cadence depends on three factors:

• Who the report is for:

Different stakeholders prefer different rhythms. For example, clients often expect monthly updates so they can track progress regularly. Whereas top management usually prefers quarterly reports that show broader trends and business impact. 

Pick a cadence that matches their expectations.

• How active your social media efforts are: 

If you run frequent campaigns or if social media is a major source of awareness and conversions, choose a weekly or monthly report. This helps you catch patterns quickly and adjust fast.

• What your goals are:

Match the cadence to the purpose.

• Trending topics or real-time content: weekly
• Account growth and platform-level performance: monthly or quarterly
• Strategic planning and year-over-year comparisons: annual

When asked about his reporting frequency, Teddy said:

I use weekly reports for pulse checks, monthly ones for detailed insights, and quarterly reviews for strategy. For big campaigns like OPPO launches, we work with faster cycles, but retainers work best with steady, structured reviews.

Step 3: Collect relevant data

Collect all data about your audience, content, and performance from all the platforms you’re active on. I generally do this using four sources:

• Socialinsider: I use Socialinsider for running cross-platform analysis, competitor benchmarking, and doing an in-depth analysis on content performance.

• Native platform analytics: Use Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube dashboards for detailed, channel-specific metrics.

• Google Analytics: Shows how social traffic behaves on your website. Helps you connect content to sessions, conversions, and revenue paths.

• CRM tools: Links social leads to pipeline stages, revenue, and sales outcomes. This is essential when reporting to leadership or proving ROI.

Step 4: Analyze and interpret the data

Data without a clear interpretation won’t make much sense to your clients or management. 

For example, one Socialinsider customer wanted to prove himself in his new role, and he used social media reporting to do that — “We didn’t just show numbers. We showed what drove those numbers.”

Break your social media analysis into simple buckets:

• By channel: Identify which platform pulled its weight. Maybe LinkedIn engagement jumped while X dipped. That instantly tells you where attention shifted.
• By content type: Check what formats worked. For example, videos might have doubled your reach while carousels brought stronger saves.
• By campaign: See which campaign contributed most to your KPIs. A launch might have driven clicks, while a brand series delivered deeper engagement.
• By time: Spot trends across weeks or months. Look for patterns like mid-week engagement peaks or seasonal drops.
• By competitor: Compare your results with industry players. Maybe you’re leading on engagement but lagging on follower growth. That shows where to improve.

Step 5: Visually present your findings along with recommendations

Your report should feel easy to read. One customer said it best: “Clean visuals build credibility. Executives shouldn’t have to interpret dashboards.” 

Clear charts help people understand your story without guessing what the numbers mean.

Instead of pulling the data and creating the visuals, I use Socialinsider to get data in charts and graphs. 

I focus on showing trends, not just totals in my report. For example, a line graph that highlights a steady rise in TikTok comments tells a much clearer story than a table of weekly counts.

When you analyze the data, make sure you pair every metric with an action. If Instagram reach dropped, suggest testing new hooks. If video retention increased, plan more short-form explainers.

A visual report with clear next steps makes your recommendations impossible to ignore.

Step 6: Build customizable dashboards with Socialinsider

Use a social media analytics tool like Socialinsider to create fully customizable dashboards for your social media report.

Automatically pull cross-platform metrics from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube—all through a single unified interface.

You can choose which platforms to include in your social media dashboard, filter by date range, content type, or campaign, and set up widgets to spotlight the social media KPIs that matter most. My favorite part is that these dashboards update in real-time, making it easy to track performance trends and share insights across your team.

To present data to stakeholders, you can download reports directly from the dashboard in PDF, XLS, or CSV formats or share them via public links. 

Key social media reporting metrics to include

The metrics you include in your report will be dependent on your goals and stakeholders.

While talking about metrics, Teddy said:

I choose metrics depending on the brand goal. For Nokia Cybersecurity, it’s trust and lead quality; for OPPO, it’s reach and shareability. I pick metrics that map directly to business outcomes, not vanity numbers.

To get you started, I have grouped metrics into six categories for easy selection.

Reach and awareness metrics

Reach and awareness metrics matter when your goal is visibility, brand recall, or top-funnel growth. 

Include them if you’re trying to show how well your content is increasing brand exposure, entering new markets, or capturing attention on high-volume platforms. 

• Reach: It shows how many unique people saw your content and how far your message actually traveled. 

I use Socialinsider to evaluate reach by tracking growth over time and comparing it across platforms or campaigns to see where my visibility is increasing and what’s driving that lift.

• Views: Views show how often your content was watched, giving you a clear signal of attention and content consumption.

It’s basically used to measure how your videos are performing and what hooks capture attention.

• Brand mentions: Brand mentions show how often people are talking about your brand online. 

I usually include this metric when I have run a large number of campaigns within that time period or if my goal is to measure brand buzz or sentiment shifts.

Audience analysis metrics

Audience analysis metrics show who you’re reaching and how different segments behave, covering demographics, interests, and engagement patterns. 

Include them when your goal is to understand whether you’re attracting the right audience, entering new segments, or tailoring content to improve relevance.

• Followers and follower growth rate: This shows how quickly your audience is expanding over a specific period. 

In my report, I compare growth across platforms and time periods to talk about where my audience is accelerating and what might be driving the change.

I love how Socialinsider also provides me with historical follower growth analysis, allowing me to see my growth over the years.

• Demographics: Demographics show the age, gender, location, and other key traits of the audience you’re reaching.

Show if they are matching against your ideal customer profile and denote shifts that signal new opportunities or misalignment.

• Audience sentiment: It shows how people feel about your brand by analyzing positive, neutral, or negative mentions.

In your social media report, evaluate sentiment by monitoring changes over time and comparing spikes with specific events, campaigns, or content pieces to understand what’s shaping audience feelings.

Teddy prioritizes this metric when analyzing audience metrics:

I would suggest looking beyond demographics too. I track cultural cues, sentiment, and content themes. For instance, our KSA audience engages more with Arabic-first posts that feel native to the region. Those kind of nuances are gold.

Engagement metrics

Engagement analysis metrics show how actively people interact with your content through likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks. 

Include them when your goal is to understand content relevance, audience interest, or how well your posts encourage participation.

• Total engagement: It measures the combined interactions your content receives across likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks.

Evaluate total engagement by comparing it across posts, campaigns, and platforms to identify if it grew over that specific period.

• Engagement rate by followers and reach: Engagement rate by followers and reach shows how actively people interact with your content relative to the size of your audience or the number of people who actually saw the post.

• Comments, shares, and saves: Comments, shares, and saves show deeper forms of engagement that signal genuine interest, conversation, and long-term value. 

I even click on the sharp upticks and downfalls in the graph to demonstrate which posts led to a lot of comments or shares.

• Post types by engagement: Post types sorted by engagement show whether videos, carousels, images, or text posts generate the most interaction.

If you’re qualifying which format to focus on next, this is the metric you should show in your report.

I look at this across platforms too. When short-form videos top the charts on Instagram and YouTube, I know I can reuse the same piece and get double the output with half the work.

• Best time to post by engagement: Wondering when to post on social media? Instead of following random timeframes, Socialinsider shows you the time that will get you the highest engagement.

Content performance analysis

Content performance metrics show how each post, format, or theme actually delivered in terms of engagement, reach, and clicks. 

I include them in my report when the goal is to understand what resonates, refine content strategy, or guide future creative decisions.

• Content format performance: Did carousels work the best on Instagram? Were Reels the highest comment driver on Facebook? 

Note down how each content format performed in terms of engagement, conversation drivers, and clicks.

• Top and bottom-performing content: This shows which posts drove the strongest results and which fell flat. Instead of just adding this content to the social media marketing report, point out the common themes in both.

Did posts fall flat because of ineffective captions? Do all the top-performing posts come from the same content theme?

I also like to add recommendations for content based on this analysis.

• Content pillar analysis: It shows how each theme or category contributes to your overall results. 

When I asked Teddy about how he goes through analyzing content pillars for clients like Nokia and Oppo, he mentioned:

I check for balance, clarity, and purpose. Each pillar must serve a role: awareness, engagement, or conversion. Then we reweight the mix monthly based on performance and campaign goals.

• Campaign content analysis: If you run a lot of campaigns, use Socialinsider to tag posts under specific campaigns and compare how different campaigns performed in terms of engagement, organic value, and views.

• Video analysis: Video analysis shows how your video content performs through metrics like views, retention, watch time, and engagement. 

I track it by comparing retention curves, engagement patterns, and performance across platforms to see what style, length, or hook delivers the strongest results.

Competitor and industry comparison

Competitor and industry comparison analysis show how your performance stacks up against others in your space. 

Include them when your goal is to benchmark growth, justify social media strategy or budget, or spot gaps and opportunities in your market.

• Benchmarking: Competitor benchmarking analysis compares your performance with key competitors across metrics like engagement, follower growth, content output, and reach.

In Socialinsider, add competitor profiles to your dashboard, go to the Benchmarks tab and get a side-by-side comparison of metrics to see exactly where you outperform or need to improve.

• Brand perception and sentiment: This analysis shows how audiences feel about your brand compared to others in your category.

Evaluate it by comparing positive, neutral, and negative sentiment trends side by side and reviewing spikes tied to specific events or campaigns.

Here’s how Teddy goes about competitor analysis for his clients:

We track tone, posting rhythm, and audience sentiment not to copy, but to see white spaces. For example, when others were overusing AI visuals, we leaned into real creators for OPPO and saw stronger authenticity scores.

Paid media metrics

Paid media metrics show how your paid campaigns performed through results like reach, clicks, conversions, and cost efficiency. 

Include them when your goal is to prove ROI, optimize ad spend, or understand which campaigns are actually moving the needle.

• Impressions and reach: They show how many times your ads were viewed and how many unique people saw them.

Compare them across campaigns and targeting groups to see which setups deliver the strongest visibility for the lowest cost.

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate shows the percentage of people who took the desired action after clicking or viewing your ad.

I like to see how different creatives, audiences, and platforms impact conversion rates. I also include this analysis in my report to showcase the type of creatives and platforms we need to focus on for paid media.

• Revenue generated: It tracks how much money your paid campaigns directly contributed.

You can even calculate revenue per campaign if you’re running multiple ad campaigns to see which ads brought the highest revenue.

• Cost per click (CPC): Cost per click shows how much you pay each time someone clicks your ad.

Evaluate by comparing CPC across different ad variations and target groups to identify what brings qualified traffic at the best cost.

Free social media report template for download

Now you know everything to create that perfect social media analysis report. But we understand that your plate may be already overflowing with campaigns, content planning, and last-minute approvals. You don’t need another task eating up your time.

So here’s a shortcut. Grab this ready-to-use social media report template and jump straight into presenting your results. 

Best social media reporting tools

You want to make the reporting process as easy as possible. Here are three tools we use in our team.

Native analytics

Native analytics give you the closest view of how your content performs on each platform. Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube all tell you exactly what your audience did, when they did it, and how they interacted with every post.

If you’re just starting or you want data for free, these analytics are your best bet.

Socialinsider

Socialinsider gives you the bigger picture that native analytics can’t. While native dashboards show what happened on one platform, Socialinsider pulls everything together so you can compare channels, track trends, and spot patterns without juggling five tabs.

It shines in the areas where native tools fall short. You get competitor benchmarking, cross-platform analysis, historical data beyond native limits, and clean visuals you can drop straight into reports.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows you what happens after someone leaves a social platform and lands on your website. It connects your social efforts to real on-site behavior, helping you see which posts, campaigns, or channels actually drive traffic, conversions, and revenue.

Use it to track UTM performance, time on page, bounce rate, assisted conversions, and the full journey from social click to final action. I use it to answer big questions fast: Which platform brings the most qualified visitors? Which campaigns lead to sign-ups or purchases? Where are people dropping off?

Social media reporting tips

To get the most effective report across to your team and clients, here are four social media reporting tips you can follow.

• Report impact in language leadership understands. Instead of talking about impressions or reach, show how those numbers influenced pipeline, conversions, revenue, or market visibility.

Teddy mentioned the same when he said:

Data tells the ‘what,' context tells the ‘why.’ A drop in engagement could mean fatigue, timing, or a creative shift. You have to read between the lines and show that interpretation in your social media analytics report.

• Don’t overload the report with data. Too many numbers dilute the message and make it harder for stakeholders to see what matters. Focus on the metrics tied to goals, highlight the shifts that need action, and keep the rest in the appendix for anyone who wants to dive deeper.

I also like to present dashboards sometimes to give quick reporting on important KPIs.

• Make your report easy to scan. Use clear headings, short sections, visuals, and quick takeaways to guide readers through the insights. Your stakeholders should not get lost in pages and pages of data. 
• Utilize AI features in analytics tools: AI can help speed up reporting and surface insights you might miss manually. For example, using Socialinsider’s AI assistant, you can highlight performance shifts, flag opportunities, and summarize patterns across platforms in seconds.

Final thoughts

A strong social media report does more than recap numbers. It shows what changed, why it matters, and what to do next. 

While creating your report, keep your story tight, highlight the shifts that deserve attention and connect everything back to business outcomes so leadership understands the real impact of your work. And remember to keep refining your social media performance report as your channels evolve. 

If you want to save time by monitoring performance quickly and easily, try Socialinsider for free and explore its different reporting features.

FAQs on social media report

What are the benefits of consistently creating social media performance reports?

A social media report helps you understand what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next. It turns raw data into insights that leadership can act on. You can spot trends early, refine your content strategy, justify decisions with evidence, and improve future campaigns. It also keeps teams aligned and focused on the metrics that actually move results.

What are the types of social media reports?

Social media reports come in several types depending on your goals. You can create weekly or monthly performance reports, campaign-specific reports, competitor benchmarking reports, platform-focused reports, and executive-level summaries. Each type helps you track progress, understand impact, and make informed decisions based on the audience and purpose of the report.

When you’re responsible for orchestrating multiple marketing channels, social media is just one part of the broader strategy you’re conducting. But as platforms evolve, Facebook is becoming an important channel for shaping brand perception, communicating value, and reaching audiences who still rely on it for both entertainment and information.

At some point, you have to answer a simple question: “What role should Facebook play for us—and what content actually belongs there?”

Whether you oversee social directly or lead the team that does, this guide will help you identify the types of content that perform well on Facebook. Use these ideas to build a social media marketing strategy your team can execute consistently and confidently.

After years of running our social media platform, Socialinsider, we’ve analyzed high‑performing Facebook content across industries and identified exactly what drives engagement and conversions.

Below, you’ll find 22 Facebook post ideas that can help your brand build trust, spark conversation, and support broader marketing goals. Let’s level up your Facebook marketing game.

What makes a Facebook post great?

The best brands on Facebook don’t rely on luck or one‑off hits. They create content grounded in audience insight, brand clarity, and repeatable formats.

Before asking your team for “more content,” align on what great should look like.

Here are four principles that consistently show up in high‑performing Facebook posts.

1. Know your audience and their needs

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask, “Why should Facebook matter in their journey with us?”

They might expect:

• Product tips or examples
• Industry news and insight
• A behind‑the‑scenes look at the people behind your brand

If someone follows a cosmetics brand, they expect tutorials, not just product shots. If they follow a SaaS platform, they expect clarity, guidance, and proof.

2. Offer something unique

Audiences don’t need another generic update. They’re looking for perspective.

Don’t just share industry news, contextualize it. Don’t just announce a feature, explain what it unlocks.

This is where your brand’s point of view becomes visible.

3. Back your content with visuals

On social platforms, visuals win over long text every time.

Find ways to incorporate:

• Polished graphics
• Short videos
• Branded templates
• Data visuals

Consistent visual branding ensures your posts are recognizable at a glance.

4. Provide variety

Your audience will get bored if every post looks or feels the same.

Instead of relying on one format, mix:

• Educational content
• Stories
• Product highlights
• Community‑driven content
• Lighter formats like memes or questions

Think in terms of content pillars your team can sustain, not random inspiration.

22 Facebook post ideas for your business

#1. Ask questions

Questions are a great way to learn about your audience–what they are struggling with and what they want to see more from you.

As a leader, you can also use these posts as lightweight research. Ask questions that validate your messaging or surface insights:

• Give them choices - If you had to pick between [options], what would you prefer?
• Ask their opinions on a topic - What do you think of [subject]?
• Share a favorite and ask them for theirs - At [Company Name], we love [favorite]. What about you?
• Share a perspective. Ask them if they agree - We believe [Perspective]. Do you agree?
• Ask for their social media content preferences - What would you like us to post more about?
• Ask for their feedback - What do you think about [feature/product]? For example, look how Calm gets over a hundred comments by asking a simple question to boost engagement.

#2. Offer tips

Not every Facebook post needs to highlight your product. Sometimes, the most valuable thing you can offer is insight.

This could include:

• How your industry is evolving
• Current statistics or trends
• Strategies your audience can apply to succeed

These posts demonstrate authority and make your brand the go‑to source for clarity in your category, which, in turn, increases your engagement rate.

#3. Share product updates

Sharing product updates keeps your audience informed and positions your team as responsive and innovative.

Use Facebook to:

• Introduce upcoming features
• Offer sneak peeks
• Highlight improvements inspired by customer feedback

Here’s a Facebook post example from Canva where they turn new feature additions into a simple yet detailed album post.

But don’t just list features; explain what each update enables. Show how the update helps customers succeed. This ties the announcement directly to value.

#4. Leverage testimonials

Testimonials are the social proof every customer is looking for. According to a survey, 88% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.

So why not use testimonials as things to post on Facebook? It can help create a positive image of your products and brand.

Here are some testimonial Facebook post ideas:

• Feature screenshots of customer reviews;
• Share video testimonials of customers using the product and discussing what they liked the best;
• Before and after results of using your product/service;
• Share a short Q&A where a customer gives their insights on your product.

#5. Celebrate company milestones

Sharing milestones isn’t bragging—it’s building credibility.

So don’t shy away from sharing your wins and accomplishments on Facebook. Your audience deserves to know they are associated with an awesome company.

The benefits of this post idea:

• You build trust in your brand. Your accomplishments signify your company is growing and people always want to put their faith in such companies.
• Because of their positive and celebratory nature, these posts can attract more likes, shares, and comments, increasing reach and visibility.
• Milestone posts provide an opportunity to thank customers, partners, and employees, making them feel acknowledged and valued.

PS: If you are sharing updates about a successful event, we would recommend using data albums as a content format on Facebook. Here’s why.

#6. Put together valuable tutorials and how-to’s

Sharing tutorials turns your business into a helpful hero, showing off your expertise while giving your audience valuable tips they’ll love and trust!

Tutorials help solve problems, teach new skills, or highlight creative ways to use your products, building trust and credibility with your followers. They’re also highly engaging and shareable, which can expand your reach and bring new eyes to your page.

Other than product tutorials, you can even show a step-by-step process through an infographic on how to do something. The best part? Your audience will realize that you are genuinely looking to provide value. This translates to brand loyalty in the long run.

#7. Share industry-specific news

If you are following Socialinsider’s Facebook page, what type of content do you expect?

That we’ll teach you how to nail your social media strategy. We do this in three ways: helping you succeed with our product, sharing general tips on social media marketing like “Facebook tips,” and keeping you posted with everything new in the world of social media.

That last part is where we turn industry-specific news into a post for Facebook.

Here’s how we recently did that.

This ensures that we are the one-stop destination for our audience for everything related to social media.

Below are some Facebook post ideas for sharing industry-specific news:

• Share info from curated industry articles: Find the best articles from reputable sources within your industry. Collate important information and share it on Facebook. For example, if you’re in the tech industry, share information about the latest technological advancements and what it means for your audience.
• Inform about important statistics: Discuss new research and statistics that might be important to your audience. This will help them see things differently.
• Share quotes from thought leaders: Instead of creating a post on “What role is AI playing in social media?”, interview reputed people in the space or those working in the field and share their thoughts.

#8. Make do’s and don’ts lists

Want to create an informative post but not with the same walls of text? You can put a spin on it by creating a do’s and don’ts list.

For example, instead of creating a post on “Things you should avoid in email marketing,” create one on “Do’s and don’ts of email marketing.” It also helps users understand the strengths and weaknesses of their current approach—what they are doing right and what they need to modify.

Instead of going overboard with the list, stick to 3-5 items for each topic. And avoid complex or wordy statements.

I would even recommend adding a “What more would you add to this list?” question at the end to get people to comment and discuss more.

#9. Create a themed post series

Are you trying to introduce a new product? Or focus on a particular feature or audience?

Series simplify planning and strengthen brand consistency. They can evoke curiosity and even encourage your audience to start creating content around it.

For example, GoPro released its new GoPro Hero 13 product in September. I loved how they have been promoting the product ever since. They created a hashtag #GoProHero13 and a themed post series that features visuals captured by the camera.

Here’s how I found the different posts in this series using Socialinsider.

So, what does the brand get right with this series?

• They feature real shots the product captures, thus building trust and credibility.
• They share a #ProTip with every post. This tip usually discusses a product feature or benefit, building awareness and subtly promoting each feature.
• Many posts talk about using the product to capture powerful images, thus helping customers succeed with their product. To replicate this for your brand, pick a theme that is relevant to your audience and aligns with your social media goals.

#10. Create polls

Do you want to gauge your audience’s reaction to a new product/feature? Or do you want them to share their opinion on something quickly?

If you are looking for quick post ideas for Facebook, polls can help you gauge your audience’s sentiment towards something.

While Facebook no longer allows you to create polls on posts, you can ask your audience to answer in the comments.

Here are some post ideas for Facebook polls:

• Ask for their product or service preferences – Comment which do you prefer more: [Product A] or [Product B]
• Gather feedback on new ideas – We are confused between these new feature additions. Tell us which you’d want more: [Feature A] or [Feature B]
• Create polls on trending topics – Do you think AI is going to be helpful in email marketing: [Yes] or [No]
• Uncover customer content preferences – What would you like us to post more about: [Educational posts] or [Reels]

#11. Create infographics

At the end of the day, every social platform is promoting visuals more. There’s a clear reason for that—visual content on social media is 40X more likely to get shared.

People like visual content more because it’s easy to grasp, remember, and share with their personal circle. Infographics are good examples of Facebook posts that help brands educate customers and share information in a digestible manner.

One brand I look up to for the infographics they create is Semrush. They repurpose their existing articles, case studies, and webinars into infographics. Here’s one example.

Below are some best practices for creating engaging infographics on Facebook:

• Opt for a vertical or square layout, as they are mobile-friendly and take up adequate space in users’ feeds.
• Keep text minimal. Focus on using more visuals or graphics.
• Use charts, graphs, and other data visualizations for numerical information.
• Use visual hierarchy to draw attention to the main message.
• Incorporate brand colors and fonts to help the audience easily identify your content.

#12. Run contests and giveaways

Are you looking for a quick way to get your post viral? One way is to host a contest or a giveaway.

These posts usually garner a lot of engagement as people like, comment, and share these posts often. After all, who doesn’t like being recognized and winning a free prize?

TIP: Make sure that the prize you select is directly related to your business. This will attract the right kind of people. And you can then nudge them towards your product or service.

#13. Share stories

Stories work because they are personal, powerful, and engaging. With a short narration, you can pull your audience in and inspire them.

You can even build a deep connection with your audience by sharing real business or personal stories.

For example, I loved how Backlinko’s founder, Brian Dean, announced Semrush’s takeover of Backlinko. It was real. It was personal. And it had all the right emotions in it – everything that the best content for Facebook should have.

No wonder this Facebook content generated 1K likes, 130 comments, and over 60 shares.

In addition to personal stories, you can share some heartwarming experiences you had with your customers or employees.

For example, here’s how Starbucks shares a story of an employee who helped the community and encouraged other Starbucks stores to do the same.

Here’s a small checklist to make sure your stories hit the right strings:

• What emotion is this story evoking? Is it the one we are targeting?
• Does the story touch on some universal theme?
• Does it start with a strong hook?
• Have we included moments that show vulnerability to build trust?
• Have we included vivid descriptions to help readers picture the story?
• Does the story encourage a question or conversation at the end?

#14. Host guessing games

Guessing games are a fun and engaging way to interact with your audience on Facebook. Instead of consistently sharing educational/informational content, guessing games can add variety to your content mix.

Three other reasons this can be a great Facebook post:

• Extended reach: These posts have the potential to be shared widely, as participating users may tag friends or invite others to join in. Thus, this content reaches a bigger audience than just your followers.
• Builds a sense of community: Games invite followers to join and have fun, creating a community atmosphere on your page. People feel more connected to brands that make them feel included and valued, especially when they’re part of a shared experience.
• Capture audience insights: Strategically creating guessing games can give you insights into audience preferences, interests, and even misconceptions. This can guide your social and overall marketing strategy.

#15. Talk about a cause you support

If variables like price and quality are comparable, 91% of customers would switch to a brand associated with a good cause.

This is because customers are increasingly wanting brands to support important causes and take some responsibility.

Once in a while, use Facebook to show the steps you are taking towards certain causes. For example, if you claim to create sustainable products, create a behind-the-scenes Facebook post showing your manufacturing process.

Many brands even support movements relevant to their niche. For example, Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign aimed to create an inclusive vision of beauty. The campaign was a massive success in helping women understand that beauty is not an absence of imperfections. Rather a power to embrace them and feel beautiful.

The campaign touched many people, increased brand affinity by 21%, and drove sales by 11%.Even today, you’ll find their Facebook posts geared towards movements like this.

#16. Tap into trends and trending topics

Leveraging trending topics in your Facebook posts is a smart way to tap into conversations people are already excited about, helping your business stand out in a crowded feed. It boosts visibility, engagement, and relevance by connecting your brand to what’s current and meaningful.

Plus, it shows your audience that you’re in tune with their interests, creating a sense of relatability and timeliness that can turn casual scrollers into active customers.

By covering trending topics as Facebook posts, your audience can share their input and hear others’ opinions, which ultimately shows how much you care about offering value to them.

In fact, Facebook itself shares info about “Hot Topics” (topics that are most popular on Facebook and Instagram across six categories). You can even see topic trends over time.

#17. Create dynamic sneak peek videos

Looking to build anticipation about an upcoming product release, feature addition, or event?

Sneak peek videos can help you do that. By creating curiosity around your upcoming offerings, they can drive traffic to your website or landing pages.

To make these videos engaging, create short videos of about 15-30 seconds. Our research shows shorter videos are most engaging on Facebook.

Here’s a good post example from Sony, sharing a quick sneak peek video for their new product launch.

Below is a quick outline to help you create a sneak peek video:

• Hook: Start with a dramatic shot, quick reveal, or a short sentence on what to expect
• Text overlay: Emphasis on the words “Coming soon” or “Sneak peek”
• Quick reveal: Show 2-3 second clips of the item or event without revealing everything
• Music: Use upbeat or suspenseful music
• CTA and branding: Show your logo and end with “Stay tuned” or “Follow for updates”
• Ending: Reveal the launch date or show “Only a few days away” text

#18. Feature employees

Customers want to be associated with brands that value their employees, encourage them, and feature them on their social accounts.

It creates a sense of familiarity and connection with your company.

So, how can you use this as a Facebook post idea?

• Run an employee spotlight series. Post a high-quality photo or a short clip of the employee talking about their journey and what they work on.
• Showcase company culture. Highlight workplace environment, company events, and employee interactions.
• Host an employee Q&A session. Run a video of your employee answering niche-specific questions or random ones, such as their favorite thing about the job or best work advice.
• Highlight employee stories. Do any of your employees work on passion projects? Or support a cause? Or have a unique talent? Create content around it.
• Show employees using the product. Feature an employee talking about how they use your product in their daily work/life.

#19. Share UGC (user-generated content)

Creating content for Facebook does not have to be challenging. Enters the savior – UGC.

UGC is content created by customers displaying your product/service. 93% of marketers claim UGC performs significantly better than traditional branded content.

After all, we would all trust a good review from a customer than a brand obsessing over its own products.

What’s more? You can easily use UGC for your Facebook business post ideas, saving the time to create content from scratch. Here’s an engaging post from Adobe Photoshop.

But what if you don’t have a lot of UGC to share? Here are three ways you can encourage customers to create and share UGC:

• Create a branded hashtag: Without hashtags, it becomes difficult to discover UGC that your customers have already created. Develop a simple, memorable hashtag and ask your customers to use them when sharing content related to your brand.
• Run a UGC contest: Host a contest where customers post UGC for a chance to win a prize. This boosts motivation while making participation fun.
• Leverage emails: Send follow-up emails after a purchase asking for feedback and inviting customers to share photos or stories about their experience.

#20. Leverage memes

Using memes in Facebook posts is a clever way for businesses to connect with their audience on a relatable and entertaining level.

They encourage likes, shares, and comments, which can help boost your organic reach and visibility.

By blending humor with your message, memes can make your brand memorable and foster a sense of community among your followers—because everyone loves being part of an inside joke!

According to Forbes, memes have around 10 times more reach and 60% organic interaction than standard marketing graphics.

Even B2B brands have started using memes to connect with their audience. Don’t believe us? Here’s a Facebook post example from Salesforce.

It’s time you add some light memes to your professional content if you aren’t already doing so.

Before you get started with meme marketing, here are some tips to get your memes right.

• Link memes to your brand/industry: You could find a hilarious meme, but if it does not relate to your brand, it does not deserve a place on your page. Instead, edit them to relate to your product/brand.
• Don’t take it too far: Before you post the meme, ensure it does not make fun of your audience or sound offensive to them.
• Get your timing right: Monitor meme trends and participate early. Post memes when they’re still fresh, and retire them once they’ve peaked.
• Track metrics: Track engagement metrics like shares, likes, and comments on Socialinsider to gauge effectiveness. Experiment with different meme formats and topics to see what your audience prefers.

#21. Collaborate with influencers

You can partner with influencers to create content for your page. This content often reaches more people and leads to higher page visibility, boosting brand awareness and credibility.

For example, Nike often partners with influencers and shares their achievements.

You don’t have to be as big a brand as Nike to feature influencers. Many small businesses partner with nano and micro-influencers. These influencers may have a small following, but they get higher engagement than celebrities and macro influencers.

Here are some tips for creating influencer-featured content on Facebook:

• Choose the right influencers: Ideally, choose popular influencers in your niche. Some other variables you should consider are an alignment in content style, tone, and values.
• Focus on visual appeal: Work with influencers to create visually appealing photos or videos, incorporating your product in a natural, aesthetically pleasing way. Good lighting, clear shots, and appealing settings make a big difference.
• Plan to create valuable content: Focus on storytelling, tutorials, product demos, or behind-the-scenes content. For example, if you’re a beauty brand, have the influencer create a tutorial using your product, sharing tips and personal insights.

#22. Create seasonal/holiday content

The holiday season brings a lot of frenzy and enthusiasm. People are looking for inspiration and holiday content everywhere, even on Facebook.

Many examples of good Facebook posts are, in fact, holiday-focused content. You can gather your team, take note of important holidays in your country, and let them come up with creative Facebook post ideas.

For example, McDonald’s launched Boo Buckets during Halloween. They promoted this with a great visual on Facebook.

And the performance numbers for this was on the roof.

Final thoughts

Use these Facebook post ideas not just to fill a calendar, but to clarify Facebook’s role in your broader marketing strategy.

After a few weeks of experimentation, review your data:

• Which content pillars perform best?
• Which formats build meaningful engagement?
• Does Facebook reach the audiences you care most about?

If you want clearer answers—and competitive context—Socialinsider can help you benchmark performance, analyze post‑level impact, and identify opportunities across channels.

Activate your 14‑day free trial to understand exactly where Facebook fits into your marketing mix.

FAQs on Facebook post ideas

What type of content is best for Facebook?

The best content for Facebook includes engaging visuals (photos, videos, and infographics), live videos, user-generated content, and interactive posts like polls and questions. Personal stories, behind-the-scenes looks, and informative or entertaining articles also work well.

With so many Facebook analytics tools promising ‘all-in-one’ insights, picking the right one can feel like scrolling through an endless feed of options that all look the same. 

The truth is, Facebook analytics tools help you track performance, understand your audience, benchmark against competition, and uncover what actually drives engagement. But finding the right fit? That’s a whole other story. 

So, I put a bunch of them to test, measuring everything from usability to advanced social media analytics features, and handpicked the 8 best Facebook analytics tools. Let’s look at each one.

Where do Facebook’s native analytics fall short (and why it’s recommended to turn to third-party tools)?

Facebook’s built-in analytics, accessed either through Meta Business Suite or Facebook Page Insights, do a decent job of giving you an overview of your page performance. But I have found it still falls short on a lot of metrics and analysis. 

Here are six of them:

• Limited competitive benchmarking: Meta Insights only shows data for pages you manage. You can’t compare your performance against competitors. Third-party tools fill that gap by aggregating and comparing data across multiple brands.
• Restricted data access: Key metrics like video views or follower counts are visible only for connected pages. Facebook blocks access to many data points for public or competitor pages, while third-party tools can bridge some of those gaps through APIs or public data.
• Inconsistent metric calculations: Facebook counts engagement on all posts receiving new interactions within a time range, while third-party tools usually track engagement only on posts published during that period, causing differences in reported numbers.
• Limited reporting and export options: Native reports are rigid, offering minimal customization. Third-party tools provide flexible exports, automated scheduling, and the ability to combine insights from multiple platforms for a unified view.
• Short historical data windows: Meta Insights often limits how far back you can access data. Third-party tools can extend these timeframes, making long-term trend analysis easier.
• Lack of advanced features: Facebook’s analytics lack features like automated benchmarking, content tagging, and multi-platform aggregation, all standard in professional third-party tools.

What should you consider when searching for a Facebook analytics tool?

To make sure you choose the right tool, here’s the criteria I considered when selecting the tools on this list.

• Data coverage and metrics: Choose a tool that tracks reach, impressions, engagement, follower growth, demographics, and content performance. I also included tools that offer historical data and competitor benchmarking for pages you don’t manage.
• Integration and accuracy: I made sure all the tools connect directly to Meta’s API for reliable, real-time data. If you use a tech stack, ensure your analytics tool integrates with the important ones.
• Reporting and customization: Look for customizable reports, flexible formats (PDF, PPT, CSV), and the ability to group multiple pages or brands under one dashboard.
• Usability and scalability: I checked if the interface simplifies comparisons and supports multiple accounts without hassle. Also, confirm how many pages you can track under your plan for scalability in future.
• Pricing and support: Compare pricing based on the number of pages, data access, and features. Strong customer support and onboarding can make a big difference.
• Additional analytics features: Advanced tools may include content tagging, pillar analysis, scheduled reports, or industry benchmarks, ideal for deeper strategy insights.

Facebook organic performance analytics tools

1. Socialinsider — best for content performance and competitor analysis

Using Socialinsider as a Facebook analytics tool is as simple as logging in to your account and adding your profile. 

The first thing you see is a clean dashboard with all your important social media KPIs. Think reach, views, follower growth, engagement, and posting frequency. The best part? I can customize this dashboard to display only the metrics that matter to me.

What stands out to me is how in-depth yet easy to navigate the platform feels. The analytics are smartly organized into sections like Content Pillars, Engagement, Reach, Impressions, and so on. It’s structured enough for data pros yet simple enough for beginners.

I may be a little biased here so hear it from our long-term user:

“We are using this social media analytics dashboard for all our 40 social media clients. We can have all the performance data in one single place.” - Arnold Vieriu, Tribal Worldwide

Key features:

• Cross-channel comparison: Get all your social media performance data in one place. Check how your brand performs across platforms for easy comparison and resource allocation.

• Advanced Facebook analytics: You get detailed engagement data, such as engagement rate by followers and by reach, engagement by post type, reach and impressions.

You can even see the top and bottom performing posts for a specific period.

The tool provides simple graphs to show how comments and shares have evolved over time.

If you see some anomalies or sudden spikes, you can click on it and see the posts that created that impact. 

• Competitor benchmarking: Compare performance against competitors across different metrics like total fans and fans’ growth, reach, views, etc.

• Industry comparison: See how you compare against a specific page or the overall industry. You can even select the country and follower number for competitor accounts you want to compare with.
• Content pillars performance analysis: Analyze your top performing content pillars and how your content pillar mix looks like for a particular period.

You can even see your competitor’s content pillar mix and benchmark against those.

• Organic value calculation: Shows the estimated monetary value of your organic social media efforts over a given period of time. You can change the values assigned as per your requirements to get the exact organic value.

• Autoreporting: Get scheduled autoreports for key metrics and analytics in your inbox without having to make them from scratch.

Pricing: Socialinsider offers a free trial of 14 days and the monthly plans start from $99.

Reviews: “I love the layout. Gathering the data from Meta is such a pain and difficult to navigate, so it saves us a lot of time. It also makes presentations more appealing and easy to read. I like how we can set the comparison easily. My most utilized tool is campaign tracking. By tagging posts, we can see the effect from just selecting comms and it's really helpful. For organic content, this tool is very helpful. The Customer Support team has also been very helpful and prompt.”

2. Social Pilot — best for Facebook management with analytics

Do you want a Facebook analytics tool that also helps with other tasks like scheduling and managing conversations? 

On the Facebook post analytics side, I can track page likes, reach, and engagement trends and even examine post-performance over custom date ranges.

On the publishing side, I can schedule regular posts, Reels and Stories for multiple pages in one go, bulk-upload up to 500 posts, and use audience targeting to refine who sees what. 

Plus, the unified inbox means you can manage comments, messages, and mentions from different pages all in one place.

Key features:

• Get detailed metrics: Access in-depth analytics for Facebook like reach, clicks, impressions, and engagement to understand how your Facebook content performs over time.
• Identify high-performing content: Quickly spot which posts drive the most engagement and reach.
• Competitor reports: Track and compare your performance against competitors to uncover content gaps and benchmark your strategy.
• Historical data: Analyze long-term trends and performance patterns with extended access to past data (approximately 2 years).
• White-labeled reports: Generate professional, client-ready Facebook analytics report with your own branding.
• Bulk scheduling: Plan and schedule hundreds of posts at once across different profiles, saving time.

Pricing: Offers a free 14-day trial after which their plans start from $30 per month.

Reviews: “I really like the overall SocialPilot platform. It has all the features we require for the 20+ pages we manage on our account. It was also super easy to integrate with all our pages on the different platforms. We use it several times a week to schedule posts and ensure our calendar is properly set up. I highly recommend this platform as it's a great deal for the price as well.”

3. Brandwatch — best for audience analysis and custom reporting 

Is your engagement dropping? Do you think it might be because you’re targeting your audience with the wrong content? 

Brandwatch helps you with detailed audience analysis so you can create laser-focused Facebook marketing strategies. 

When I tried the tool, I found it easy to slice and dice audience segments by behaviour, demographics, and interests with tools like custom classifiers, unlimited keyword rules, and image analysis that spots logos and scenes where my brand appears.

Their AI assistant, Iris AI, also makes it easy to run topic analysis and pore through millions of conversations happening around the topic. 

When it comes to reporting, there’s no one-size-fits-all: I could build fully customised dashboards, drag and drop widgets, schedule exports in PDF/CSV/PPT and, share live links for stakeholders.

Key features:

• Performance analysis: Assess how your content, channels, and campaigns are doing with deep insights: post-level metrics, cross-network comparisons, AI-driven insights on content performance, and dashboards to measure and visualise success.
• Automated AI-powered email alerts: Receive automatic email notifications when AI spots unusual spikes or drops in brand mentions, sentiment, or other key social media metrics.
• Historical trends: Dive into past data archives (billions to trillions of conversations) to identify long-term patterns, seasonal shifts, and trends in your brand or industry.
• Sentiment analysis: Analyse the tone of conversations at scale (positive, negative, neutral, and beyond) using natural language processing and machine-learning models to understand how audiences truly feel about your brand or topic.
• Competitor analysis: Benchmark your brand against rivals across metrics like share of voice, content performance, and sentiment to uncover strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in your market.

Pricing: Not available on the website. Contact Brandwatch team to get these details.

Reviews: “The support team truly stands out for their exceptional service. They respond promptly and demonstrate a deep understanding of our business requirements. Additionally, the data rigor remains consistently high and fast, which allows us to deliver quick and accurate insights to our clients in various sectors. The user interface could be modernized; there are sleeker options available in the marketplace that they can emulate.”

4. Synthesio — best for trend analysis and social listening

Synthesio is a great Facebook analytics tool if you play around with trends a lot. 

You can monitor brand mentions, hashtags and cross-platform chatter with its social listening dashboard and dig into who’s saying what, where and how often. 

Its AI-powered Topic Modeling engine scans thousands of posts in minutes to surface emerging themes and trend clusters I would otherwise miss.

On the trend-spotting front, Synthesio’s Signals module alerts me when a topic is gaining traction or shifting sentiment, so I’m never caught off guard. 

Key features:

• Campaign analysis: Monitor and measure your marketing or communication campaigns in real time. Track conversation volume, engagement, share of voice and performance of key messages to see what’s working and what isn’t.
• Comprehensive trend discovery: Surfacing emerging topics and consumer behaviours by scanning vast data sets using AI-driven topic-modelling.
• Evaluate trend velocity and maturity: See how quickly a trend is growing (velocity) and how established or saturated it is (maturity) to decide whether to act on a rising topic now, or wait.
• 360° consumer insights: Combine social, search, survey and behavioural data across languages and regions to build a holistic view of your audience.
• Social listening: Track and analyse what people are saying about your brand, category, competitors, products or topics across social networks, forums, blogs and news.
• Reputation monitoring: Keep an eye on the health of your brand by identifying negative sentiment spikes, crisis signals or reputational risks, enabling you to respond quickly and protect your brand image.

Pricing: Not available on the website. Contact Synthesio’s team for specific details.

Reviews: “The filtering options and ad-hoc searching feature are great. The customer support is really what stands out to me, as it is so much better than what I have ever gotten with any other social media tool. The only con being it's a complex tool, so adoption can take time.”

Facebook paid performance analytics tools

5. Bïrch — best for Facebook ads automation and reporting

Imagine waking up and seeing your Bïrch dashboard already updated: bids adjusted, underperforming ads paused and budget shifted to winners while you were asleep. That’s the reality you experience after diving into this Facebook ads automation and reporting tool. 

For Facebook campaigns, you can use its visual rule-builder to set layered triggers like ‘if ROAS drops below X for 3 days then pause ad’ and ‘when CTR rises above Y then increase budget by Z’. 

I also tapped into its bulk-ad-creation feature that helps launch dozens of ad variations in one go. 

On the reporting side, you can build customised dashboards with drag-and-drop widgets and set scheduled delivery via Slack or email. 

Key features:

• Advanced automation rules: Create custom rules that pause, start, duplicate campaigns/ad-sets/ads, adjust budgets or bids based on conditions you define (example, cost per acquisition, spend thresholds, performance comparisons).
• Custom metrics and timeframes: Define your own Facebook metrics and set custom date/time frames for comparison to surface meaningful performance shifts.
• Audience and creative analytics: Identify top-performing audiences and creatives across campaigns, compare segments, find what’s working and scale accordingly.
• Bulk operations and post-boosting: Launch or duplicate ads in bulk, boost top organic Facebook posts automatically when they meet performance criteria, export post IDs for reuse.
• Cross-platform support and reporting: While focused on Meta platforms like Facebook/Instagram, Bïrch supports multiple ad platforms, provides dashboards, scheduled Facebook page analytics reports and performance visualization for clients or teams.

Pricing: Their paid plans range varies depending on your monthly ad spend. For monthly ad spend up to $10K, the plans start from $49 per month.

Reviews: “I love how easy Bïrch makes managing ads across different platforms. The automation rules save me so much time and help me get better results without having to constantly check and adjust things manually.”

6. AdsEspresso — for paid campaign management and analytics

Managing multiple Facebook ad campaigns can feel like juggling flaming swords. You miss out on one thing and your campaign may crumble.

Adsespresso makes tracking all of it easy. The platform lets you build and test dozens of ad variations in minutes using its guided campaign creation flow. You can segment audiences, tweak visuals, and experiment with headlines without leaving the dashboard. 

What I liked the best is its Compare tool. This Facebook page analytics tool lines up campaigns side by side so I can instantly see which one’s driving the best ROAS or CTR. 

They also offer tagging for aggregated reporting, meaning you can easily organize and group campaigns by clients or segments. Once done, you’ll be able to see aggregated statistics for each campaign.

Key features:

• Optimization rules and automation: Create rules to automatically pause, adjust, or duplicate ads based on performance metrics and free up time for social media strategy.
• Retargeting and audience lists: Use retargeting lists (for example, visitors, converters, engaged users) and build ad sets to re-engage these audiences with tailored messages and creatives.
• Bulk update: Manage and edit multiple campaigns, ad sets or ads in one go to scale your workflow efficiently.
• Ad metrics analysis: Access detailed performance metrics like clicks, impressions, reach, conversions, cost per result, and engagement with widgets and graphs to quickly assess how campaigns are doing.
• Customizable dashboards: Choose which KPIs matter to you and customize your Facebook analytics dashboard.
• Drag-and-drop reporting tool: Build and export reports easily with drag-and-drop tables, graphs and snapshots (including white-labeling) so you can share performance with clients or team members.

Pricing: Offers a free 14-day trial. Their pricing plan range starts from $49 per month (monthly ad spend of $1000).

Reviews: “The best part is quickly being able to create multiple versions of Ads also really makes it easy for us to go for split testing. It makes the overall ad management very comfortable.”

7. Northbeam — best for multi-touch attribution modeling

Picture this: you’re reviewing your Northbeam dashboard and  at a glance you can trace a customer’s journey from a cold Facebook ad all the way through to purchase, instead of just seeing ‘last-click.’ 

What got me hooked is how Northbeam’s multi-touch attribution models work: you can choose custom look-back windows, apply the proprietary ‘Clicks + Modeled Views’ model that credits not just clicks but verified views and impressions. 

It also relies heavily on first-party data and integrates seamlessly across channels so you’re not locked into biased platform stats.

Key features:

• Unlimited attribution models & lookback windows: Northbeam supports multiple attribution models (Linear, Clicks-Only, Clicks + Modeled Views) and allows you to choose long or custom lookback windows.
• First-party data foundation and independent measurement: The platform emphasises using your own first-party data rather than relying solely on ad-platform claims, enabling more ‘truthful’ attribution across channels.
• Omnichannel and full-funnel visibility: Track every touchpoint, from awareness to conversion, across all channels (ads, search, direct traffic, etc.), so you see the full customer journey.
• Real-time or near real-time reporting: Hourly updates and detailed dashboards enable analysing media performance quickly and reacting to changes in campaign behaviour.
• Creative or campaign-level granularity: You can break down performance down to the ad/creative level, enabling you to see which creatives or assets across channels are the drivers.

Pricing: They offer custom pricing so you’ll have to get in touch with their team for exact pricing plan.

Reviews: “Northbeam has helped make it easy for us to determine what is really making money within the businesses we work with and letting us scale the mediums that are actually profitable. We'd recommend Northbeam to any business doing over $5 million a year, spending on paid traffic, and looking to find clarity within their numbers.”

8. HYROS — best for advanced conversion tracking

Have you ever launched a Facebook ad campaign only to see conversions disappear into the ether and wondered exactly which ads, audiences and actions are driving results? 

That’s where HYROS steps in. 

Once you connect your Facebook ad account, you immediately benefit from its server-side integration and URL-parameter tracking to attribute leads, sales and calls back to the original ad source, even when the standard pixel loses data. 

The platform also allowed me to push custom conversion events back into Facebook and build advanced attribution models that track first-click, last-click or multi-touch paths so I truly understand what’s working.

And if you need to report back to clients or top management, that’s easy as well.

Key features:

• Granular ad and campaign tracking: HYROS lets you track leads, sales, and calls back to specific ads, ad sets and campaigns on Meta by using custom URL parameters
• Full-funnel and multi-touch attribution: Beyond last-click attribution, you can see how Facebook ads fit into the broader customer journey (including other channels) and organise your attribution window and model accordingly.
• Custom parameter support: You can keep your existing UTM/tracking parameters and map them inside HYROS, maintaining your own naming conventions or legacy tracking setups.
• Offline and lead form tracking: The platform supports tracking of Facebook Lead Ads forms and offline conversions (for example where the ad generates a form or call rather than direct online purchase).
• Agency and multi-client tools: Get dashboards and admin tools for agencies running Facebook ads for many brands.

Pricing: Their business pricing plans start from $230 per month with annual plan and a monthly tracked revenue up to $20K.

Reviews: “The money it costs to use Hyros is less than the amount I was losing on Meta ads not having Hyros. I finally clearly know what ads to shut off, which ones to increase, and I’m thrilled to see my ROAS increasing. If you care about your business and want success, use the best tools. Get HYROS!”

What are some API limitations of third-party Facebook analytics tools?

Sometimes you may think, “Why is my Facebook analytics tool not working properly?” That is largely because of API limitations. Here are two of them.

Metric availability and data gaps

Here’s the thing about Facebook’s API: it doesn’t share everything. Some metrics are locked away for pages you don’t manage, such as follower counts or audience demographics for competitors.

Even when you’re analyzing your own page, certain insights might simply not show up. Metrics like video views or reach can disappear without warning, and Facebook doesn’t always split organic and paid engagement. Sometimes, the platform even retires old metrics altogether, which leads to empty spots in your reports and confusion about what changed.

Data discrepancies

Even when the data does come through, it might not match what you see inside Facebook’s native reports. That’s usually because of different attribution models, time windows, or API constraints. The result? Slight variations in your metrics that can make cross-checking feel like comparing two versions of the same story told by different people.

Final thoughts

The best Facebook analytics tools make your life easy. Whether it’s answering questions like, “What did my paid ads performance for last month look like?” or “What changes do we need to make in our content strategy?” or saving time looking for KPIs.

Before subscribing to any platform, I’d recommend taking a step back and listing exactly what you need it to do. Then, use the free trial to test those features in real time. It’s the easiest way to know if it fits your workflow or just looks good on paper.

And if you’re curious about how Socialinsider can help you dig deeper into Facebook metrics and automate your reporting, try it free for 14 days. You might just find your new favorite analytics sidekick.

FAQs about Facebook analytics tools

Why use Facebook analytics tools?

Facebook analytics tools help you understand what content resonates with your audience, how your advertising performs, who your followers are, and how your social efforts contribute to business goals. They provide data-driven insights that allow you to optimize your strategy, justify your social media investments, and improve ROI.

How can I export Facebook post data?

You can export Facebook data in several ways:

• From Meta Business Suite: Navigate to Insights → Export Data → select date range and metrics → export as CSV or Excel
• From Meta Ads Manager: Select the campaign, ad set, or ad → Reports → Export
• From third-party tools: Most offer CSV, Excel, PDF, or PowerPoint export options
• Via the Facebook Graph API: For developers needing programmatic access to data

You walk into the board meeting clutching your Facebook report. Slides are ready, coffee’s kicking in, and you’re hoping this isn’t another round of blank stares and “Umm, what does this mean for our business?” 

This time, though, the room nods. They get it. 

Why?

Because every chart connects to a business goal, every insight has a clear takeaway. That’s the power of a strong Facebook analysis report. Whether you’re making a report for one CEO or fifty clients, the right report makes Facebook marketing look worth every dollar.

For a real-world perspective, I reached out to someone who’s been in the social media space long before Reels were a thing. Meet Megan Bowen, founder of Meg B Marketing — 80+ clients served, 210K followers built, and 32M video views delivered.

Let’s learn from her experience in this guide.

How should your Facebook analytics report be structured

When I spoke with Megan, she pointed out that the structure of a Facebook analytics report depends on who it’s for and what you’re trying to achieve. One client might care most about content performance, while another may prefer starting with audience insights.

But every solid report includes a few essentials. Here are those and what to include in them.

Executive summary

I recommend starting with this section because it gives a quick overview of your most important findings.

It could cover things like:

• Growth trend in terms of followers, engagement, or website traffic through Facebook.
• If you witnessed major engagement shifts, such as Album posts getting more engagement than Reels.
• The profile’s standout content for the period.
• Change in key metrics and the reasoning behind them

To make this task easier, I generally refer to Socialinsider’s Key Insights Summary, which gives me findings of what happened in that particular period, along with observations on what I can do next.

Facebook audience analysis

The audience runs the show on social media. If you target the wrong crowd or the right crowd with the wrong content, your strategies will fail to deliver results.

Here’s what you should analyze and include in your Facebook insights report.

• Demographics: Adding demographics (age, gender, location) shows the client who you’re actually reaching.

Megan mentioned that not every brand needs to be in front of everyone, everywhere. Some brands might have a very specific target, like 18-24 year old females in the U.S. And you need to check if that’s the largest section showing up on demographics.

She also added that location can be a crucial factor for certain kinds of businesses –

“When it comes to demographics, I always look at age and gender, though their importance really depends on the brand. I also pay close attention to location, especially for brick-and-mortar businesses or brands serving a specific area. If a company is trying to expand into a new region, location data becomes a valuable info-gathering tool.”

• Follower growth: How much did you grow your audience in the last month or the last quarter? Was that in line with what you were expecting? Or do you need to optimize your strategies?

I use Socialinsider to get this info for my Facebook audience report. The best part? It shows historical data for up to 3 or even 4 years, depending on the subscription. It helps me see how the overall account has progressed year over year.

Megan also discussed looking at the follower vs. non-follower mix to get more insights into the audience and your content strategies:

When I look at a Facebook report, the first thing I check is interactions, especially the split between followers and non-followers. I also like to break that down by content type and even by views. It’s not about one being better than the other; they serve different purposes.

Some posts are meant to nurture your existing community, so I want to see if they resonate there. Others are more discovery-focused, and I’m curious to see what gets picked up by non-followers — that kind of engagement can really inform future content strategy.

When I notice a spike in non-follower engagement, I always ask: did it lead to new followers, or was it just a momentary reach boost? That connection helps me understand whether our content is converting new audiences into long-term followers.

• When they are most active: Engagement generally runs high when your audience is most active. To get this data, you can use native analytics.

I also like to compare it with Socialinsider’s data on the best time to post by engagement to see if it aligns.

Facebook engagement analysis

Vanity metrics may not show much, but they tell you what type of content your audience responds to. Here are five things you should include in your Facebook analytics reporting.

• Total engagement: It shows your clients or team the sum of reactions, comments, and shares received on your page in the selected time period. Instead of just showing this number, I like to showcase the percentage change over the previous period.
• Engagement rate by followers and reach: I like this metric over total engagement because it allows for fair, consistent comparison over time. You can track how your rate evolves from one reporting period to the next, giving you a clear view of whether engagement is growing relative to your audience size. 

It’s also great for benchmarking. You can include your competitors’ engagement rates in the report to showcase how your performance stacks up against theirs.

Instead of manually calculating it, I draw this data from Socialinsider.

Megan talks about how you should always correlate your engagement rate to your other goals (if any). She said:

Engagement metrics are important. And I do use them. But what matters more to me is the trend: did engagement go up, and if so, did that translate into meaningful results? I always pair engagement with downstream KPIs. Think metrics like website traffic, conversions, watch time, or landing page bounce rate. 

It’s crucial to ask: are people actually leaving Facebook to learn more about us, or are we just generating engagement that doesn’t drive any real connection? Engagement should mean something for the business. Of course, that definition varies. Some brands are happy with strong online interaction alone, while others need that engagement to convert into revenue. It really depends on the company’s goals.

• Comments and shares: These metrics are more important than just likes as they show an active form of engagement. It shows people taking the time to react, contribute, or spread your content.

When analyzing these metrics in Socialinsider, I always investigate anomalies. If the graph shows a sudden dip, I click in to see which posts caused it. If likes have stayed consistent but comments or shares have dropped, that’s my cue to dig deeper. Maybe the topic didn’t spark conversation, or the content wasn’t share-worthy.

• Content format by engagement: Is the investment in Reels paying off? Are album posts working better than Reels? Should you shuffle resources for the next month to experiment?

Megan recommends not relying on one or two spikes to completely change your social media strategy. Instead, she says, look for patterns over time and then experiment and see if the success holds up.

The first step is to identify where the spikes in engagement are coming from. Is it a specific post type, theme, or format? Then I look for patterns over time. If one post performs exceptionally well, I don’t overhaul my strategy overnight. Instead, I track performance across four to six weeks and start testing

From there, I dig deeper: why did it perform well? Was it the creative, the caption, or the tone? For example, if carousels perform well, I’ll test whether it’s all carousels or just the funny, meme-style ones. The key is to test one variable at a time and turn those insights into a deliberate strategy.

• Reactions distribution showing audience sentiment: Show the distribution of reactions you get on Facebook and talk about the general audience sentiment around your content.

Facebook content performance analysis

You post daily. But is that content even getting you any results? Or are the content themes you’re focusing on effective?

This analysis should answer these questions for your clients.

• Content pillars performance: Are you prioritizing content pillars that are getting you engagement? Is your content mix leaning more towards promotional content?

Only when you do this analysis, you can experiment with a context mix that might become the optimal one for you moving forward.

Instead of manually doing it, you can use AI-generated content pillars categorization in Socialinsider.

When talking about this subject, Megan mentioned something important. She said that instead of doing a complete comparison, you should break down your content pillars into two overall categories: promotional and entertainment.

Here’s why —

I like to divide our content pillars into categories like educational, entertaining, and promotional, but I never analyze them all on equal grounds. Promotional content rarely performs as well as something entertaining. And that’s completely normal. By separating them, you can set realistic expectations and give each pillar context.

This way, if a promotional post performs modestly, you’re not unfairly comparing it to an entertaining post that’s designed to go viral. The numbers start to make more sense when you evaluate each pillar within these two categories.

• Top and bottom-performing content: Look for common patterns in top and bottom-performing content. Maybe the top-performing content is all geared towards a specific pillar. Maybe the tone in the bottom-performing content is very salesy.

Jot down these insights in your Facebook report so your clients know exactly which insights you gathered from the data and the steps you plan to take next.

• Show campaign-specific performance: Did you run any major marketing campaigns in the past month or quarter? What kind of results did they bring? Did you get an increase in followers or engagement?

I usually group this content by tagging it in Socialinsider.

I can then check the overall campaign performance in the Content pillars section.

This saves me time and I don’t have to manually calculate the different metrics like engagement rate and percentage of total engagement for the campaign.

• Visuals and messaging analysis: Are your visuals of high quality? Is the tone resonating with your audience? I like to include this in the report as it gives clients or top management an idea of how the creative side supports performance. It shows that I am not just tracking metrics, but also interpreting what drives them.

Megan does the same for her clients when conducting a Facebook page analytics report —

It’s not always about the numbers. I like to take notes on the creative styles, tones, and themes that seem to resonate. For example, maybe a certain tone performs consistently well, or people respond more when we tell stories. Those qualitative insights matter because they reveal patterns about what our audience genuinely connects with. So instead of focusing only on metrics, I pay close attention to what our community is consistently engaging with and why it resonates.

• Reels insights: For video performance, focus on metrics like watch time, completion rate, and retention graphs. 

Pinpoint which Reels worked well and why. Mention what you will focus on implementing for your Reels strategy based on these insights.

Facebook competitor analysis

When you share a Facebook report with clients, one of the first questions they’ll ask is, “So, how do we stack up against the competition?”

For easy analysis, you can use the Benchmarking feature in Socialinsider. It gives you a side-by-side comparison of various metrics.

Here are the social media metrics or insights you should include in this section.

• Engagement comparison: How is their engagement rate compared to yours? For fair comparison, I like to compare the engagement rate by followers. 

Megan said something similar while talking about engagement. She said:

I do look at the engagement rate but I always pay attention to how large a page’s audience is compared to how actively it engages, because that ratio tells you much more about real community connection than follower count alone. For example, if a page has 20,000 followers but only gets a couple of comments, you know that’s not great.

If you find their rate high, dig deep into the next analytics to find out why.

• Content pillar mix: Are they focusing on unique pillars that are getting them great engagement?

When you look at their content pillar distribution, pay special attention to which themes dominate their feed and how that balance compares to yours. Are they leaning heavily into entertaining or educational content while keeping promotional posts light? This gives you an idea of what you might have failed to notice while analyzing your content.

• Posting frequency: A competitor’s high engagement rate might simply come from posting more often than you do. Tracking their posting frequency helps you understand whether their results are volume-driven or strategy-driven.

Use that insight to decide whether to experiment with posting more frequently or find a sweet spot that keeps your audience engaged without overwhelming them.

• Tone and branding: Don’t skip the qualitative side of analysis: tone, visuals, and overall branding. They often explain why certain posts perform well. Maybe their friendly, conversational tone sparks more comments, or their clever captions make people want to share. Observing these patterns helps you understand not just what works, but why it connects.

Megan mentioned looking at it the other way and finding what’s being overlooked. Here’s what she had to say —

I like to poke around and really observe what competitors are doing, almost like a bit of digital sleuthing. The goal is to identify the white space: what’s being underused or overlooked, and where the opportunity lies. Maybe nobody’s experimenting with a certain format or tone, and that’s something we can own. Or, if everyone’s doing the same thing and it feels repetitive or stale, that’s our cue to approach it differently and stand out.

Summary of next steps

Wrap up your report with a plan your clients can rally behind. Outline the key actions you’ll take next month or quarter based on what the data revealed. This could be testing new content formats, refining ad targeting, or doubling down on what’s already working. Be clear about what you aim to achieve and why it matters.

For example: “Our Facebook post analytics report showed that Reels drove 40% more engagement this month, so next quarter we’ll increase short-form video production by 25% to boost reach and follower growth.”

This helps clients see the data and also how you’re turning that data into actionable strategies.

How to create your Facebook analysis report: A step-by-step process

Ready to put it all together? Follow these steps to create your Facebook reports for clients.

Step 1: Set goals and KPIs

Before you even start collecting data, here are two questions you should ask:

• Who will I be presenting it to? Will it be top management, clients, or my team?

Megan explains why this step is important —

You always have to consider your audience when creating reports. If I’m reporting to a business owner who isn’t in marketing and just wants to know things are handled, I keep it simple: a short summary, maybe a chart or two, and clear next steps. They want to see, ‘Here’s what’s happening, and here’s what I’m doing about it.

But if I’m reporting to a marketing director or a team of marketers, the report looks different. It’s more detailed, with screenshots, examples, and notes about trends I’m testing or shifts I’ve noticed. Marketers want to understand the reasoning and experiments behind the data.

• What is the focus of this report? Is it a general update report, or are you focusing on certain goals like increasing brand awareness or engagement?

This will dictate the KPIs you select and showcase in your report.

Step 2: Collect data

This is where I roll up my sleeves and go data hunting. I start with Meta Business Suite to pull the basic analytics like reach, impressions, engagement, audience demographics, etc. Then I hop into Ads Manager to grab ad spend, clicks, and conversions. If I’ve got UTMs set up, I always check Google Analytics to see what people did after they clicked through.

The ultimate step is to lean in to third-party social analytics tools like Socialinsider. I can check content performance, competitor benchmarks, and campaign performance all in one place.

Step 3: Put data in a visual format

If you’re presenting to clients or even your top management, you need to use as little text as possible. Instead, show data visually for easy interpretation.

For example, instead of mentioning how much reach you got in the past month, show a graph of the reach evolution over time.

I usually use Socialinsider to get this data in a visual format instead of creating it from scratch. You can even directly download data into multiple formats from the tool.

Step 4: Add action items

Once you’ve gathered the data and added your visuals, turn those numbers into meaning. Explain what’s happening and what you plan to do about it.

For example: “Video views dropped by 20% this month, but engagement on image posts grew. Next month, we’ll test shorter video formats and repurpose top-performing images into Reels to see if that improves reach.”

I like to do this for each section I am including in the report. But if that’s too much, you can add this at the end of the report.

Step 5: Share a customizable dashboard

If your clients don’t want an extensive report but just an update on key Facebook metrics, you can share a customizable Facebook analytics dashboard with them.

In Socialinsider, you can customize your dashboard by selecting relevant metrics through the right tab. You can then download the data and present it to your clients.

These dashboards update in real time, making it easy to track performance trends and share insights with clients and your team.

How to extract insights from your Facebook analysis report

Data collection is important. But many times, marketers miss out on drawing insights from that data. Here are my four strategies to extract the most out of your data.

• Spot seasonality and trends. Do certain posts perform better on weekends or holidays? Does engagement spike during product launches or certain times of day? Also, compare time periods to see whether engagement has gone up or down since last month or quarter.
• Dig deeper into how your audience interacts. Check which demographics engage most: by age, gender, or location. Are you reaching new audiences, or mainly talking to existing followers?
• Identify trends. Compare performance across campaigns to see shifts in audience response. Are competitors testing new formats or content types that are paying off?
• Track conversions and traffic. Go beyond likes. Did content actually drive clicks, leads, or sales? Are Facebook conversions growing or losing ground compared to other channels?

Facebook reporting best practices

While creating this report, here are some best practices you should adopt.

• Make reports visually engaging: Think about how a good image instantly grabs your attention. The same logic applies to reports. You don’t need to spend hours perfecting colors or design details, but a clean, visual layout makes your data easier to digest and your insights stand out. Use charts, icons, and whitespace to guide the reader’s eye to what matters most.

To save time, use templates or Facebook analytics tools that help you strike the right balance between clarity and aesthetics.

• Don’t focus solely on data. Bring the narrative together. A good report doesn’t drown people in charts and numbers. I always follow the data → insight → action framework while creating reports.

Megan put it well when she said:

The biggest mistake I see is when marketers fail to translate the data in a way that their audience actually cares about. Agencies and social media teams are so deep in the numbers that they forget most people don’t speak that language. You have to turn metrics into meaning — what does this data say about your community? Does it show that people care about your message, or that there’s a gap between what you’re posting and what they’re buying?

• Automate reports: If you need to present multiple reports to clients or top management, save yourself the headache with tools that offer auto-reporting features. They handle the repetitive part: pulling data, updating visuals, and organizing metrics, so you can focus on adding real insights. You can always tinker with the output later, polishing the visuals or adding context before sending it off.

Final thoughts

A great Facebook analytics report is all about drawing data and using that to inform your next strategy. When your data tells a clear story, it becomes easier to spot trends, justify decisions, and inspire action. 

Ensure each section of your report connects insight to impact, showing how your efforts on Facebook move the brand forward. And instead of manually doing everything, rely on tools to make it easier. 

If you want to try a tool that helps you draw in-depth data and automate your reporting, Socialinsider does it all. Take the tool for a free spin to see exactly how it helps.

FAQs about Facebook analytics reports

What is a Facebook analysis report?

A Facebook analysis report is a detailed overview of how your Facebook Page or campaigns are performing. It tracks key metrics like reach, engagement, audience growth, and content performance to show what’s working and what isn’t. The goal is to turn data into insights and help refine your strategy, prove ROI, and make smarter decisions for future campaigns.

What are the benefits of Facebook reporting?

Facebook reporting helps you understand how your content performs and whether your strategy is driving real results. It highlights what’s working, what needs improvement, and where your best opportunities lie. Regular reporting also builds transparency with clients or stakeholders, proves ROI, and helps you make data-backed decisions that improve engagement, reach, and conversions over time.

Alright, I’ll get straight to it.

If you’re still using old-school Facebook tactics, you’re leaving results on the table.

I know you don’t have time for “good enough” anymore. You need a strategy that delivers.

So let’s explore the top Facebook best practices that go beyond the basics and actually drive real impact.

How does Facebook’s algorithm work today?

If you’ve noticed your Facebook posts performing better lately, you’re not imagining it. 

According to a Socialinsider study, Facebook engagement climbed by 18% in the first half of 2025. This is proof that the platform’s algorithm is rewarding the right kind of content again.

So, what’s changed? In short: quality and intent.

Facebook’s algorithm has become smarter at predicting what users *actually want to see*, not just what they interact with out of habit. 

It now prioritizes:

• Authentic engagement over vanity metrics. Shares, saves, and meaningful comments carry far more weight than likes.
• Content that sparks conversation. Posts for Facebook that trigger back-and-forth interactions (especially early on) are boosted higher in feeds.
• Native formats. Facebook still favors content created within the platform: Reels, photo carousels, or text-based posts, over external links.
• User relationships. The closer someone is to your brand (followers who message, comment, or react often), the more likely they’ll see your future posts.

In other words, the algorithm’s not working against you. It’s laser-focused on rewarding Facebook content types that feel personal, relevant, and real.

Best practices for optimizing different content formats on Facebook

Whether it’s video marketing, images, or text, I’ve got the social media tactics you need to create social media content that truly resonates. 

So let’s get to work and uncover the best practices on Facebook for each content format.

Video content best practices for Facebook

Let me start with these Facebook video best practices that will help you optimize your video marketing strategy for both views and engagement:

Create videos according to data-backed best-performing video lengths

Video length matters more than you think. 

And according to our study on social media benchmarks, videos under 30 seconds and in the 60-90 second range pull strong view counts. 

But here's the twist: 90-120 second videos drive the highest engagement rates.

If you ask me, I'd say the sweet spot is the 90-second window, giving you enough time to hook viewers, deliver real social media value, and create a complete narrative arc without losing your audience's attention. 

Use emotional triggers to drive shares

Views are great, but shares? 

That's how your content spreads. And shares happen when you tap into genuine emotion. Real customer stories, behind-the-scenes moments, or relatable struggles resonate far more than polished, scripted content. 

Trust me, when viewers see themselves in your video or feel something real, they get compelled to pass it along.

Visual content best practices for Facebook

I'm sure that one and off, you're wondering what to post Facebook moving forward, right?

Well, we know visuals are the heartbeat of Facebook engagement.

So, to truly stand out in a crowded feed, make sure you:

Leverage UGC campaigns

Invite your audience to share authentic, personal moments with your brand. 

User-generated content amplifies trust, sparks genuine conversations, and not only gives your social media community a voice but also fuels your visual content with fresh, relatable perspectives.

Double down on albums

One of our Socialinsider studies reveals that albums are currently driving the highest engagement on Facebook, with images coming in second.

A good social media manager knows that albums offer a powerful way to showcase events, company culture, or product stories by grouping visuals into cohesive narratives that encourage followers to explore more.

Text posts best practices for Facebook

So, what are the Facebook posting best practices to ensure your text stands out? 

Let’s dive into the essentials:

Use interactive posts such as polls & questions

One powerful takeaway from our competitive analysis on Facebook, including insights from leading industry voices, is the success of interactive content. 

Text posts with simple backgrounds and open-ended questions on Facebook consistently drive higher engagement levels. 

These types of Facebook posts allow brands to spark conversations with their audience, making it more likely that people will engage. 

Here's an insight our CMO, Adina Jipa, offered in an interview:

Additionally, incorporating polls can also amplify this engagement as they provide instant feedback.

Have an optimized posting strategy

Posting frequency and timing matter.

According to our research on how often to post on social media, brands that post about 5 times a week tend to see the best results. 

But remember, the key is finding the right balance: post often enough to stay in your audience’s feed, but not so much that you risk fatigue or a drop in engagement.

BONUS:

• How to structure text for maximum readability

For text posts to perform well, the structure is crucial.

Using short paragraphs, clear language, and bullet points or numbered lists to break up long blocks of text are just a few social media optimization tips you can use to make your post easier to read.

• When text-only posts outperform visual content

While visuals are powerful tools, there are times when text-only posts outperform images or videos. 

Simplicity can work in your favor. In certain situations, text posts allow for deeper engagement, especially when you want to focus on delivering a message or starting a conversation. 

Moreover, pairing images with your text can enhance the message, making it more dynamic. 

For example, when posting on Facebook, consider adding subtle, relevant images to provide context to your posts. This can enhance your audience's connection to the content, without overshadowing the primary message.

Platform specific features and engagement optimization best practices

So, you want your social media campaigns to stand out on Facebook?

Well, if you're asking what the secret is, I'd tell you it’s all about understanding each platform’s quirks and using them to your advantage. 

With a bit of know-how and some solid social media marketing strategy, you’ll be making waves and building an engaged community in no time. 

Let me break down some easy-to-follow tips for creating engaging posts on Facebook.

Facebook groups best practices

Facebook Groups are where the magic happens. They’re your community’s home base. 

But don’t just throw up a group and expect it to grow on its own. 

Here’s a few Facebook group best practices to keep them buzzing:

• Spark conversations: Don’t just drop links or promo material. One thing that I constantly do is to ask questions, run polls, and share content that gets people talking. The key is to make sure your posts encourage replies. Trust me, the more interaction you create, the more invested your members will be.
• Consistency over perfection: You don’t need to post every hour, but you do need to post regularly. Keep the momentum going by scheduling posts that mix it up. Discussion starters, helpful tips, and personal insights. Your members will expect it, and they'll look forward to the next one.
• Give VIP access: One of the Facebook best practices I've tested myself was to reward group members with exclusive content, such as sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes action, or first dibs on a special offer. And guess what I've discovered - when people feel like they’re in the know, they’re more likely to stick around.
• Be a real human: Engage personally. Respond to comments, react to posts, and show you’re there for more than just selling. A real connection goes a long way.

Facebook Stories best practices

From experience, I can tell you Stories are one of the best types of content to post on Facebook and a perfect way to connect with your audience on a daily basis. 

Here’s how to keep them coming back for more:

• Keep it real (literally): Stories are less about polish and more about authenticity. Think of them like a quick chat with a friend. Share your real-time moments, whether that’s a new product drop, something funny happening in the office, or a cool life hack. Keep it light, fun, and human.
• Use interactive features: Polls, questions, and countdowns are your best friends when it comes to Stories. They keep people engaged and give them something to interact with. Make them feel involved.
• Be consistent (but not overwhelming): No one likes a story spammer, but consistency does matter. Try to stick to a rhythm that fits your brand: daily, weekly, or on special occasions. 
• Short, sweet, and snappy: Stories should be bite-sized and to the point. Keep them quick and impactful. Focus on visuals. People are scrolling fast, so make your content stop them in their tracks with something eye-catching.

Facebook Reels best practices

If I haven't told you this before, well, now's the time - Facebook Reels are your chance to show off your creative side

But with a 90-second time window (as we've already seen, this is the best duration), you must ensure you make it count. Here’s how:

• Hop on trends: Trendy sounds, challenges, or memes are great, but you don’t need to follow the crowd exactly. Put your own twist on trending topics. Make it relevant to your audience, and make it fit your style.
• High-quality visuals and sound: This one’s a no-brainer. People scroll past low-quality videos faster than you can say “content creator.” Keep your visuals sharp and your sound crisp. And don’t forget to make the first few seconds of your Reel grab attention. You have about 3 seconds before people lose interest.
• Text is your friend: Make sure your message is clear, even if the viewer isn’t listening to the sound. Use text overlays to emphasize your point or give context to your visuals. It helps people connect with your message, even on mute.
• Play with timing: While it’s tempting to stretch a Reel to its max 90-second limit, sometimes shorter is better. People tend to watch shorter Reels all the way through. My advice? Test different lengths and see what keeps your audience glued to the screen.

Facebook content creation and measurement best practices

Creating content that not only grabs attention but also keeps your audience engaged can feel like a juggling act, I know.

But fear not. 

Nailing your social media content strategy is easier when you know the right balance, the right pillars, and the right time, trust me.

Use the 80/20 content strategy

• Balance promotional vs. valuable content

When it comes to Facebook, a good rule of thumb is the 80/20 rule. 

In other words, 80% of your content should add value to your audience—whether it’s educational, entertaining, or just downright inspiring. 

The remaining 20%? 

That's your promotional content. No one likes being hit with constant ads, so make sure your audience gets to know your brand first and foremost through meaningful content.

• Discover the content pillars that build loyalty

Take it from me, building audience loyalty starts with understanding what content resonates most. 

It’s not just about what you post, but how consistently you post content that truly connects with your audience. 

Luckily, Socialinsider can help you identify the most engaging types of posts on Facebook. Not only for your own brand but also for your competitors.

Take Tripadvisor, for example. 

In the image below, you can see that their content consistently focuses on high-engagement topics like Adventure & Outdoor Activities and Travel Tips & Guides. 

These specific social media content pillars have proven to resonate with their audience, driving interaction and loyalty.

Thus, by leveraging Socialinsider's AI insights, you can uncover these content trends for your brand, just like I did, to ensure you're always sharing what your audience is most likely to engage with.

• Leverage seasonal content planning for sustained engagement

Lastly, don’t forget about the power of seasonal content. 

Whether it’s gearing up for the holidays, offering post-vacation deals, or highlighting “Summer Escapes,” seasonal themes work wonders for timely, relevant engagement. 

Plan ahead for key dates, and tailor your content to the seasons. It’s the easiest way to keep your audience coming back for more.

Important metrics to track

To truly understand how your content is performing, you need to focus on a handful of key brand metrics. 

Follower growth

A steady increase in followers means your content is resonating with people. 

It’s like getting a virtual high-five every time you post something that clicks. 

But if your follower count starts stagnating or dipping, it’s a sign to rethink your strategy. 

Let me exemplify, moving forward with TripAdvisor’s case study, which, in this case, is a positive one. An analysis of the brand's follower growth demonstrated how strategic content can drive followers over time.

Reach, impressions, views, and engagement

These are your bread and butter when it comes to gauging content performance. 

Below, I've run a quick rundown of these social media analytics:

• Reach: how many unique people saw your posts
• Impressions: how often your content was shown to those people
• Views: the number of times your videos were actually watched
• Engagement: all the interactions—likes, shares, comments—your content gets

Tripadvisor’s reach vs. impressions distribution graph below clearly shows how these metrics provide a deep dive into how your content is spreading. 

A high reach with low engagement? Maybe it's time to rework your content to spark more interaction.

Comments and shares

If you ask me, comments and shares are where the gold is. 

When people comment, they’re engaging, connecting with your message. And when they share? That’s the ultimate compliment. Shares mean your content is so good that people want to spread it to their own networks.

Take a look at Trip.com’s spikes in comments and shares in the graph below.

These peaks show us that certain posts are sparking deeper engagement. 

Watching for these trends lets you refine your content to maximize those moments of high interaction.

Here's how Jameka Christy, freelance social media manager approaches metric tracking:

With Facebook, I pay extra attention to things like post reach, shares, and link clicks since a lot of traffic and engagement can come from those.

Organic value

Now, let’s talk organic value. 

This social media metric is your best friend when it comes to proving the power of your social media marketing efforts. It's actually one of my favorite metrics to analyze.

Why? Because it actually shows how impactful organic content can be, highliging that ads are not always the most powerful tactic.

Here's another interesting insight Jameka gave me when I asked her about the importance of paid vs organic social media:

Sometimes, organic content is already strong and just needs a little amplification, while other times, paid ads are carrying most of the weight. Comparing the two helps me figure out where the real opportunities are, whether that’s creating more engaging organic content or adjusting the paid strategy to get a better return.

When you see high organic value, naturally, it means your audience is loving your content naturally. They’re sharing, commenting, and engaging because your content is genuinely connecting with them.

When should Facebook Insights be complemented with external analytics tools?

Facebook Insights is a great start, but it doesn't always give you the full picture. 

To truly elevate your social media strategy, my advice is to go beyond what Facebook itself can offer and optimize data collection.

For in-depth insights

External competitive analytics tools offer detailed, actionable insights that allow you to optimize your content, spot trends, and beat the competition. 

Here’s why I see them essential for social media success:

Discover the best content formats based on engagement

Figuring out what truly drives engagement? It’s an art. 

External tools like Socialinsider provide a deep dive into which content formats (whether videos, photos, status updates, or Reels) deliver the highest engagement.

With this knowledge, I can focus on producing the Facebook post types that resonate most with my audience. 

Imagine discovering that videos consistently outperform images, enabling you to double down on video production for even better results.

Top and bottom posts

With external tools, I can easily identify what type of posts work best on Facebook. The ones that captured my audience’s attention and sparked conversations.

Equally important is recognizing the bottom-performing posts. Those that missed the mark. 

This valuable comparison allows me to understand what resonates with my brand's followers and what doesn’t, helping me fine-tune my content. 

Let's move forward with the Tripadvisor example.

When looking at the top and bottom posts for this brand, I could see that their audience is more responsive to Travel Tips than Promotions, signaling that a shift toward more engaging, value-driven content would make a great idea.

Best time to post by engagement

Timing is everything when it comes to social media. 

While Facebook Insights can tell me how my content is doing, external analytics tools show me the best times to post to maximize engagement. 

These tools analyze historical data and engagement patterns to pinpoint the specific times and days your audience is most active. 

Now that you know that, you can schedule your posts for those peak times and ensure your content grabs people’s attention.

For competitive benchmarking

While Facebook gives you great insights into your own content performance, it’s tough to estimate how you’re doing relative to your competitors. 

External Facebook analytics tools provide competitive benchmarking, tracking your competitors' performance and content strategies side by side with yours.

For instance, you can see exactly how brands like Tripadvisor, Trip, and Kayak compare in terms of social media KPIs such as reach, engagement, and content output. 

The Facebook competitive analysis I ran below is a perfect example of how you can spot strengths and weaknesses in your approach when compared to industry leaders.

By leveraging external analytics, you’ll not only get the big picture but can use competitive insights to refine your approach.

And here's a piece of advice Kassandra Quinn, social media strategist, had for me, and I feel like sharing with you:

Competitive data is helpful but it’s not the whole story. I like to know what others in the space are doing, especially if we’re benchmarking. It can give you insight into trends, tone, and how other brands are positioning themselves.

That said, I treat it as context, not the blueprint. Just because a competitor is posting five times a week or using a certain format doesn’t mean it’s right for your brand.

Final thoughts

Well, we can now surely say that cracking the Facebook code isn’t a game of chance, but smart strategy. 

By understanding what type of content performs best on Facebook—from authentic posts to engaging formats—you can elevate your content from “meh” to unmissable.

With the right tools and insights, you’ll learn how to use Facebook effectively and fine-tune your content for max impact to keep your audience coming back for more.

FAQs on Facebook best practices

What are some examples of brands integrating Facebook best practices in their strategies?

B2B

SurveyMonkey uses Facebook to promote its survey and data collection tools, with a focus on educational content as the main pillar. This strategy targets businesses in need of customer feedback and market research solutions.

eCommerce

ASOS employs Facebook's advertising tools to showcase their products, targeting specific demographics with tailored ads. They use carousel and Reels ads to display multiple products and retarget users who have interacted with their content.

Local businesses

Joe Coffee Company uses Facebook to build community engagement by sharing local events, promotions, and behind-the-scenes content. They encourage user-generated content and respond promptly to customer inquiries.

How to use organic post performance to inform your ad strategy?

Use high-performing organic posts as a benchmark for ads. Analyze engagement to identify what resonates with your audience. Then, target those demographics in your ads. A/B test content and optimize your ad schedule based on peak organic post times to maximize effectiveness.

Feeling overwhelmed every time you need to make an executive Facebook analytics report? Been there. Facebook metrics are many, and it’s quite easy to get lost in all this data, let alone make sense out of it. 

To turn those numbers into insights, you need to understand what each Facebook metric means and why you're tracking it in the first place. 

In this article, I've broken down the Facebook metrics that actually matter — what they mean, when to track them, and how to use them to build smarter strategies. Let’s dig in. 

What types of Facebook metrics should you track?

Facebook metrics can be too much when you're staring at the Meta Business Suite dashboard full of numbers. 

But the good thing is, you don’t need to track all the social media metrics simultaneously. Just the ones that fit your current goals. 

Here's what Nia Patel told me when I asked her about the most important metrics for her when reporting to executives:

It really depends on executives’ goals and what they want to get out of posting. But for the most part, it's either brand awareness (reach/views) or new leads (conversions, link clicks, sign-ups, etc).

And I agree — it totally depends on the goals. When you’re choosing the metrics you want to track, focus on those that follow your specific buyer journey and fit your current objectives. 

For example, if your goal right now is brand awareness, your core metrics would be reach, views, and follower count. But if your focus is on conversions and the bottom of the funnel, you’ll care more about engagement rate, click-through rate, and link clicks.

What are the main Facebook metrics categories that will help you make informed decisions?

You can divide the Facebook metrics into several main categories based on what they're tracking. These categories align with different goals and stages of your customer journey. 

Understanding these categories helps you navigate faster and choose what to track based on what you're trying to achieve. 

Let’s break down the core categories of Facebook metrics:

Facebook reach and visibility metrics

These metrics tell you how visible your content is: who's seeing it and how often. They're your first line of insight into whether your Facebook content is making it in front of people.

Reach

Facebook reach shows how many individual people have seen your content. The difference between reach and impressions on Facebook is that reach counts each person only once, no matter how many times they saw your post. 

Like most metrics, reach doesn't work alone. It pairs with other Facebook metrics to give you a fuller picture. But it's especially useful when you need to calculate the approximate volume of your potential audience.

I pay closer attention to reach when running brand awareness campaigns. If I'm trying to introduce a brand to new people, I need to know how many individuals actually saw it compared to before the campaign started. Did we expand our footprint, or are we just talking to the same crowd?

When you’re after new people, go for reach. 

One thing to keep in mind: many platforms — Facebook included — estimate reach rather than track it exactly. The numbers can shift slightly over time as the platform refines its calculations.

Impressions

Impressions on Facebook measure how many times your content has been seen in total. Unlike reach, impressions include every time someone scrolled past your post, whether it's the same person seeing it twice or ten different people seeing it once.

The difference between reach and impressions on Facebook is that while reach tells you about audience size, impressions tell you about frequency. And sometimes, frequency matters more.

For example, when I'm running a campaign with a specific message I want to stick, like a limited-time offer or an event reminder, I track impressions. Seeing the same post multiple times increases the chance people will remember it or finally take action. 

Mentions

Mentions happen when someone tags your Facebook page in their post, comment, or story. It's a way for customers, partners, or other brands to engage in a dialogue with you.

Tracking mentions gives you insight into how people talk about your brand when you're not the one starting the conversation. I find mentions especially important when managing reputation or community engagement. 

If you're running a campaign encouraging user-generated content, or if you've just launched something new, watching mentions helps you spot opportunities to join conversations or address concerns before they escalate.

Facebook audience metrics

Reach and impressions tell you how many people see your content. Audience insights tell you who those people are and whether your follower base is growing or stagnating.

Audience demographics

Facebook helps you analyze your audience with demographic data, such as age, gender, and location. You can also see insights into when your audience is most active.

This data gives you context about who's on the other side of the screen. Coming up with marketing personas is fun, but real data tells you how to tailor your content to resonate.

I once worked with a client who assumed their audience was primarily women aged 25–34 because that's who bought their product in-store. But Facebook analytics showed their engaged audience is slightly older — women 45–54 were the most active group on the page. Turns out, they were buying for their younger relatives. That insight shifted the entire content strategy.

Follower growth

Follower growth is straightforward: is your Facebook page gaining followers, losing them, or staying flat?

Many social media managers call this a vanity metric alongside likes, but I think that's too dismissive. Follower count often matters to stakeholders, and the platform's algorithm tends to favor accounts with healthy growth.

More importantly, follower growth reflects whether people find your brand worth following, and that's the first step in moving them down the funnel.

I track follower growth for two main reasons. First, to measure organic growth. If followers are steadily increasing, it means content is resonating and people want more. 

Second, to evaluate campaigns. Did that ad spend bring new followers? Did the influencer partnership lead to a spike? Growth tells you whether your efforts are expanding your audience or just spinning wheels.

I always keep follower growth on my radar. It's not a self-sufficient metric, but it's an important signal that sits behind almost everything else you do on the platform.

Facebook core engagement metrics

Engagement metrics are the signals that tell you if your content is resonating. This group of Facebook metrics shows whether people interact with your content or just scroll past.

Likes, comments, shares

The holy trinity of social media engagement metrics, these are your general markers of engagement. 

Likes are likes — they show the simplest appreciation, comments indicate someone took the time to respond, and shares mean your content was valuable enough for someone to pass along to their own audience.

On its own, a like doesn't mean much. But together, these actions add up to something more important: your engagement rate. And that's where the real insight lives. 

Engagement rate

Engagement rate on Facebook is one of the most useful metrics you can track. 

But here's the thing: there are different ways to calculate it, and the version you use depends on what you're trying to measure.

Engagement rate by followers shows how much your current audience interacts with your content. It's calculated by dividing total engagements (likes, comments, shares) by your follower count. 

I use this when I want to understand how well I'm retaining and activating the people who already follow the page. If you're focused on deepening relationships or moving your existing audience down the funnel, this is your metric.

But engagement by followers might not be enough if your goal is growth.

Engagement rate by reach divides engagements by the number of people who saw the post. This one tells you how well your content performs with everyone it reaches, not just your followers.

I track this when evaluating broader campaigns, boosted posts, or content aimed at attracting new audiences. 

In my work, I personally prefer to have engagement by reach as my baseline and calculate other engagement rates if a particular campaign requires it.

Additional engagement metrics for powerful insights

Core metrics are enough to fulfil your KPIs, but sometimes, you need to dig a little deeper to get a better insight. When talking about reading into your metrics, Jazz Starling said:

Have KPI's set, but pay attention to details. Look at what works and what doesn't, and make room to point out some interesting results in other metrics. It can be useful in the strategy. Quantity is good, but quality is key to many questions the clients bring to the table.

Basic engagement metrics give you the headlines for your executive reporting. These additional engagement metrics are not exactly KPI-worthy, but they help you read between the lines and spot patterns to shape a smarter, more efficient content strategy for Facebook. 

Content format performance

Not all content formats perform equally. Text posts, images, videos, and carousels can resonate differently on Facebook. Breaking down performance by type helps you see what works with your particular audience. 

The key here is looking beyond total likes or comments. Check the engagement rate for each format. A video might rack up more likes simply because you post more videos, but images could have a higher engagement rate per post.

Meta's native analytics don't make this easy to track. But Facebook analytics tools like Socialinsider digest it for you so you can spot trends without manually sorting through every post.

Best-performing content pillars

Content pillars are the recurring topics you come back to — the themes that structure your content strategy. Grouping posts by pillar helps you plan better and read your social media analytics more clearly.

Tracking which pillars perform best on Facebook doesn't mean you abandon everything else and double down on one topic. But it does help you allocate effort more strategically and make use of a data-driven marketing approach.

I had a client who was convinced their audience loved behind-the-scenes content. It was a big part of our social media strategy. We spent a lot of time and effort from a small team creating detailed production videos. 

But when we broke down performance by content pillar, behind-the-scenes was middle of the pack. At the same time, user-generated content, which we barely touched, was significantly outperforming everything else. 

That data shifted our entire approach. It also saved us hours of unnecessary production work.

Comment sentiment analysis

No social media content analysis is complete without a sentiment check. A hundred comments sounds great until you realize half of them are complaints, bots, or people arguing in your comment section.

Sentiment analysis helps you understand the actual tone of your engagement. Are people excited, frustrated, confused, or just spamming? This context matters, especially when you're reporting results or deciding whether a post truly succeeded.

Facebook conversion metrics

Conversion metrics are crucial for proving social media ROI and the impact social media has on business. 

When Katie Murphy talks about her clients, she notes:

Some clients care only about brand awareness, while others are only bothered about leads and conversions.

But social media doesn't have to be only one or the other. A balanced strategy ensures both goals are ticked. You're just prioritizing one over the other depending on where you are in your marketing cycle. 

If you're leaning toward the conversion side right now, here are the core metrics to track.

Organic traffic and lead generation metrics

Conversions don't only come from paid ads — they can be organic, too. Facebook allows you to attach links to your posts (even if the algorithm isn't thrilled about it), and you can still measure traffic and leads from organic content with a bit of precision.

Link clicks

Link clicks tell you how many people clicked on the link in your post. You can see this metric directly in Facebook Insights under individual post performance. 

It's a straightforward measure of whether your call-to-action is compelling enough to get people off the platform and onto your website or landing page.

Conversion rate from Facebook traffic

This tells you what percentage of people who clicked through from Facebook completed a desired action — signing up, downloading something, or making a purchase. 

You'll need to track this through your website analytics (Google Analytics, for example) by filtering traffic sources to Facebook. Divide conversions by total Facebook clicks, and you've got your conversion rate. This metric helps you see if Facebook is sending quality traffic or just browsers.

Lead quality from Facebook

Not all leads are equally useful. Lead quality measures how many of your Facebook-sourced leads are moving through your sales funnel. 

You can track this by tagging Facebook leads in your CRM and monitoring how many turn into qualified opportunities or customers. 

If Facebook is driving volume but not quality, I’d say it might be time to rethink your targeting or messaging. Or even change the traffic source completely — one of my clients had to switch from Facebook to Reddit because, despite Facebook having tons of clicks, very few of them actually converted into a prospect. 

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

This one can be a little tricky to calculate, especially if you’re not in retail, SaaS, or another quantifiable field. Customer lifetime value estimates the total revenue a customer will generate over their relationship with your brand. 

To calculate it, multiply the average purchase value by purchase frequency and customer lifespan. Then compare CLV for customers acquired through Facebook versus other channels. 

If Facebook customers have a higher CLV, it justifies more investment in the platform, even if upfront acquisition costs are higher.

Facebook paid advertising metrics

Paid conversions are usually easier to track than organic ones. As long as you're aware of competitive benchmarks, like how much a user is supposed to cost in your industry, you can measure the success of your social media campaign rather quickly.

However, remember that setting KPIs for paid campaigns depends heavily on your budget, creative quality, and most importantly, the competitive landscape. What works in one niche might flop in another.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR measures how many people clicked your ad after seeing it. It's calculated by dividing total clicks by total impressions, then multiplying by 100. You can find this metric in your Facebook Ads Manager. 

A strong CTR means your ad creative and messaging are resonating. If your CTR is low, the problem is usually in the hook or the visual — people aren't compelled to click.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

CPC tells you how much you're paying each time someone clicks your ad. Facebook calculates this automatically in Ads Manager by dividing total ad spend by total clicks. 

Lower CPC means you're getting more traffic for your budget. If CPC is climbing, it could mean your audience is saturated, or your ad relevance score is dropping, so it’s time to refresh your ad creatives.

Cost Per Mille (CPM)

CPM is the cost to show your ad to 1,000 people. It's calculated by dividing total spend by impressions, then multiplying by 1,000. 

I usually use CPM for awareness campaigns where you care more about eyeballs than clicks. High CPM means competition for your audience is fierce, or your targeting is too narrow.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

CPA measures how much you're spending to acquire one customer or lead. Divide total ad spend by the number of conversions. This metric can also be found in the Facebook Ads Manager report. 

This is one of the most important metrics to evaluate how effective your social media marketing is because it directly ties spend to results. If CPA is higher than your profit margin, the campaign isn't working properly. 

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS tells you how much revenue you're generating for every dollar spent on ads. It's calculated by dividing revenue from ads by total ad spend. 

For example, a ROAS of 3:1 means you're making $3 for every $1 spent. This metric is critical for understanding the profitability of your whole endeavor. Even if CPA looks good, if ROAS is weak, your pricing or product margins might need tweaks. 

Advanced Facebook metrics that will help you optimize your strategy

That’s a lot of numbers already, right? 

But as I mentioned before, you don’t have to track all of your Facebook metrics at once. To choose the right metric for each case, it’s important to understand what we’re tracking and why. 

Here are several additional Facebook metrics that are a little more specific. They won't always make it into your executive social media report, but they're incredibly useful if your goal is building a better Facebook strategy overall.

Facebook video metrics

Video is taking over all social media platforms, and Facebook is no exception. 

Understanding video metrics is essential if you want to integrate video into your strategy effectively and know whether it's actually working for you.

Video engagement and average engagement per video

Video engagement measures how people interact with your video content — likes, comments, shares, and reactions. Average engagement per video gives you a baseline for how your video content performs compared to your other posts.

Engagement rate is important here, but I also recommend keeping an eye on shares. Shares mean people thought your video was worthy of putting on their own feed or sending to friends. That's a strong signal if you're looking for organic growth.

Want to dive deeper into video performance? Check out our guide on Facebook Reels Analytics for more detailed tracking.

Video views and average views per video

Video views tell you how many times your video was played. Facebook counts a view after just a few seconds of watch time. Views count will answer the question, “Is your hook good enough to capture attention?”

It's important to distinguish views from impressions. Facebook's "Views" metric counts the number of times a video was played. Impressions, on the other hand, count every time your content enters someone's feed, even if people scrolled past it. Views indicate actual attention, while impressions measure potential exposure.

Average views per video help you understand if the video format is consistently grabbing attention or if only certain videos are doing the job. If your average is low but a few videos spike, you've got some winners to study.

Top videos

Identifying your top-performing videos helps you double down on what works. Look at the hooks that grabbed attention, the formats that held it, and the topics that drove the most engagement or shares.

Not all of your content has to go viral, but if some videos are performing better than others, use them as a playbook for future content. Take into account things like hooks, topics, the length of the video, and captions. Anything can be the decisive factor, but hooks usually hit the hardest. 

My tip — don’t be too worried about being repetitive. Facebook loves original videos, but if you see that a particular hook or topic works every time, lean into it and find new ways to apply it.  

Facebook group metrics

If you manage a Facebook group, these metrics help you understand whether your community is growing and, more importantly, whether it's really active.

Group member growth

This Facebook metric tracks how quickly your group is gaining (or losing) members over time. 

Steady growth means your group is attracting new people, but growth alone doesn't tell the full story. Pair it with activity levels and engagement rate to see if those members are engaging with your social media content. 

Active members vs. Total members

Total members might look impressive, but active members are what actually matter. 

Facebook defines active members as people who've engaged with the group in the past month — posting, commenting, or reacting. You can find this breakdown in your Group Insights. 

If your active member percentage is low, it means people joined but aren't sticking around or participating. That's a signal to rethink your content or engagement tactics.

Competitive Facebook metrics

Competitor analysis is one of the most important ways to give context to your efforts. It helps you set realistic social media KPIs, understand the landscape, and identify gaps in your strategy. 

Bear in mind that competitor analysis on Facebook is not a one-time thing. It has to be held consistently to ensure you’re still in the right context. Doing the research manually is quite a hefty process, but competitive analysis tools like Socialinsider do the heavy lifting for you.

Engagement and growth rate comparison

This metric helps you understand whether your growth and engagement are competitive. Is 100 new followers a month good or bad? You won't know unless you see how actively your competitors are growing.

Industry benchmarks are helpful, but direct competitor research gives you more concrete data. In Socialinsider, you can add competitor profiles to your dashboard and compare engagement rates and follower growth side by side. This shows you where you stand and whether you need to push harder or if you're already ahead of the competitors.

Content gap analysis

Content gap analysis helps you fortify your strategy by showing where you're falling behind or where your competitors are dropping the ball. 

Socialinsider lets you compare the top content pillars, posting frequency, and average engagement rate for each content pillar across competitors. You can quickly spot if they're dominating a specific content pillar while you're barely using it.

When there's a gap, there's opportunity. This analysis becomes a source of inspiration and a strategic advantage. I like to cross-compare this data with the most used formats to see what type of content is most popular among our quite similar audience. 

Competitor campaign analysis

Understanding how competitors handle campaigns gives you a clearer picture of what's working in your space. 

You can analyze their posting cadence, messaging, and the reactions they're getting in the comments. It can either help you draw inspiration or dodge a bullet. 

In Socialinsider, you can use auto-tagging to label competitor posts by campaign or content type. This makes it easy to track their campaign frequency, see which tactics are landing, and spot patterns in timing or creative approach. 

Organic value analysis

Calculating the organic social media value is a pain in the brain. When there’s no UTM and ad budget, it’s quite hard to tie conversions to a particular post or calculate how much it eventually costs you. 

But Socialinsider has a feature that helps you estimate the organic value of your social media profiles, including Facebook. It estimates how much you would have spent on ads to achieve the same reach and engagement you're getting organically.

The default values are estimates based on industry standards, but you can always customize them to fit your particular case better.

This metric is incredibly useful when you need to justify social media investment to stakeholders who think only paid ads drive results. It puts a dollar figure on your organic work and shows the ROI of building an engaged audience over time.

This metric also helps you in your social media optimization efforts. If the organic value seems lower than expected, it might also be a signal to revamp your Facebook content strategy or invest more time into audience building.

How to turn the metrics into business insights?

We don’t track metrics for the sake of metrics — we do that to know what’s next. Here are my top five tips on how to translate your numbers into actions: 

• Start with goals, not dashboards. Establish what your current goals are. Are you building awareness, driving traffic, or converting leads? Your goal determines which metrics matter. 
• Look for patterns, not one-time wins. A single viral post is exciting, but it's not a strategy. Analyze trends over weeks or months to see what consistently works. 
• Compare context, not numbers. A 5% engagement rate means little without context. Compare it to your past performance, your competitors, and industry benchmarks. 
• Tie metrics to money. Executives care about ROI. Connect your metrics to revenue whenever possible. If you can draw a line from a metric to a dollar, you've made your case.
• Act on insights quickly. Data is only useful if you do something with it. If a content format isn't working, stop pushing it. If a competitor is ahead of you in video, test it yourself. The faster you act on what the metrics are telling you, the faster you improve.

Final thoughts

Facebook metrics can feel endless, but you don't need to track everything to build a strong strategy. What you need is clarity — understanding what each metric measures, why it matters, and which ones align with your specific goals.

Choose the right metrics for the moment, track them consistently, and use the insights to make better decisions.

Many business owners and social media analysts avoid conducting a regular Facebook page audit because the sheer volume of data feels overwhelming. 

You know there's valuable information buried in your years of Facebook activity, but making sense of engagement rates, reach statistics, and audience demographics without getting lost seems like a mission impossible.

But it’s not. With a plan and expert tools, like the ones I'm going to guide you through, you can turn that intimidating pile of data into actionable insights that actually improve your Facebook analytics and drive measurable business results.

Why is it essential to create regular Facebook performance audits?

Running a Facebook performance audit isn’t something you should do just once and forget about—it’s a process that needs to be repeated regularly. Facebook’s algorithm, features, and audience behaviors evolve constantly, so the tactics that worked last year may no longer bring results today.

Here’s why consistent audits are essential for your brand’s growth:

• Adapt to algorithm changes – Facebook often updates how content is distributed and prioritized. Regular audits help you see how these updates impact your reach and engagement.
• Spot performance trends early – By comparing quarterly or monthly results, you can identify whether engagement, impressions, or ad ROI is going up or down and adjust before small issues become bigger problems.
• Keep your strategy audience-centered – Your followers’ interests, demographics, and behaviors change over time. Audits ensure your content and messaging stay relevant.
• Stay competitive – Brands that actively monitor performance are quicker to spot opportunities—like testing new formats or capitalizing on trending topics—before competitors do.

A regular Facebook performance audit acts like a feedback loop for your social media strategy. It gives you the data you need to refine your approach, maximize ROI, and stay ahead in a crowded digital space.

How to conduct an effective Facebook audit?

Running a thorough Facebook audit means examining every aspect of your page's performance to understand what's working, what isn't, and where you're missing opportunities.

Every good mission needs a plan, and this six-step approach to social media is your blueprint for infiltrating Facebook's data vault. Moving forward, I'll break down the process into manageable pieces, using real examples to demonstrate each technique.

Check that the basic elements of your Facebook page are up to date

Before examining performance data, I suggest checking that your Facebook page foundation is solid. Start with your contact information: verify your business address, phone number, website URL, and hours of operation are current.

Your call-to-action button placement should align with your primary business goals, whether that's driving website visits, encouraging bookings, or generating leads.

Pay special attention to your visual elements. Your profile photo should be recognizable at small sizes, while your cover photo needs to communicate your brand message clearly. 

These elements create the first impression for new visitors, so they must accurately represent your current brand identity and positioning.

Side note: I had a short chat with Kassandra Quinn, Social Media Strategist at ModSquad and she shared me how her process looks like:

When I run a social media audit, I’m looking for alignment across voice, visuals, content, and strategy. It’s not just about what we’re posting, but whether it supports the brand’s goals and speaks to the right audience.

Here’s how I usually approach it:

The goal is to get a clear, data-informed picture of what’s working, what feels off, and how to refine the strategy moving forward.

Start with a content audit

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify which content formats are secretly sabotaging your engagement rates.

Different post types, like photos, videos, links, and status updates, generate varying levels of engagement depending on your audience preferences and Facebook's algorithm priorities.

For example, I've run a short analysis example of BMW’s Facebook performance below, and I discovered that albums consistently achieved the highest engagement rates, followed by Reels.

This type of data reveals which formats your audience prefers and helps guide your future content strategy decisions.

Next, identify your top and bottom-performing posts to understand what resonates with your audience, as in the example below.

Through this Socialinsider post analysis, I could easily identify BMW's lowest-engagement content. I recommend studying them, as these posts reveal content themes or formats that fail to connect with the audience.

And also, the best-performing content pillars deserve attention, too.

BMW's content pillar analysis demonstrates that "Vehicle Showcases & Reviews" is its strongest performing category, followed by “Customer Testimonials & Sorties” and “Industry News & Trends”. At the other end of the spectrum, “Safety Tips & Innovations” has the lowest engagement.  

This type of insight helps you understand which topics your audience finds most valuable and should inform your editorial calendar planning. Lower-performing pillars aren’t necessarily to be discarded if they’re important to your brand, but you can tweak the format and messaging to make them more appealing. 

Do a Facebook audience analysis

Your content might be high-quality, but if it's not reaching your intended demographic, your social media audit will reveal misalignment between your target audience and actual followers.

Here's a geographical distribution analysis I ran for BMW, to identify where their fans are located, and what type of audiences their current strategy is attracting.

During the audit, I recommend that you review age demographics, gender splits, and location data to ensure your content speaks to the people who actually follow your page. 

For example, if you're targeting young professionals but your actual audience is older, you might want to keep publishing popular content formats, while gradually introducing posts that appeal to younger users through features that younger demographics prefer, such as Stories and Reels.

Go deeper into performance metrics

Understanding your followers and growth trends provides crucial context for your Facebook performance analysis.

For example, the fan count tracking revealed the brand in my example experienced a -0.16% decline, losing 32K followers over the analyzed period. This negative growth signals potential issues with content relevance or posting frequency that require immediate attention.

But the engagement distribution told me a more nuanced story. The Facebook engagement metrics below showed 1.1M total engagements with a healthy growth of +49%, indicating that while follower count declined, existing followers became more active. This suggests content quality improved even as Facebook reach might have decreased.

Reach and impression data reveal how effectively content spreads beyond the immediate follower base. BMW's average reach per post demonstrates strong organic visibility despite follower losses. This indicates their content successfully engages users who then share it with their networks.

As seen in the example I ran you through, a Facebook audit is helpful in identifying strengths, while highlighting areas needing improvement. Using the right marketing data will get you a balanced approach, rather than having to jump to conclusions and change the wrong things.

Here's another insight that Kassandra gave me:

The most important metrics really depend on your goals, but I focus on two. I want to know not just how far the content went, but who it reached and what impact it had. I specifically pay attention to:

Engagement rate: This tells me how relevant the content is to the audience. A high engagement rate means people aren’t just seeing it but they’re responding to it.

Reach and impressions: Are we getting in front of the right people? Is our content being surfaced consistently?

Run an analysis of organic vs paid efforts

Separating your organic versus paid social media performance helps you understand which content succeeds naturally versus what requires advertising. 

Let me show you how the organic value feature within Socialinsider helps you quantify the monetary worth of your unpaid content efforts.

Organic value calculations assign dollar amounts to engagement actions, awareness impact, and audience growth generated without advertising spend. This metric helps justify your social media investment by showing concrete returns on organic content creation efforts.

Below, you can see how you can customize value calculations for different engagement types.

Setting specific values for reactions, comments, and shares creates a framework for measuring organic social media ROI across your campaigns.

Track competitors' data

Your Facebook audit report becomes more actionable when you understand how your performance in social media compares to similar businesses. Think of this as your reconnaissance mission, gathering intelligence on what your competitors are doing without them knowing you're watching.

Moving forward with my BMW example, here's how the brand's data looks like, in comparison with Porsche and Toyota, revealing relative strengths and weaknesses across key social media KPIs. I find Socialinsider's “Key Insights Summary” feature to be very helpful, making it easier for me to analyze and distill important information. 

Other brands’ number of fans and average engagement provide context for evaluating your own social media metrics. If you're in the automotive industry with significantly lower engagement rates, this suggests opportunities to study other successful content approaches.

Content pillar comparisons reveal which topics perform best across competitor pages. BMW, Porsche, and Toyota all succeed with "Vehicle Showcases & Reviews" and "Industry News & Trends", indicating these themes resonate strongly with automotive audiences regardless of brand positioning.

Here's a tip that I have for you. Campaign-specific analysis becomes possible when you tag and categorize content systematically. The content tagging feature in Socialinsider allows you to track specific initiatives, making it easier to measure ROI on particular marketing efforts or seasonal promotions.

Understanding competitive insights through detailed competitive analysis tools helps identify content gaps your competitors haven't addressed, revealing opportunities for differentiation in your Facebook page audit strategy.

Final thoughts

The data you uncover through a Facebook audit only becomes valuable when you use it. Start with your biggest opportunities first, whether that's refining your content strategy to match your audience, or reallocating budget between organic and paid efforts. Then, gradually add in more optimizations. 

And note that a Facebook audit shouldn't be a one-time exercise. Now that you know what to track, schedule regular monthly reviews. Focus on drawing actionable insights and improving things consistently.

Facebook Audience Insights was once the go-to tool for digging into your social media target audience, uncovering demographics, interests, and behaviors that fueled smarter campaigns. 

But as Facebook quietly limited or retired features, many brands found themselves scrambling for better ways to run social media audience analysis.

The truth? You don’t need to rely on outdated Facebook analytics dashboards anymore. 

In here, I've put together a couple of fresh tools, creative workarounds, and proven methods that give you the kind of audience insights Facebook no longer delivers, so you can keep targeting sharp, data-driven, and effective.

General Facebook audience demographics data

With 2.28B global users and over 3B monthly active users worldwide, Facebook remains one of the most important platforms for understanding social media consumer behavior.

In the U.S. alone, usage spans every age group. 

According to Statista, 25–34 year-olds make up the largest segment (24.2%), followed by 35–44 (19%) and 18–24 (18.6%). 

Older audiences are far from absent, with over 12% of users aged 65+.

This breakdown highlights why using audience insights matters: your social media community isn’t unitary. 

Different age groups interact with brands, ads, and content in very different ways. 

Understanding what audience insights are in this context helps marketers tailor strategies that actually resonate.

Why are audience insights more critical than ever?

So why are Facebook Insights and audience research so important, you might ask?

Because guessing doesn’t cut it anymore. 

With endless competition for attention, brands need data-driven marketing to make smart decisions instead of relying on assumptions.

Audience research fuels a stronger social media content strategy, from knowing which formats grab attention to understanding when and where your community engages most. 

By going beyond surface numbers and tapping into deeper insights, businesses can stay relevant, personalize at scale, and make every post work harder.

Where can you see audience data in your native Facebook analytics dashboard?

If you’re doing social media analysis, the first stop is always your native tools. 

Meta offers a few built-in dashboards under Facebook Audience Analytics, but they’re far more limited than the old Facebook Audience Insights tool. 

Still, let me show you where you can find them and what they actually show:

Meta Business Suite

How to access:

• Long into Facebook

Click on Meta Business Suite from the left-sided menu

• Then click on Insights > Audience

• And here’s the type of data you’ll see:

Data display: surface-level demographic data only

Here, you’ll see basic breakdowns like age, gender, top cities, and top countries. It’s helpful for a high-level snapshot, but not much more.

Limitations:

• No psychographic insights (interests, behaviors, motivations)
• No cross-platform correlation (Instagram, TikTok, etc.)
• Primarily descriptive, not actionable

Facebook Page Insights

How to access:

• Log into Facebook
• Go to your Professional Dashboard from the left-sided menu
• Click on Insights > Audience

Data display: restricted to page followers only

You’ll get insights into who already follows your page: demographics, cities, and countries.

Limitations:

• No visibility into broader market or potential audience
• Lacks detailed targeting insights you can apply outside your current followers

Facebook Ads Manager

How to access:

From your main Facebook dashboard, select Ads Manager in the left menu.

Data display: only shows data for your ads (no market insights)

The data here is campaign-specific. 

You’ll see who your ads reached, engagement, and conversion metrics.

Limitations:

• Doesn’t reveal anything about the wider Facebook user base
• Lacks actionable insights for targeting beyond your ad audience

How to correlate your Facebook audience insights with your other metrics?

Your Facebook audience size may show how many people you’ve reached, but numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. 

My take? The real value comes when you connect target audience insights with performance data, blending who they are with what they actually do. That’s how you move from raw Facebook metrics to actionable strategy.

To make this less abstract, I've taken GoPro as an example and moving forward I'll walk you through how different audience insights tie together to shape decisions.

Top-performing content types

Using Socialinsider, I could see that video and Reels dominate engagement while static images underperform. 

For GoPro, that signals an audience hungry for dynamic, immersive storytelling.

My takeaway? The brand should invest more in high-impact formats like Reels and cut back on what doesn’t spark interaction.

Most engaging content pillars

The next breakdown shows which themes sustain attention. 

As I discovered, for GoPro, artistic and lifestyle-driven posts consistently outperform utility-heavy ones. 

This analysis revealed not just a content preference but the narrative backbone of the brand, the themes that create long-term resonance and recognition.

Engagement patterns

My findings? That GoPro’s engagement evolution highlights spikes around launches and dips in off-campaign weeks.

Tracking these patterns is critical because they reveal causal levers: what actually sparks momentum. 

Is it a new product drop, UGC reposts, or behind-the-scenes teasers? 

Once you identify triggers, you can engineer repeatable waves instead of relying on lucky virality.

Optimal posting times

Timing shapes reach. 

Facebook rewards posts that gain traction fast, and GoPro’s heatmap highlights Sunday evenings as a sweet spot. 

Posting then means engagement accelerates early, pushing content further organically, essentially free amplification hidden in your own data.

Content consumption needs

Finally, I strongly advise you to not measure against only yourself, but against the market as well. 

If you ask me, audience insights become even more meaningful when you compare them against industry-wide content consumption benchmarks. 

The chart here shows how frequently brands post across platforms, with Instagram averaging around five posts per week. 

This context matters: if your posting volume is far below or above these norms, your engagement results may reflect effort imbalance rather than true content performance.

I'll leave you with our global benchmarks study below, to help you easily evaluate whether your strategy is competitive or falling behind.

How does Socialinsider help with audience insights and intelligence gathering?

To truly understand your audience, you need clarity on where growth happens, why it slows down, and how each platform contributes to the bigger picture. 

That’s where social media data collection and smart reporting come in.

And, I may be subjective, but I think Socialinsider might just be the best Facebook analytics tool for you, thanks to its comprehensive metrics and cross-platform solutions for turning scattered data into actionable insights. 

Whether you’re doing a social media audit or preparing executive reporting for stakeholders, the platform helps you see both the fine details and the broader trends that matter.

Let me show you how:

Audience increase or decrease trends identification

Growth doesn’t always mean a straight upward line. 

Audiences shift. They grow when content resonates and shrink when messages miss the mark. With Socialinsider, you can track both increases and decreases in fan count over time.

The fan growth dashboard makes it simple to:

• Spot sudden spikes that might be tied to a campaign, a viral post, or an influencer collaboration;
• Identify drops that may require a change in content or posting strategy;
• Understand long-term patterns and seasonal fluctuations in audience engagement;

Nonetheless, the fan growth metric is particularly powerful when benchmarking against competitors, helping a social media analyst instantly see if performance trends are unique to their brand or if they mirror wider industry shifts.

 Cross-platform audience intelligence

Your audience isn’t confined to a single platform. And trust me, neither should your insights be. 

Socialinsider’s cross-platform audience intelligence gives you a complete picture of where your community lives and how big it can become.

Here’s what you can use the app for:

Audience platform segmentation

See the distribution of your followers across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more. 

This breakdown helps you identify which platforms deserve more attention, where growth is accelerating, and where your efforts may be underperforming.

Market size prediction for social media

By combining impressions, engagement, and video views with growth trends, Socialinsider helps you estimate your true potential audience size. 

This makes it easier to forecast ROI, set realistic targets, and allocate resources where they’ll have the most impact.

How to use your Facebook audience data to generate higher social media marketing results?

Your Facebook audience isn’t just sitting there passively scrolling. 

Eevery like, comment, and click tells you something about who they are and what they want. 

So instead of treating that data as noise, use Facebook audience insights to uncover patterns, shape smarter content, and ultimately push your social media KPIs in the right direction. 

Here are some of the social media best practices to consider:

Turn audience data into personas

Numbers alone don’t inspire action, but people do. 

That’s why the first step is turning raw data into relatable personas. 

Demographics, interests, and browsing habits suddenly become “The Trendsetter,” who never misses a launch, or “The Researcher,” who reads reviews before buying. 

When you map out these personas, you’re not just segmenting your audience on Facebook. You’re making it easier to step into their shoes. 

And when you do that, everything changes: you know which pain points to address, which formats grab attention, and what tone of voice feels natural.

Spot platform-specific behavior patterns

This is where I've seen many brands slip: assuming what works on TikTok will work on Facebook. It won’t. 

Facebook has its own rhythm. And your audience behaves differently here than anywhere else. 

Some communities engage heavily with polls, others with video tutorials or shareable graphics.

By studying engagement patterns, you’ll know not just what your audience interacts with, but when they’re most likely to act. 

Thus, digging into Facebook audience insights can help you identify:

• Peak times when your community is most active;
• Which post types spark the strongest reactions;
• Actions that often follow engagement, such as link clicks, shares, or sign-ups.

Aligning your social media content with these rhythms means you’re meeting them exactly where they’re already paying attention.

Connect insights to your KPIs

As I mentioned before, data only matters if it moves the needle. 

That’s why the last step is connecting your insights to the social media KPIs that define success for your brand. 

If you know your “Trendsetters” react fastest to product drops, build campaigns around urgency to lift click-through rates. If your “Researchers” need reassurance, invest in content that highlights reviews and quality to lower cost per conversion. 

The beauty of personas and behavior analysis is that they give you a roadmap—not just for better engagement, but for retention, loyalty, and measurable ROI.

Final thoughts

To wrap it up, mastering how to use audience insights is your secret weapon for transforming data into dynamic social media success. 

By turning cold numbers into relatable personas, uncovering those platform-specific behaviors, and tying everything back to your KPIs, you unlock the power to create campaigns that hit the mark every time. 

How do you squeeze real value out of a Facebook competitor analysis? Do you scroll through a few viral posts and call it a day? Or do you also dig into the messy details, the qualitative metrics, and the lesser-known content pillars?

Worry not. To help you get it right, I called up someone who’s been living and breathing social media for 15 years. Meet Adina Jipa, CMO and co-founder of Socialinsider.

Adina has worked with thousands of clients, picked the brain of top social media experts, and seen what actually clicks on Facebook. 

This guide pulls her playbook apart piece by piece so you can run a Facebook competitive analysis that truly matters.

What is a Facebook competitive analysis?

A Facebook competitive analysis is the process of digging into your competitors’ presence on the platform to uncover their strategies, measure their performance benchmarks, and spot their strengths and blind spots.

Why is a competitor analysis on Facebook important?

Focusing only on your metrics can be a trap. You risk missing the bigger picture of what competitors are already doing well. 

Here are my three key reasons for conducting a competitive analysis.

• Helps refine your content strategy: Are educational Reels working great for you? That’s awesome. But what if some other content theme might get you more engagement? This discovery and much more can be possible, thanks to competitor analysis.

Adina mentioned the same. 

I have seen that numbers like engagement or follower growth tell only part of the story. The real value comes from understanding why those numbers look the way they do — what formats competitors use, how often they post, and which content pillars they lean on, whether it’s funny, educational, or thought leadership.

Once you dive deeper, you get the insights you need to refine your own strategy and decide what to publish next.

• Aids setting performance benchmarks: Your engagement rate may be slowly increasing. But how does it compare to your competitors? Do they get a massively high engagement rate on the same content pillars as you work on?

By running an analysis, you can determine the ‘why’ behind such answers and set realistic but high goals for your content team.

• Helps gain credibility as a social media manager: Telling your boss or client “We’re crushing it” hardly ever works, right? 

That’s why Adina sees credibility as one of the biggest wins of a Facebook competitive analysis.

She explains:

As a social media manager, it’s important to prove to your manager, or to your clients if you’re on the agency side, that you’re doing a great job and outperforming competitors. 

Having competitor data in your reports or when you walk into meetings gives you credibility. You build confidence, not just in yourself, but in your strategy. And you prove that Facebook still matters for the industry you’re in.

How to run a comprehensive Facebook competitor analysis

Here’s  the step-by-step process Adina and her team follows while conducting a competitor analysis on Facebook.

Step 1: Find and vet the competitors you will analyze

Instead of picking competitors at random, we divide them into three categories to compare Facebook pages.

• Direct competitors: These are competitors that offer similar products or services as your brand.

Adina mentioned discovering these competitors in two simple ways: (i) by running surveys and interviews where customers mention competitor names and (ii) by checking out review sites and third-party platforms like Reddit where people discuss and compare similar products.

For example, upon searching Asana alternatives, I could find three forum links where I can find direct competitors. I just need to then go to Facebook and find their accounts.

• Indirect competitors: These competitors do not have similar offerings but cater to the same target market. 

Adina talked about its importance while saying:

You need to look beyond direct competitors and include the wider industry landscape. In our case, that meant tracking not just other tools and software companies, but also the top voices and publishers in social media, because that’s where our ideal customers were active.

To run through the same example as Asana, I would look for productivity influencers, coaches, or even different tools that cater to the same purpose, say Notion.

• Aspirational competitors: These are brands that may be outside your exact niche, but whose presence, strategy, or positioning you aim to emulate.

To find who this competitor could be for your brand, Adina suggests performing social listening.

We are a part of a lot of communities and we read through comments actively. We pay special attention to comments that mention brands our ideal customers look up to, the brands they believe are life-changing for them.

Step 2: Choose relevant metrics for your Facebook competitive analysis

There will always be a lot of metrics to track. But is tracking each one really necessary? Or how should you prioritize the different metrics? 

Here’s how Adina categorizes and tracks them for Socialinsider.

Audience metrics analysis

These metrics give you insights into your competitor’s audience and how they are growing.

• Follower count and growth rate: What is their follower count? How many new followers have they added in a particular period? Sudden spikes can be especially telling. 

For instance, when I spot a sharp uptick in Socialinsider, I always check the posts published around that time to see what might have triggered the growth. Was it a campaign, a viral post, or a new content format?

• Reach and impressions: Check how many people are seeing your competitors’ content and how often it’s being shown. Consistently high reach or impressions can signal strong distribution strategies or boosted campaigns worth noting.

Content metrics analysis

Content metrics will give you a sneak peek into the strategies that work well for your competitors. Here are the ones we measure for Facebook page comparison.

• Posting frequency and timing: How often do they post content on Facebook? Are there any particular days when they tend to post more? You can also check for the reason behind it — do they get a lot of engagement during those days?

Post this analysis, see the timing when they get the highest engagement. If you have been struggling with engagement, you can experiment with these timings.

• Content format distribution: Look at the mix of posts competitors publish: images, videos, Reels, carousels, or links. Spotting which formats they use most (and which drive the most engagement) reveals where they’re focusing their efforts.

• Tone of voice and copy length: Spy on competitors posts to see if their style is casual or formal, playful or authoritative. I recommend focusing on whether they use short, punchy captions or longer storytelling formats to engage their audience.

For example, one of the brands we aspire to be like is Canva.

We analyze their posts and we love how they mix educational content with playful and humorous content.

We follow the same approach with our posts sometimes.

Engagement metrics analysis

This is one of the key metrics brands monitor, and for good reason. It shows how much your shared target audience actually enjoys engaging with your competitors’ content. It will also help you benchmark competitor’s KPIs.

• Engagement rate: In addition to comparing the overall engagement rate for a particular period, I also compare engagement rate by followers to get a better understanding of how my brand stacks up against competitors.

Adina also mentions looking for patterns instead of studying standalone Facebook metrics.

She mentioned:

It’s important to track metrics like follower growth, engagement rate, and total engagement, but the real insights come when you correlate them. Don’t just look at numbers in isolation. Look for patterns. For example, if there’s a spike in engagement, does it also show up as a spike in followers?

The same applies to reach and views, especially with Reels becoming more important on Facebook. If a post drives higher reach, did it also attract new followers? By connecting these dots, you uncover the bigger story behind the metrics rather than just staring at standalone numbers.

Comments and shares analysis: Many times, we forget to measure engagement metrics that really matter. And that is if the competitor’s audience actually wants to join the conversation or spread the content. Comments reveal the depth of interaction, while shares show whether the message is strong enough for people to endorse it publicly.

• Community management strategies: How long do your competitors take to reply to comments or ongoing discussions? What tone and approach do they follow when tackling discussions like complaints or feedback?

For example, here’s the approach Asana follows.

Step 3: Run an analysis on your Facebook competitor’s content

Content is the foundation of any social platform. This is why it will be our most important step of the Facebook page analysis, giving you enough insights to refine your content strategy. 

Run a content pillar analysis

Start by doing an industry-level analysis on Socialinsider that shows the top content pillars for each competitor.

Then, Adina mentions running a competitor-level analysis for each brand —“This helps us understand which content pillar/s generated higher engagement rates. Just as important, we note which pillars don’t perform well, so we don’t replicate what isn’t working in our industry.”

That’s not it. At Socialinsider we use the content pillars feature for a general view, but in-house we also create more specific sub-pillars by manually tagging posts. That gives us a deeper layer of insights.

For example, you can mark ‘vacation place feature’ content for your brand and each competitor and see if your engagement rate matches theirs. 

Next, look at pillar-specific strategies. 

Then we break it down further, looking at what content formats work best within those pillars, how often competitors post them, and even the timing of when they’re shared. The goal is to get as much context as possible, so we understand not only what works for competitors, but also why their audience responds to it.

Check their best-performing content formats

Facebook is fueled by multiple content formats: status, photo, Reel, and album.

Look at the ones working the best for each competitor. Are there common patterns you observe? For example, status posts being one of the top-performing format for each competitor.

This gives you insights into what is working at the industry level and if you need to optimize your social media strategy.

Get insights from their top and bottom posts

Instead of manually finding these posts, I go to the Content section in Socialinsider and find the top and bottom posts for each competitor.

How do I analyze them further? I ask these three questions:

• Is there a common pattern in the top-performing posts, such as the tone or the kind of captions used? Can we replicate it for our brand?
• Which format did they use — image, Reel, or album post? Are they following a particular format for specific content pillars?
• How did the audience respond in comments, reactions, and shares? What triggered engagement (or lack of it)?

These insights will help optimize your content strategy.

Steal a peek at their organic value

Ever wondered what your competitors’ Facebook page performance would be worth if they had paid for it?

That’s what Socialinsider’s organic value feature shows. Instead of only seeing likes, comments, or shares, you can measure what those interactions would be worth if they had been driven by paid ads.

You can even assign customized values to these metrics to get a more realistic, niche-specific figure.

Why does this matter? Because it helps brands:

• Quantify competitor success: You can finally compare Facebook page performance in dollars, not just percentages.
• Spot efficiency gaps: A competitor might be generating $10K in organic value from a single campaign. If you’re spending the same amount in ads to reach similar results, that’s a red flag.
• Prove ROI internally: Showing the 'ad spend equivalent’ of your own organic performance makes it easier to secure budget and justify strategy.

Look at their advertising performance

The most straightforward and cost-free way to spy on your competitors ads is Facebook Ad Library. It shows you all the active campaigns your competitors are running.

For example, I can see all the present ad campaigns by Trip.com.

Adina suggests running these checks regularly.

If you do this every month or quarterly, you begin to see patterns from your competitors. For example, when summer is coming, you might notice a competitor starting to run sales promotions. Or let’s say Black Friday is coming in the autumn: if you’ve searched their ads in the past, you already know when they usually start pushing Black Friday campaigns.

This way, you can build a calendar and map that information against your own campaigns to see whether you should replicate, adapt, or anticipate your competitors’ moves.

Other than that, we usually check for three main things: 

(1) Ad visual elements

• Image/video style and quality: Notice whether competitors invest in high-production visuals or rely on simple, quick-turnaround creatives. 
• Product presentation methods: Pay attention to how products are showcased. Do they use demo videos, unboxings, flat lays, or in-use scenarios?
• Lifestyle vs. product-focused imagery: See if the ads highlight the product in isolation or place it within a lifestyle context (people using it, aspirational settings). This tells you how they position their brand.
• Use of text overlays and graphics: Check if ads use bold text, captions, or design elements to reinforce messaging and make the creative stand out.
• Video length and pacing: If they use videos for ads, analyze how long they run and how quickly they deliver key messages. 

(2) Ad copy analysis

• Headlines and primary text patterns: Look at how competitors structure their main message. Do they keep it short and bold, or go for detailed explanations? Headlines often reveal the hook they rely on most.
• Emotional triggers and pain points addressed: Notice if the copy leans on humor, fear of missing out, inspiration, or problem-solving. This shows what emotional levers they use to connect with their audience.
• Call-to-action language: Track whether CTAs are direct (‘Buy now’) or softer (‘Learn more’). 
• Value propositions emphasized: Pay attention to the benefits they highlight: price, quality, convenience, exclusivity, and how consistently those appear across campaigns.
• Urgency and scarcity tactics: Watch for phrases like “limited time,” “only today,” or countdowns that push immediate action. These can reveal how often competitors lean on short-term tactics.
• Brand voice and tone: Evaluate whether the copy feels formal, conversational, playful, or authoritative. Tone shows how competitors want to be perceived and what resonates with their audience.

(3) Technical elements

• Aspect ratios used: Check whether ads follow platform best practices – square (1:1), vertical (4:5 or 9:16), or horizontal (16:9). The ratio competitors choose shows how mobile-first or cross-platform their ad strategy is.

Formats used: Look at whether they run static images, carousels, stories, or reels. Tracking formats reveals how diverse their creative strategy is and which ad placements they prioritize.

Step 4: Create a SWOT analysis based on your findings

Once I’ve gathered all the competitor data, I put it into a SWOT framework : strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This step forces me to go beyond numbers and actually translate insights into strategy.

Here’s how I do it:

• Strengths: I note where competitors consistently outperform. Maybe they have higher engagement on video content or faster response times in comments. 

For example, Tripadvisor is great at community engagement. Their audience not only leaves reviews but actively answers each other’s questions, which strengthens their brand credibility. That’s a clear strength.

• Weaknesses: Then I highlight the gaps. If a competitor has high reach but weak engagement, that’s a weakness. 

With Trip.com, for instance, I noticed they often post promotional deals that get plenty of impressions but limited interaction. That shows an opportunity for more engaging storytelling.

• Opportunities: This is where I connect competitor gaps to my own brand. If I see a brand getting strong traction from user-generated content, but my competitors haven’t tapped into it, I add ‘UGC campaigns’ as an opportunity for us.
• Threats: Finally, I look at what competitors do that could limit our growth. If a brand dominates paid campaigns during seasonal spikes, say, Black Friday travel deals, that’s a threat I need to plan around.

Step 5: Make a final optimization plan 

You now have all the insights you need.

You just need to put them in a way your team can quickly understand and implement.

Adina recommends backing your strategy with data to help everyone trust the strategies you’re proposing. 

One way to show this data is by generating a benchmarking report through Socialinsider.

The best part about these benchmarking reports is that you can add them to your presentations or even send them directly to managers or clients. The key is to do this consistently (every few months) so you can compare your progress against competitors

This way, you can say: here’s where our strategy outperformed, here’s where we’re falling behind, and here are the insights I’ll apply next month or next quarter.”

You can also segment your optimization plan in three ways: identify quick wins (things you can achieve in 1 month), establish medium-term improvements (can take up to 3 months) and think of long-term strategic shifts (can take till 6 months)

Top Facebook competitive analysis tools

Let’s be honest: keeping an eye on competitors can be time-consuming. And doing it manually often means missing the bigger picture.

To make this process quicker and data-backed, it’s smarter to lean on Facebook competitive analysis tools. Here are three worth checking out.

Socialinsider takes the guesswork out of Facebook competitors analysis. Just add your competitor profiles and instantly see how they stack up against you.

This means seeing:

• Their content performance compared to yours
• Content distribution by format and content pillars
• Their engagement rate and other key social media metrics like follower growth, impressions, reach, and post-level metrics
• Their posting frequency and cadence by engagement

The best part: it shows you patterns, content gaps, and organic value so you can prove ROI with confidence.

Keyhole

Keyhole tracks competitor performance in real time and shows you what drives their engagement. You can monitor hashtags, keywords, and campaigns alongside follower growth and content performance. 

It’s predominantly a social listening tool that can help you spot trends, measure sentiment, and see how your brand stacks up.

Quintly 

smallest detail. You can compare performance, spot trends, and build reports tailored to your team or clients. 

It may take a bit of setup, but once running, it gives a structured view of how you and your competitors perform over time.

Mistakes to avoid while conducting your Facebook competitive analysis

With so much data to sift through, it’s easy to slip up without even realizing it. Here are four common mistakes to watch out for.

Blindly following competitors

While talking to Adina about the mistakes brands often make, one clearly stood out: never take any competitor strategy at face value.

She says:

It should never be a copy-paste. We never recommend taking what competitors are doing and applying it one-on-one to your own page. The key is to use insights from your own audience. For example, ask them how they want to receive information: animated videos, Reels, or face-to-camera posts. Combine that with industry-level insights, and then adapt it to your strategy.

Let’s understand it with an example. Imagine your competitor starts posting memes, and their engagement shoots up. It’s tempting to copy that and flood your page with memes. 

But here’s the catch. Your audience might not come to you for jokes. They may value practical tips or behind-the-scenes content instead. 

A smarter move is to test the idea in your own style. Maybe turn complex insights into light, shareable visuals. That way, you ride the trend but still stay true to what your audience wants.

Ignoring comment threads and conversations

Looking at comments and discussions on your competitor’s Facebook can give additional insights that raw metrics won’t be able to.

You might discover which product features customers actually like, what pain points they want solved, or what makes them tag friends.

For example, I know for a fact that so many people love Starbucks for their different range of drinks. But while going through the comments on this post, one thing popped up — people went crazy over baristas writing little notes on their cups. It’s a small gesture, but the comments showed just how much those personal touches matter to the audience.

Don’t overlook the context behind numbers

Metrics are the backbone of a competitive analysis. We all know that. But too often, we take those numbers and not the story behind them.

As Adina explained, numbers are only the starting point:

You need to add context. What generated that spike in followers? What post triggered the jump in engagement? In Socialinsider, for example, you can click on a spike and instantly see which posts drove it. That context turns raw numbers into real insights.

I also recommend looking for patterns by combining different metrics. It takes more time, but the clarity you gain is worth every second.

Final thoughts

We get it. Everybody wants to outperform their competitors on social media. Instead of going all guns blazing, start small. Pick your competitors, track the right metrics, and look for patterns instead of isolated spikes.

Keep checking in monthly so your insights don’t go stale. And remember, the goal shouldn’t be to copy competitors. Rather, outsmart them by knowing your audience better. 

To make Facebook competitive analysis work for you, try out the different features of Socialinsider for free. Activate your trial period here.

Picture this: you’ve just launched what you believe is your brand’s most creative social media campaign to date. The posts look stunning, the copy is compelling, and you’re excited to see the results. A week later, you’re staring at your analytics dashboard, trying to make sense of the numbers. Your reach seems decent, but impressions are through the roof. Is this good or bad? How do these numbers align with your marketing strategy goals?

If this scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Six out of ten marketing leaders struggle to demonstrate the impact of their marketing investments because they are measuring the wrong metrics.

This confusion isn’t just academic—it has real consequences for your marketing effectiveness. When you misinterpret these fundamental metrics, you risk optimizing for the wrong outcomes, misallocating your budget, and ultimately diminishing your ROI. A campaign with impressive “reach” numbers might actually be underperforming if viewed through the proper analytical lens.

In this article, we’ll demystify the reach vs. impressions conundrum. Let’s dive in.

Reach vs. impressions: core definitions and fundamental differences

At their most basic level, reach and impressions represent two distinct ways of measuring your content’s visibility. But the devil—and the marketing value—is in the details.

What is reach?

Reach measures the total number of unique users who have seen your content. This includes posts, stories, check-ins, ads, social information from people who interact with your brand account, and more. Think of reach as counting heads—each person who encounters your content counts exactly once, regardless of how many times they see it.

What are impressions?

Impressions, on the other hand, count the total number of times your content was displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or even seen by the same person multiple times. This includes posts, stories, ads, and other content or information on your business page. If someone scrolls past your post three times in their feed, that counts as three impressions.

The crucial relationship between these metrics

This relationship can be expressed in a simple formula:

Impressions ÷ Reach = Frequency

Frequency tells you how many times, on average, each person saw your content. A high frequency (3+) might indicate your content is being shown repeatedly to the same audience, which could be either strategic (for reinforcement) or problematic (suggesting limited audience reach).

Visual comparison: reach vs. impressions

Historical context: the evolution of these metrics

These metrics weren’t born in the digital era. Traditional media has long distinguished between reach and frequency:

• In television, “reach” referred to the percentage of households tuned to a program, while “gross impressions” counted total viewings
• In print, “circulation” (analogous to reach) measured unique subscribers, while “readership” (similar to impressions) estimated total readers, including pass-alongs

The digital revolution brought unprecedented precision to these measurements. Early web analytics focused primarily on “hits” and “page views” (impressions), but as digital marketing matured, the importance of tracking unique visitors (reach) became apparent.

Social media platforms further refined these metrics, initially focusing on followers and likes before developing the sophisticated reach and impression metrics we use today.

The practical difference for marketers

Understanding the distinction has real implications for how you evaluate performance:

• Reach-focused analysis helps you understand campaign penetration and audience expansion (for a correct analysis, reach should be correlated with the total addressable market)
• Impression-focused analysis helps you understand overall visibility and message reinforcement

For example, a campaign with 10,000 reach and 10,000 impressions (frequency = 1) reached many people, but each person saw it only once, potentially insufficient for complex messaging. Conversely, a campaign with 1,000 reach and 10,000 impressions (frequency = 10) had high repetition but limited audience penetration.

Common misconceptions

The most prevalent misconception is treating these metrics as interchangeable. They’re not. They tell different parts of the same story. Another common error is assuming higher numbers always signal success. In reality, the “better” metric depends entirely on your campaign objectives, which we’ll explore in detail later.

Platform-specific reach and impressions

While some platforms let you track both reach and impressions, others offer limited access to them. Let’s break down how each major social media platform defines and tracks these metrics.

Facebook reach vs. impressions

On Facebook, reach is an estimated metric that measures the number of people who see any content from your page or about your page.

Impressions measure the number of times your content is shown on a person’s screen.

• Facebook lets you track both reach and impressions in its native analytics dashboard. Both metrics are broken down into paid and organic categories.
• But Facebook doesn’t provide reach data through its API. That means third-party tools can show accurate impression counts, but only estimate reach based on the available data.

To check reach for your or a competitor’s Facebook page, add the page to your Socialinsider dashboard, open it, and click on Reach. You’ll instantly see key metrics like total reach (for paid and organic campaigns), average reach per post, organic reach rate by followers, and post types sorted by reach (just keep in mind that data for accounts you don’t own is limited due to Facebook’s API).

To check impressions for your Facebook page or a competitor’s, check the Impressions tab. You’ll see key metrics like page impressions (both paid and organic) and total post impressions.

Instagram reach vs. impressions

Instagram defines reach as the total number of unique accounts that have seen your content.

• Previously, you could track both reach and impressions. Still, in May 2025, Instagram officially discontinued the impressions metric and replaced it with views, which measures the number of times content is displayed on a user’s screen.
• Instagram shares both metrics through its API, and they can be tracked through third-party analytics tools.

With Socialinsider, you can track Instagram reach over time, segmented by paid and organic sources.

You can also track the number of views generated by your Instagram posts over time.

X (Twitter) reach vs. impressions

On X, an impression is counted every time a user sees a tweet, whether it’s on their home feed, search results, conversation threads, or a user’s profile. You can get the impressions data for both organic tweets and quoted retweets.

Socialinsider lets you track impressions over time so that you can analyze historical data and identify the best time to post your content.

LinkedIn reach vs. impressions

On LinkedIn, impressions refer to the number of times users view a post within a specified time period. The posts can include link shares, images, videos, polls, native documents, text, multi-image posts, and carousels.

To check your LinkedIn performance using Socialinsider, open the Reach tab to see estimated reach, average reach per post, and reach rate by followers, both for your own and competitor pages.

Go to the Impressions tab to view metrics, such as total impressions and the best times to post based on impressions.

Native apps vs. third-party tools: Reach vs. impressions

Let’s break down the differences between native and third-party tools and, more importantly, when to rely on each.

Key differences

Methodology

Native platforms have direct access to their own data. They can typically provide more accurate and comprehensive metrics.

In contrast, third-party analytics tools rely on platform APIs to gather information, and usually, this information is limited.

Discrepancies

When comparing numbers between a native platform and a third-party tool, you’ll almost always find some differences. This doesn’t mean one is wrong and the other is right. It just reflects how each system collects social media data and processes it.

Native platforms typically show higher social media reach and impression figures than third-party tools. These differences, combined with varying data refresh rates, can result in slight discrepancies across reporting periods.

Metrics

Native platforms often offer more detailed breakdowns of these metrics and differentiate between organic and paid social media campaigns more clearly.

Depending on API access, third-party tools may display a clear breakdown of organic and paid data, combine them into one, or exclude them entirely.

When to use native apps or a third-party tool to get reach and impressions

Here’s when you should use native platform analytics:

• You need granular performance data for a particular platform. For example, if you’re optimizing Instagram ads and need to see exact reach vs. impressions breakdowns for each ad set.
• You’re working inside platform-specific ad managers like Meta Ads Manager, YouTube Studio, or LinkedIn Campaign Manager, where you can access post-level and audience segmentation data not available elsewhere.

Here’s when you should use third-party analytics tools:

• You want a unified view of performance across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, and TikTok in one dashboard.
• You need a comparative analysis between different channels, such as comparing engagement rates across Instagram and LinkedIn for a product launch.
• You need more advanced analytics features like competitor benchmarking, automated reporting, and historical performance analysis beyond the typical 30/60-day native limit.

Related metrics and relationships

Take a look at how reach and impressions relate to other metrics so that you can better analyze performance across the marketing funnel.

• Reach vs. views: Reach counts unique users who saw your content, while views track how many times the content was actively watched.
• Reach vs. engagement: Social media engagement metrics (likes, shares, comments) reflect how users interact with your content. High reach with low engagement could signal that your content isn’t resonating with the audience.
• Impressions vs. clicks: This measures how often people saw your post and took action. It helps calculate CTR (click-through rate).

Reach introduces your content to new users (top of the funnel), impressions reinforce your message through repeated exposure (mid-funnel), and engagement or clicks show audience interest and intent (bottom of the funnel). Tracking all three helps identify where users drop off and what makes them take action.

CPM (Cost Per Mille), which measures the cost to deliver 1,000 impressions through paid ads, is also a key metric for evaluating the efficiency of your brand visibility efforts.

When to prioritize reach vs. impressions

Whether you should be prioritizing reach or impressions (or both) will depend on your campaign goals and current social media marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look at when to prioritize each:

Campaign objectives that favor reach: If your campaign goal involves improving brand awareness or reaching new people, prioritize reach to measure how many unique users saw your content. For instance, if you’re launching a new product or entering a new market, focus on reach to ensure you’re connecting with as many new people as possible.

Campaign objectives that favor impressions: If you are pushing out campaigns where repetition is important (such as retargeting), prioritizing impressions is the best way to go. For instance, if you are promoting a seasonal sale, building a high-impression campaign can repeatedly remind users of when the sale is and encourage them to make a purchase.

Is reach better than impressions?

Both serve different purposes and have distinct roles. The right metric will depend on your content goals. Use reach to expand your audience and impressions for repeated exposure as well as brand recall.

Measuring and analyzing reach and impressions

You can monitor reach and impressions using native platform analytics (such as Meta Business Suite, LinkedIn Analytics, or TikTok Creator Tools) or third-party tools like Socialinsider, which provide a unified dashboard for cross-platform comparisons.

Native tools offer more granular, real-time data, while third-party tools simplify reporting, especially when managing multiple brands or platforms.

Set benchmarks by industry and platform

Your raw, isolated numbers will never tell the full story. Even if the reach increased, is it really good or just barely good enough as compared to your competitors?

To truly assess your brand’s performance, you’ll have to benchmark your reach and impressions against your industry or competitors. Socialinsider’s Social Media Industry Benchmark Reports provide up-to-date, channel-specific data to help you analyze your brand’s performance.

Red flags in the data that can indicate problems

Here are the main red flags that you should watch out for when analyzing reach and impressions:

• High impressions, low reach: It means the same users are seeing your content repeatedly, and you’re not able to reach new users. To fix it, experiment with new creatives and audience targeting.
• High reach, low engagement: It means a lot of new users see your content, but they are just not interacting with it. To fix it, consider changing your content mix and messaging.
• Sudden drops in reach and/or impressions: A decline in visibility can be due to a number of factors, including algorithm changes, reduced posting, or audience disengagement. Check for platform updates, review your posting frequency, and analyze past top-performing content to identify optimum timings or best-performing formats.

How to visualize and report on these metrics effectively

Visualizing reach and impressions over time helps identify patterns and seasonal spikes. When you include these metrics in your social media reports alongside engagement, clicks, and conversions, you get a fuller picture of how your content supports broader business goals.

Socialinsider simplifies the way you analyze and visualize reach and impressions with built-in historical tracking.

Its automated visual reporting feature allows you to generate ready-to-share reports with custom charts, date ranges, and performance breakdowns.

Compare your performance against competitors or industry standards using the competitive benchmarking feature. Many of our clients have found that what looks like ‘good reach’ in isolation might actually be underperformance when viewed against industry benchmarks.

If you want to go more granular, you can group specific campaigns into content pillars and analyze reach vs. impressions for each individual campaign to determine which topics (as well as platforms and post formats) generate the best results for your brand.

You can also conduct this analysis for competitors to see what works at an industry level and identify topics to approach.

Future of reach and impressions

For years, impressions have been considered the main metric as they track how many times your content appears on a screen. But impressions don’t account for how much of the content is actually consumed. As users scroll faster and attention spans shrink, the big question is: is anyone even watching your content, or are they just scrolling through it?

This shift in user behavior is reshaping what success looks like on social media. One of the clearest signs of this shift is Instagram officially phasing out the impressions metric and replacing it with views. While on the surface, this may seem like a minor change, it’s actually a significant and possibly long-term shift in how platforms measure performance and define content value.

Passive viewing is now a legitimate and meaningful form of engagement, particularly on video-first platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

For brands, this shift requires taking a more intentional approach to their social media content strategies:

• Create for the ‘quiet audience’: Not all of your prospective customers will like, comment, or share, but they will watch, listen, and maybe even save your posts. Build content for these passive viewers instead of just chasing active engagement.
• Focus on meaningful connections: Instead of just trying to reach as many people as possible, brands should focus on content that connects with their audience and helps build lasting brand loyalty.
• Build sophisticated distribution models: Rethink how and where content is shared. Use analytics to understand where your viewers are most likely to consume (not just see) your content.

Final thoughts

Reach and impressions aren’t interchangeable metrics. They serve different roles across the funnel.

Prioritize reach when your goal is to grow brand awareness or connect with new audiences. Focus on impressions when you need repeated exposure, like in retargeting or promotional campaigns.

Track both over time, benchmark against competitors, and look beyond surface numbers to uncover what’s really driving results.

With Socialinsider, you can automate the entire process of tracking, benchmarking, and reporting your brand’s social media performance. Start your free trial today.

FAQs about reach vs. impressions

1. Is reach better than impressions?

Neither is inherently better - they serve different purposes. Reach measures unique people who saw your content, while impressions count total views (including repeat views by the same person). Reach is better for understanding audience size and brand awareness, while impressions are better for measuring content frequency and overall exposure. Choose based on your campaign goals.

2. Is CPM for reach or impressions?

CPM (Cost Per Mille) is traditionally calculated based on impressions, not reach. It measures the cost per 1,000 impressions. However, some platforms also offer CPM based on reach (sometimes called CPM-R or unique CPM), which calculates cost per 1,000 unique people reached. Standard CPM refers to impressions unless otherwise specified.

3. What is the difference between impressions and views?

Impressions count when an ad or post is displayed on someone’s screen, regardless of whether they actually looked at it or engaged with it. Views typically require some level of engagement or attention - for example, video views often require watching for a minimum duration (like 3 seconds), or the content needs to be in the viewable area of the screen. Impressions are broader; views are more selective and indicate actual consumption.

4. What is the difference between reach and engagement?

Reach measures how many unique people saw your content - it’s about audience size. Engagement measures how people interact with your content through likes, comments, shares, clicks, saves, etc. - it’s about audience response. You can have high reach with low engagement (many people saw it but few interacted) or low reach with high engagement (fewer people saw it but most of them interacted). Reach indicates exposure; engagement indicates interest and connection.

With many businesses relying on Instagram to drive sales and revenue, what happens when the algorithm shifts and your posts no longer reach the audience they once did?

This shift highlights the importance of understanding key social media metrics and trends, such as social media reach and engagement rate by reach fluctuations, in order to effectively evaluate your strategy's results and establish future goals.

In this study, we're going to be looking at the average reach rate in 2025 and beyond, offering a data-driven look at how reach on social media is changing, and what it means for brands moving forward.

What is social media reach?

Social media reach represents the total number of unique users who have been exposed to a piece of content, post, or advertisement on a social media channel within a selected timeframe.

The reach metric indicates how aware people are of your brand. Unlike followers or impressions, it gives you a more accurate count of the people you've impacted and helps you estimate the potential size of your audience.

Why is social media reach important?

By tracking social media reach, you can, for instance, see just how effective your campaigns are in real-time and make any necessary adjustments before it's too late.

Besides social media campaign measurement, reach can also provide some useful information about:

• The real number of active followers
• The impact of your partnerships with influencers and other brands
• The interest generated around your online events and launches

Compared to other metrics (such as impressions), reach paints a more realistic picture of your content's performance because it counts each person only once, regardless of how many times they've seen your content.

How to calculate social media reach

Calculating social media reach can be tricky, considering that this metric only takes into account unique users who were exposed to your content.

One thing to keep in mind is that social media reach data will always be an estimate - regardless of the third-party analytics app you're using. For maximum accuracy, our recommendation is that you turn to native analytics dashboards (Meta, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, YouTube, TikTok).

Social media reach is one of the most important content KPIs, especially relevant for measuring brand awareness. As a result, reach is one of the go-to social media managers’ metrics analyzed for this business objective.

Is social media reach decreasing?

Over the last couple of years, several social media studies have emphasized Instagram’s superiority in performance compared to Facebook.

Whether for its increased reach, engagement rate, and many other KPIs, Instagram has proven to be the better choice for marketing purposes.

But while it is true that Instagram generates a higher reach compared to Facebook, it also registers a 12% YoY decrease.

Jumping to the numbers now - in 2025, Instagram has a reach rate of 3.50% on average, while Facebook scores a 1.65% average reach rate.

For more up-to-date Instagram insights on a variety of metrics, you can check our latest benchmarks data for Instagram.

Engagement by reach stats for 2025

With reach representing the total number of unique viewers a social post gained, engagement by reach displays how many interactions a post has gathered from those viewers.

Since a brand's social posts are usually seen only by a part of its total social media followers, the engagement rate by reach is considered a more accurate and insightful way of getting engagement data.

Compared to the engagement rate by followers, engagement by reach is frequently the preferred formula when measuring social media engagement.

That’s because this measurement version shows how relevant a piece of content was for those users who have actually seen it.

Most of the time, the people reached make for a smaller base than the total follower base.

With fewer users taken into account as a reference, in this situation, there will be significant variations in numbers when calculating engagement by both followers and reach.

Moreover, regardless of how marketers may look at engagement, according to data, one thing is clear - Instagram records higher engagement rates than Facebook.

In 2025, Instagram gets an engagement rate by reach of 3.00% on average, while Facebook engagement rate by reach records average values that go up to a maximum of only 1.20%.

NOTE: The findings of this study are based on the analysis of Facebook and Instagram social media posts published between January 2023 - August 2024.

Other social media platforms were not included in this research, as some have different ways of calculating engagement, while others do not offer reach data.

4 Tips on how to increase social media reach

Boosting your social media reach requires a combination of strategy and creativity. Here are a few proven methods that can help expand your audience and improve engagement.

Feature UGC (user-generated content)

One of the most effective ways to increase your social media reach is by featuring user-generated content (UGC). This tactic not only builds trust but also encourages more engagement, which boosts reach further. When users see real customers using and endorsing your products, they’re more likely to engage with your posts and share them with their networks.

Understanding how to measure reach in these cases is crucial, as it helps track the impact of UGC on your brand’s visibility.

For example, GoPro regularly shares content created by their users, showcasing stunning footage captured with their products. This strategy has helped them grow a massive, engaged community and increase their reach organically.

Leverage influencer partnerships

Partnering with influencers is a proven way to tap into new audiences and increase your social media reach. Influencers can introduce your brand to their loyal followers, driving engagement and expanding your visibility.

To fully understand the impact of these partnerships, it’s important to measure reach effectively, allowing you to track how far your content is extending.

For example, Daniel Wellington, the watch brand, successfully leveraged influencer marketing to grow their reach. By gifting influencers their products and encouraging them to share photos with their followers, the brand quickly gained visibility and boosted sales.

Post at optimal hours

Timing plays a critical role in increasing your social media reach. Posting when your audience is most active ensures higher engagement, which signals to the platform’s algorithm to push your content to more people.

To optimize this strategy, using reach measurement tools can help track when your audience is most engaged and refine your posting schedule accordingly.F

For example, BuzzFeed has perfected the art of posting at optimal times across different platforms. By tracking their audience’s behavior and engagement patterns, they ensure their posts go live when they’ll get the most interaction, ultimately boosting their reach.

Have a strong Instagram SEO strategy

A strong Instagram SEO strategy can significantly improve your reach. By optimizing your profile, captions, and hashtags for relevant keywords, you can ensure your content gets discovered by users searching for specific topics.

For example, Fenty Beauty uses Instagram SEO strategically by incorporating relevant hashtags and keywords into their posts, making it easier for new audiences to discover their content. This has helped the brand grow its reach by appearing in more searches and on Instagram's Explore page, allowing it to tap into new markets and customer segments.

Conclusion

As social media reach continues to decline across platforms, brands must adapt with innovative strategies to stay relevant. The shift in organic reach, especially on Instagram, underscores the need for authentic engagement through influencer marketing and user-generated content.

Understanding reach trends and fine-tuning tactics will be critical for sustained social media success in 2024 and beyond.

By focusing on metrics beyond surface-level, such as engagement by reach brands can better evaluate their strategy's effectiveness in achieving the social media goals established and optimize base on their community's preferences.

FAQs about Social Media Reach

1. What is a good social media reach?

For brands with large audiences, a good reach for Instagram would be around 8% for an Instagram post and 1% for an Instagram Story. As for Facebook, a good reach would be around 6%.

2. What is social media reach and engagement?

Social media reach is sometimes calculated using engagement, and it is in fact a more accurate way of looking at engagement data.

If you are a creator or a brand, you likely have accounts on both Instagram and Facebook. Instead of managing them in silos, what if you could manage them on one platform? And for free!

That’s Meta Business Suite for you. It’s a one-stop platform for effortlessly managing content, marketing, and advertising efforts on Instagram and Facebook.

Wondering how to use Meta Business Suite for your business? This article walks you through the step-by-step process, explores its key features, shares tips to maximize its benefits, and even suggests alternative tools if you need more advanced analytics or functionalities.

What is Meta Business Suite?

Meta Business Suite is a social media management tool that allows Meta users to manage Facebook and Instagram. It allows tracking and managing content, communications, ads, and content performance in one place.

You might have heard of it earlier as Facebook Business Suite. In 2020, it was later rebranded to Meta Business Suite to reflect the company’s broader ambitions beyond social media.

It also now integrates WhatsApp Business apart from Facebook and Instagram.

To give you a little preview of what you can do with it, you can:

• Use templates to create posts, stories, reels, and ads
• Publish/schedule feed posts and stories without switching accounts
• Read and reply to messages and comments across three platforms
• Track insights and trends, and know more about your audience on Facebook and Instagram
• Create a to-do list of notifications to manage
• Create, track, and manage ad campaigns

While Meta Business Manager allows you more control over your business settings and security, Business Suite has one breakthrough advantage — you can toggle easily between accounts instead of having different accounts in different tabs.

This makes content planning, scheduling, communicating, and tracking easier.

Getting started with Meta Business Suite

Walk with us through the basic steps of using Facebook Meta Business Suite by connecting your accounts.

Requirements before setup

Before you start using Business Suite, make sure you meet these key requirements.

Business accounts on platforms

• You must have an existing business account on Facebook and/or Instagram
• If you don’t have a business account yet, you can convert your personal account or create a new Facebook page and link it to an Instagram Business or Creator account.

Page ownership requirements

• To access and manage a Facebook Page or Instagram account through Meta Business Suite, you must be the owner or give them full admin access.
• If you don’t want to give multiple people full access, you can choose to give them partial access (task access).
• If your page is already linked to an Instagram account, you should add it to your business portfolio for Business Suite.

Device compatibility

• Meta Business Suite is available on both desktop and mobile. The web version can be accessed through this link on PCs or laptops. Or you can download the mobile app for iOS or Android to manage content and messages on the go.

Access options

Let’s run through the step-by-step process of setting up your Facebook Business Suite through desktop and mobile.

Desktop setup process

• Log in to your account on the Meta Business Suite page

• If you don’t have an existing page, you will be prompted to create a business page next. Click on “Create a business page tab”

• Follow the onscreen steps and fill in all the required details.

• Link your account. However, in many cases, Meta automatically associates your Facebook Business Page with your Meta Business Suite account, so manual setup may not be necessary.

Mobile app installation and setup

• Go to the App Store (iOS) or Google Play Store (Android). Search for Meta Business Suite and download the app.
• Open the app and log in using your Facebook business account credentials
• If you already own a Facebook page, it will show up on the home page.

When to use a browser vs. when to use a mobile app for Facebook Business Suite?

• The browser version provides more detailed controls for handling multiple pages and accounts. Use it when you need to access in-depth features, analytics, or bulk content scheduling.
• The mobile version is perfect for making on-the-go changes. For example, monitoring notifications, replying to urgent messages, and managing ads on a small scale.

Configure your Facebook Business Suite

Now that we have the basics covered, let’s finish the final setup.

Connect your Instagram account

Once you have connected your Facebook page, connect your Instagram account as well.

• In the desktop app, go to Settings from the left sidebar
• Find “Connect Assets” to connect your Instagram account

• A new window will open, asking you to enter your Instagram username and password. If you don’t see the account you want to connect to, tap “Switch Accounts” and enter your details.
• Click “Continue” to finalize your business portfolio

Set up permissions and user roles

Invite your team to work with you and manage things. Go to the Settings tab in the left sidebar and click on the Users section.

To invite people, find the option in the top right corner.

Enter their email address, and you will be asked to assign the person partial access or full control.

In case of partial access, assign business assets/things they can modify or conduct.

Once everything is finalized, click on “Send invitation”.

If you have already added people, you can change permissions or user roles by going to the “Edit business portfolio permissions” next to their name.

Make your changes and click on “Save”.

Navigate the dashboard

Here’s an overview of what lies in your Business Suite dashboard.

• Home page: Get an overview of your business, including recent posts, performance insights, and quick actions.
• Adverts Manager: Access Meta Ads Manager for advanced campaign settings, audience targeting, budgeting, and performance tracking.
• Notifications: View all recent interactions, including comments, likes, and messages from your Facebook and Instagram accounts.
• Inbox: Manage messages, comments, and reviews from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in one unified inbox.
• Content: Create, schedule, and manage posts and stories for both Facebook and Instagram.
• Planner: Shows a calendar view of scheduled posts, stories, and ads to help organize your content strategy.
• Ads: Manage ad campaigns, set budgets, choose audiences, and create new ads to enhance your marketing strategy.
• Insights: Analyze performance metrics like reach, engagement, and audience growth for posts, stories, and ads.
• All tools: Access additional features like page settings, roles, appointments, and monetization.

Customize your experience

Want to customize your dashboard and how your sidebar menu looks?

Go to the “Edit” button on the sidebar, and you can select up to 10 tools to display on your menu.

Essential features for beginners

If you’re starting out, we would recommend getting acquainted with these three features first.

Content creation and scheduling

Still not sure if you want to subscribe to a tool that helps create content? We suggest checking out the free content creation and scheduling features of Meta Business Suite.

Create posts for multiple platforms

• Create a post by clicking any of these three different areas on your dashboard — Home, Content, or Planner.

• Tap “Create Post”
• Choose whether you want to share the content on Facebook, Instagram, or both.
• Add details to your post, like image, caption, tags, and location.
• Edit your media using the built-in features

• Once your post is finalized, click “Schedule,” “Publish,” or “Finish later.”

You can follow the same process for creating Reels and Stories.

Upload images and videos to your content library

Want to create a library for all your image and video content? One where everything stays organized, is available for quick use, and can be easily modified.

Enter Meta Business Suite’s File Manager.

Look at how I have different folders where I store my videos and images. I can ensure my team uses the right assets for our social content.

To do this,

• Click on All Tools → File Manager from the left menu.
• Click Upload and select images or videos from your computer.
• Organize files into folders to keep everything structured.
• Use the built-in editor to crop, resize, or enhance images
• When creating a new post, click Add Photo/Video and select media from File Manager instead of re-uploading.

Schedule content

Whether you’re creating a story, post, or reel, you can schedule it for later. But how do you use Meta Business Suite to schedule posts?

Start by setting different times for Instagram and Facebook.

By selecting the “Active times” option, you can schedule your post for the times when your audience is most active.

Then view and manage these scheduled posts in your Content Planner.

Inbox management

Does replying to messages take a lot of your time? Do you wish you could block 30 minutes every day, open one platform, and reply to everyone? With a unified inbox, Meta Business Suite makes it possible.

That’s not all. Three other features that will win your team over:

• You can set up automated replies. For example, whenever someone asks for your contact information, the pre-set automation can share your number or location instantly. You can even set replies for frequently asked questions.

• You can respond to comments on Facebook and Instagram through your inbox and even mark some comments to follow up with later.
• View customer information like name, photo, and location directly from your Inbox. Add labels, contact details, and private notes to organize information and make future interactions smoother. For example, a customer messages your business with a product inquiry. From the Inbox, you see their details and add a label like “New Lead.” You also noticed: “Asked about pricing; follow up in three days.” This helps your team be on the same page when it comes to future interactions.

Basic analytics

Meta Business Suite’s analytics let you understand the results of your organic and paid social media efforts across Facebook and Instagram in one place.

Go to the Insights section through the menu on the left, and you will come across this page.

Let’s first look at the key metrics available on this platform.

• Views: Total number of times your videos, stories, or posts were watched.
• Reach: Number of unique users who saw your content.
• Follows: Number of new followers gained over time.
• Net interactions: Total engagement across all posts, including reactions, shares, and comments.
• Link clicks: Number of times users clicked on links in posts or ads.
• Individual post performance: Engagement, reach, and impressions for each post.
• Messaging performance: Response rate, average reply time, and customer interactions via Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
• Ad performance: Click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and ad spend.

Understanding audience insights

One of the most interesting metrics available is audience metrics. It breaks down your audience for both platforms and gives you insights into:

• Age and gender
• Top towns/cities
• Top countries

In the Audience Trends section, you can even see your audience’s most active times, the percentage of engaged followers, and returning viewers.

That’s not all. The potential audience section shows you the estimated audience size if you run an ad, the top locations you can target, and the top pages liked by your audience.

Decoding engagement metrics

In the Content tab of Insights, you can see an overview of how all your content is performing.

You can also see the top content by views, top content formats, and interactions on your posts.

These engagement metrics can give you an idea of the format and topics you can target moving forward.

If you are looking for more detailed insights, Socialinsider analytics dashboard should be your go-to option.

Facebook Analytics Dashboard

Get premium Facebook analytics to track performance, analyze content, and compare your Facebook metrics against competitors.

Start your 14-day free trial

Intermediate features and strategies

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s explore the platform’s more advanced features to maximize its potential.

Cross-platform content management

Many brands end up sharing the same content on both Instagram and Facebook. But there are often minor variations in these posts. Meta Business Suite helps you seamlessly manage these cross-platform variations.

Creating platform-specific content variations

When you’re creating a post or reel in Meta Business Suite, you can set the following variations:

• Customise posts for Instagram and Facebook by toggling the “Customise post” option in the Post Details section of the Content tab.

• While writing the text for Facebook, you can input a feeling/activity, location, and button to DM directly on Messenger and WhatsApp. For Instagram, you just get the option to add the location.
• When you add hashtags, you can see the popular ones for Instagram and Facebook, respectively.

Once done, you can see how your post looks on Instagram and Facebook, on desktop and mobile.

Use Content Planner

Meta Business’ in-built planner is great for creating content with your team.

To use it:

• Go to the Planner tab in your left menu
• Click on the + icon on the day when you want to add content. Choose from post, story, reel, or ad
• Enter basic details about the content and tap Finish later
• Notify your team to finalize the details before it goes live

Content performance analysis

If you want to analyze individual content or a group of content pieces, go to Content in Insights tab and select the time period.

View metrics like reach, impressions, interactions, and link clicks. You can even sort content by your choice of metrics to find top-performing content for your brand.

Although the insights provided by the native analytics platforms are a good starting point for small businesses, if you’re a medium-sized business or an agency, chances are you’re looking for insights that the native platforms cannot provide. And this is where Socialinsider shines—it can provide you with in-depth content performance analytics on Instagram or Facebook. With it, you can easily see the top content-performing pillars and the engagement they bring.

Based on these granular insights, you can optimize your content strategy.

Advertising basics

If you run ad campaigns or are trying to build your first one, Meta Business Suite is a great place to start.

Start by viewing your previous ad campaigns in the Ads tab on the left menu.

If not, let’s learn the basics of creating an ad campaign.

Creating simple ads

In Meta Business Suite, there are three ways of creating ads — automate your ads, create one from scratch, or turn your Facebook or Instagram content into an ad.

If you choose automated ads, you will answer a series of questions and get a personalized plan.

If you want to boost an existing piece of content, just select the post, set your variables, and publish your ad.

To create an ad from scratch, choose a goal first.

Now for the exciting part — designing your ad. Add an image, headline, and description, customize the CTA button, and include a website URL if needed.

If you want Facebook to fine-tune your ad for each viewer, turn on automatic adjustments. This feature allows the platform to modify aspects like brightness or aspect ratio to improve engagement and effectiveness.

Next, scroll down to define your target audience. You can choose an existing audience or create a new one based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.

After that, select ad placements, set your budget, and determine the duration of your campaign.

Once everything is set, click Publish to submit your ad for review. And that’s it. You’ve just launched your first campaign.

Budget management

Meta allows you to set a daily budget for your ads. It shows you the estimated number of accounts you can reach based on your budget.

The higher your budget and the longer the duration, the higher the reach.

You can start with a small budget and scale up depending on the performance of your ad.

Performance tracking

Go to the All Ads section in the Ads tab. You will find ads categorized by key metrics like views, reach, results, and amount spent.

Monitor the cost-per-result to understand how efficiently your budget is being spent. Also, analyze audience Insights to see who interacts with your ads based on demographics and behavior.

If you want to go one step further, compare organic vs. paid performance to assess how well your paid campaigns complement your overall content strategy. Based on these insights, you can make real-time adjustments to your existing ad campaign.

Team collaboration

One area where Meta Business Suite shines over Meta Business Manager is its collaboration features. Let’s explore them.

• As we saw earlier, you can invite team members to manage your business portfolio. You have the option to give each team member full or partial access to manage things. If you work with a contractor or a freelancer, give them temporary access if required.
• If your business receives a high volume of messages on Instagram and Facebook, Meta Business Suite makes it easier to stay organized by letting you leave private notes on conversations. These private notes can act as internal comments and help your team stay aligned, so anyone jumping into the chat can quickly get context and respond appropriately.

• You can set up approval workflows. As Meta Business Suite supports post drafts and scheduling, one team member can draft content while another reviews or schedules it. And with shared access to the Planner, everyone can see what’s coming up and plan accordingly.

Advanced features and strategies

These features will help you utilize Business Suite to its maximum potential. Let’s explore three of them.

Reporting

You can get reports in Meta Business Suite by exporting your data in PNG, CSV, or PDF formats.

For example, if you want to get a report on audience insights, you need to go to the Audience tab in Insights. Find the export button in the top right and select the format you want.

One caveat? Business Suite does not provide extensive social media reporting features, so you’ll need to download individual reports for different metrics, such as audience insights and content insights.

If you are looking for comprehensive reports, a better option would be a social analytics tools like Socialinsider. For example, I generated a social media audit report for Socialinsider’s Facebook performance. It gave me a 13-page report containing all details like top 3 posts, total engagement, reach, impressions, post distribution, post types, post types sorted by engagement, fans growth, etc.

The best part is I can even schedule auto-reports so my team can get all the data on a regular basis.

Advanced advertising features

Let’s check out three advanced advertising features available to you in Meta Business Suite.

A/B testing

While this option isn’t directly available when creating an ad from scratch, Business Suite allows you to test different versions of your post before turning them into ads.

Go to the A/B testing option in the Content menu.

Click Create A/B test. You can choose to test up to 4 versions of the content.

Depending on the results, you can boost this content and turn it into an ad.

Alternatively, you can go to Meta Ads Manager, which offers built-in split testing tools.

Set custom audiences

Do you want to target people with a specific education level or in a specific industry?

You can set these preferences easily in Meta. Here’s how to do it.

• While you’re creating an ad, scroll down to the Audience section and click on Create New.

• A new pop-up will open. Scroll down till you find the Detailed targeting option. Click on Browse.

• You can add different demographics, interests, and behavior attributes here.

• Once selected, click on Save audience.

This will help you target specific sets of people, increasing your conversion rates.

Pixel integration

Meta Business Suite does not have a dedicated Pixel setup tool, but you can still integrate Meta Pixel by linking it through Meta Events Manager. Here’s how.

• Go to Meta Events Manager and click Connect data sources.
• Select Web and then choose Meta Pixel as your data source.
• Enter your Pixel Name and Website URL, then click Create Pixel.
• Follow the setup instructions to install the Pixel on your website using manual code installation or a partner integration.
• Once installed, verify that the Pixel is working using the Pixel Helper extension or the Test Events tool in Events Manager.
• After integration, you can track conversions, optimize ads, and retarget visitors within Meta Business Suite’s Ad Tools and Insights.

While the setup happens in Events Manager, the performance data and retargeting options can be accessed through Meta Business Suite, allowing you to manage everything in one place.

Automation and time-saving tools

Once you are done with everything, it’s time to find out how you can save time with Meta Business Suite. Here are three ways we use it to automate things.

Automate responses

While we have already seen that you can automate responses to DMs, you can even create custom automations for your business.

Go to Inbox > Automations and click on Create Automation.

If you can’t find the option you want, click on Start from scratch.

You can set your own conditions and subsequent actions. For example, if you receive frequent inquiries about your store hours, you can create an automation that detects messages containing “What are your hours?” and automatically responds with your business’s operating times.

Once done, click on Save changes.

Recycle content

Do you want to repost your top-performing content? Instead of spending time finding these posts, go to the Content tab in the left menu. You will see the posts getting the most reach at the top.

Click on that post. Find the ellipsis button and choose Duplicate post.

You can now change the caption, picture, or schedule the post as it is.

If you run some recurring promotions or announcements, use the Planner to schedule this repeated content. This way, you don’t have to worry about manually posting each time.

Integrate with other tools

You can integrate your Facebook page with apps that will help run your business smoothly.

Go to All tools in the left sidebar and find Business apps in the Manage section.

Whether you want your users to schedule appointments easily or offer a streamlined shipping experience, you will find many relevant tools.

Just click on the tool of your choice and follow the step-by-step instructions.

Mobile-specific features

Now that we already know how to use Meta Business Suite, here’s a breakdown of the features and navigation differences on both iOS and Android.

iOS and Android app guide

Meta Business Suite’s mobile app is built for convenience and on-the-go management, which is why the desktop version is more feature-rich.

You can download the iOS version from this link or by going to the App Store and searching for Meta Business Suite.

If you’re on an Android-supported device, here’s the link or search for the app on Google Playstore.

Once the app is downloaded, all you need to do is enter your credentials and get started.

While you can utilize all the basic features, such as boosting posts, checking performance, scheduling posts, replying to messages, and getting real-time alerts, there are a few features that are better to use on the desktop.

• Full ad creation & management: You can boost posts, but detailed ad targeting, split testing, and campaign management require access from desktop.
• Advanced audience targeting: Creating custom or lookalike audiences is limited in the app.
• Detailed insights & reports: You get basic Instagram and Facebook analytics, but in-depth performance reports and data exports are only available on desktop.
• File manager access: The media library for organizing and reusing content is not available on mobile.
• Assigning notes and labels to DMs: While you can assign conversations to specific people on the team, labeling and leaving notes is still not possible
• Automations & custom responses: Setting up custom automations for messages is mainly a desktop feature.

Meta Business Suite limitations and workarounds

Although we’ve touched on a few limitations already, here’s a quick rundown of common roadblocks you might face in Meta Business Suite (along with practical ways to work around them)

Common troubleshooting in Meta Business Suite

Here are some typical issues users face in Meta Business Suite and how to address them.

• Account connection issues. Sometimes, Facebook or Instagram accounts may disconnect from Meta Business Suite. This can happen due to password changes, permission revocations, or platform glitches.

To fix it, go to Settings and then Accounts, and reconnect your accounts. Make sure you have admin access on all platforms you’re linking.

• Publishing errors. Posts may fail to publish due to incorrect formatting, policy violations, or expired access tokens.

To fix it, double-check your content for any flagged words or broken links. Reconnect your account if needed, and try reposting. Also, ensure scheduled times are not in the past.

• Analytics Discrepancies. You may notice that certain social media metrics in Meta Business Suite differ from those in Ads Manager or Instagram’s native app.

To fix it, give the system time to sync, as data may update with a delay. For high-accuracy campaign data, use Meta Ads Manager or export metrics for external analysis.

• Permission Problems. Users may be unable to access certain pages, assets, or features due to incorrect role assignments.

To fix it, go to Settings > Users > People and review user roles. Ensure team members are granted the appropriate permissions for Pages, ad accounts, or Instagram profiles.

Meta Business Suite alternative

Looking for a tool that does more than just help you post? If you want a platform that guides every stage of your content strategy with deep, actionable insights, Meta Business Suite might not check all the boxes. And while we might be a bit biased, here are three strong reasons why Socialinsider is a powerful alternative when it comes to making data-driven decisions.

Gives you cross-channel analysis

Many clients shift from Meta to Socialinsider because they can get data on all their social platforms on one dashboard. Brands just have to connect their profiles, select the pages they need, and set up their one-stop dashboard.

You get a unified view of insights across all your social platforms in one place.

This cross-channel functionality enables you to:

• Generate aggregated reports that combine metrics across all social platforms
• View breakdowns within charts based on social channels
• Compare brands as a whole instead of individual platform profiles
• Access key metrics, top content pillars, followers, posts, engagement, impressions, and video views in one consolidated view

This feature is particularly useful for bi-weekly reporting to track how a brand is progressing across all channels. The reports can be downloaded in PDF, PowerPoint, or Excel formats, and you can schedule automated reports to be sent regularly.

For agencies managing multiple clients, you can organize projects by client and create brand reports that consolidate all their social media presence.

Discover content pillars

Content pillars are a feature that categorizes posts based on their content themes. They help users understand how content is distributed within brand strategies and which types of content drive engagement.

You can see two types of content pillars in Socialinsider:

• AI-generated content pillars: Automatically assigned based on the industry of a profile. Each industry has up to 10 predefined content pillars (e.g., vehicle showcases, special offers, market research).
• Custom content pillars: Users can create their own content pillars by manually tagging posts or setting up auto-tagging based on keywords or search queries.

Content pillars provide valuable insights by showing:

• Post distribution across different content themes
• Engagement metrics for each content pillar
• Which content types perform best

For example, a car company might discover that vehicle showcase posts drive 94% of their total engagement, indicating what content they should focus on.

This feature is particularly useful for optimizing content strategy based on performance data.

Get competitive and comparative insights

You can see how your brand performs compared to your past performance and others in your industry.

Here’s what you can do using our tool:

• Benchmark against competitors. Run a competitor analysis to track and compare your social performance, like engagement rate, follower growth, and post frequency, against competitors, industry leaders, or market averages.
• Conduct a side-by-side profile analysis. You can analyze multiple brand profiles (including competitors’) side-by-side to see what kind of content performs best, how often they post, and how their audience reacts.
• Compare audience engagement. See how engaged your audience is compared to others in your space. Find out which brands are driving the most conversations and why.
• Get content strategy insights. Understand what types of posts, formats, or hashtags work for competitors so you can refine or pivot your own strategy with data-backed decisions.

Want to see how these features work for your brand?

Final thoughts

Meta Business Suite is a great tool if you’re just starting your social media journey and are mainly active on only two platforms — Instagram and Facebook.

You can follow the step-by-step process and set things up, be it automations or post scheduling.

But if you are looking for a comprehensive tool that helps you gain insights across all platforms—Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X, consider investing in a more robust tool like Socialinsider.

While Facebook marketing is no longer what it used to be a couple of years back in terms of engagement, this social media channel still remains a major priority for most influential brands.

That is why keeping an eye on your Facebook analytics is key. And that’s where our playbook on one of one of the most important Facebook metrics - engagement - comes to the rescue.

In this guide, we’ll share 25 tried-and-tested strategies (along with examples) to help you create content that reaches and engages people. Let’s get your Facebook engagement rates up!

What is Facebook engagement?

Engagement is a critical metric for assessing the effectiveness of content and the overall health of a Facebook page.

Here’s a breakdown of what includes Facebook engagement:

1. Likes: Users can show their appreciation for a post by clicking the "Like" button. This is a basic form of engagement.
2. Comments: When users leave comments on a post, they are engaging in conversation and sharing their thoughts, which can foster community interaction.
3. Shares: Sharing a post to their own timeline or in a group allows users to spread content to their friends and followers, amplifying reach and visibility.
4. Reactions: Beyond just likes, Facebook offers various reactions (like, love, haha, wow, sad, angry) that allow users to express a range of emotions toward a post.
5. Clicks: Any interaction that involves clicking on a link, image, or video in a post counts as engagement. This is especially important for driving traffic to websites or landing pages.
6. Saves: Users can save posts to revisit later, indicating that the content resonated with them.
7. Event Responses: Engagement can also include RSVP responses to events created on Facebook, showing interest or intent to attend.

Engagement is important because it signals how well your content resonates with your audience.

Higher engagement rates typically indicate a more active and interested audience, which can lead to increased visibility through Facebook's algorithm, helping your content reach more people.

Ultimately, understanding and improving Facebook engagement is key to building a strong community and achieving marketing goals on the platform.

25 Tips to increase engagement on Facebook

There isn’t one sure-shot way to increase engagement on Facebook. You need to employ different strategies and social media best practices to see what works for your brand.

Here are 25 tips on how to get more engagement on Facebook.

#1 Have a diversified content calendar

According to our Facebook benchmarks study, albums represent the content format that generates the highest engagement on this platform. However, a YoY analysis also reveals that Reels represent the only format that is on an ascending engagement path.

Ultimately, videos and Reels also drive the highest number of shares for larger profiles. This is no surprise, given that videos have taken over social media, as they are a more engaging, interactive type of content compared to others.

Here are some tips to help you boost engagement with Reels.

• Opt for vertical videos (also known as portrait videos). This is better suited for mobile orientation, considering that a large majority of Facebook users access the platform via mobile devices.
• Mix different types of videos. For example, instead of sticking to plain product feature videos, include Q&As, interviews, step-by-step tutorials, and behind-the-scenes fun videos. Here’s how Canva posts a tutorial video that users can easily learn from.

• Include captions in your video. 75% of people watch videos on mute, so this will help people engage with your content even on mute. Semrush does this often.

• Focus on shorter videos. Our data suggests videos shorter than 30 seconds get the most engagement.

Overall, the data emphasizes that diversity is of the essence since each type has unique benefits, and specific audience segments may respond more to one style over others.

#2 Ask questions

Are you looking for ways to get more people to comment on your content? A simple way is to ask a question. Here are some ideas to get started.

• How do you [perform a task/action]?
• What made you [do/follow something]?
• What’s your favorite [fill here]?
• What would you recommend/suggest [fill here]?
• What’s your go-to [product/tool/strategy] for [achieving a goal]?
• What would you like to learn more about in [specific field]?
• How has [brand/product] made a difference for you?

You can even ask your audience what content they like best and then prioritize that in your social media calendar.

The team can take this one step further by interacting with the comments. They can even direct people to certain activities or videos in their app.

TIP: Instead of simply posting your question, we recommend asking questions with a background as a status post to drive more comments and engagement.

Here’s an example from our page.

#3 Use high-quality visuals

Posts with images on social media receive 150% more engagement than those without visuals. The problem is just adding visuals won’t grab attention. Everyone is doing the same.

You need to stand out with quality visuals. For example, Canva uses an attention-grabbing color palette that resonates with Autumn and inspires users.

Even if you do not have a fancy camera, you can use these tips to create high-quality images:

• Learn how to use natural lighting to capture incredible images
• Master composition techniques like the rule of thirds and leading lines
• Play with different angles and perspectives
• Experiment with filters and effectsEdit using tools like Remini, Adobe Photoshop, and Snapseed to boost quality

#4 Share native content

Facebook’s algorithm favors native content (content directly posted on the platform) over external links. This means you’ll have a higher chance of appearing in your audience’s news feeds and boosting engagement on your posts.

This is especially true for videos. To get good engagement on Facebook, instead of cross-posting videos or sharing external links that take users to YouTube, upload the video directly to Facebook.

#5 Analyze your most popular posts

Some of your videos are going viral. Do you want to leave that chance to random luck? Or do you wish to replicate this virality and get more eyes on your content?

A simple way to do that is by analyzing your posts. Once you have a good number of posts on your page, use Facebook insights to get a basic idea of page views, video views, post engagement, clicks, etc.

You can even find out if the posts getting the most engagement have something in common - for example, tutorial posts getting the highest likes.

Use Socialinsider to get more in-depth insights. For example, here’s how I checked the most popular posts on Canva’s Facebook page.

I could even check individual insights for each post to dig deeper.

Using these insights, I was able to identify which content pillars and types are getting the best engagement.

Let’s take a loot at this AI content pillar analysis below.

#6 Reply to comments and messages

One of the best practices to increase Facebook page engagement preached all over the internet is to engage with your community.

If someone makes an effort to leave a comment on your post, acknowledge it. Nobody likes being ignored. Schedule time every day or at least every week to respond to comments, direct messages (DMs), and posts you’re mentioned in.

By replying to comments, you signal to Facebook’s algorithm that your post has engagement, which can further boost its reach.

Also, maintain a specific tone and language while commenting. If you’re trying to portray yourself as a fun and cheerful brand, use positive language, wit, and emojis in your comments.

#7 Add a CTA to every post

CTA (Call-to-Action) is a prompt for users to take specific actions such as liking, commenting, or clicking on a specific link.

Here’s how Salesforce encourages its audience to register for their upcoming expert-led sessions via a simple CTA.

Here are some tips for creating CTAs.

• Use concise language and be clear. For example, “Purchase Now,” “Learn More,” or “Sign Up.”
• If your goal is to increase comments, ask simple and relevant questions.
• Offer deals and discounts to encourage users to take quick action. For example, “15% off on the first five orders.”
• Tailor CTAs for mobile users. Ensure the CTA is easy to tap and the landing page it leads to is mobile-friendly.
• Don’t overcomplicate it. Test different CTAs and find the ones that translate into more engagement.

#8 Use Facebook Stories

Like Instagram stories, Facebook stories disappear in 24 hours and appear at the top of your feed. Because of its short-term visibility, you do not have to put in too much effort to get stories right.

Many brands even choose to reshare Instagram stories on Facebook.

Below are some ideas on what you can share as Facebook stories.

• Share behind-the-scenes content. It could be a glimpse of how the product is made or a day in the life of your team.
• Post product tutorials or tips. For example, “Here’s how to use our beauty products to create your Halloween look.”
• Use polls, quizzes, and question stickers. This is a fun way to get their feedback, take a vote, or let followers ask you questions.
• Add swipe-up links or put updates as stories to encourage specific actions like visiting the product page or checking out your recent Facebook reel.

#9 Go live

Facebook Live videos drive 3X more engagement and 10X more comments than traditional videos.

This is because when brands go live, the video shoots right at the top of your audience’s feed. Followers who regularly interact with your page also get a notification when you go live. This creates a FOMO (fear of missing out) in their minds—if they do not view the live right now, they will miss some super cool content. This translates into higher views and engagement.

Facebook now also provides a way to keep your live broadcast video on your business page so you can keep promoting it.

For example, Mailchimp regularly hosts expert sessions on Facebook Live, which the audience can later view on their page.

When going live, follow these strategies for more engagement:

• Announce the Facebook Live in advance and create hype around the event
• Bring industry experts to talk about relevant topics
• Focus on “What’s in it for the audience” and lead with that offer
• Interact with the audience by responding to their questions in comments

#10 Incorporate UGC

Are you short on time but still want to post content your audience will love? Or is your content becoming repetitive and dull? User-generated content (UGC) could be your savior.

It is a great way for your audience to learn about the brand from happy customers. And customers also love it when you share their content as yours. A perfect win-win!

The best part? UGC earns a 28% higher engagement rate than branded content on social networks.

Some examples of UGC you can share are customer reviews or testimonials, photos or videos of your customers using the product, and case studies.

Pro-tip: If you’re posting customer stories or case studies, try to give an emotional touch to the UGC.

#11 Utilize Facebook groups

Users want to engage with brands that have an active presence. This translates to having a consistently active social profile. But the best brands don’t stop there. They invest in branded communities.

These communities create an inclusive environment for their audience, start discussions, get UGC, gather valuable insights, and direct more people to engage with their Facebook content.

At Socialinsider, we have our own community on Facebook, where our audience interacts with each other, discusses social media strategies and new updates, and connects with other industry professionals.

#12 Boost some of your content

Who doesn’t love organic reach? But there’s no harm in post-boosting when you can increase your engagement efforts and results. Here are three types of posts you can boost:

• Posts that are already popular. Facebook’s algorithm loves showing posts that get a good engagement, and thus, this content will get even better results when boosted.
• Posts that you know can get better engagement with a push.
• Specific campaign or event-related posts that need promotion.

Some best practices to make your boosted content get more engagement are:

• Create a custom audience so your post reaches relevant audience demographics.
• Have concise text and appealing imagery/videos.
• Restrict the time period as engagement drops if you run boosted posts for over a week.
• Facebook boosts require a lot of trial and error. So keep tracking results and optimizing your content-boosting strategy according to the results.

#13 Optimize your posting time and post consistently

You can’t post several times a month and think, “Why am I not getting results?” Getting your Facebook engagement high is an ongoing task. You need to keep posting consistently. That consistency could look like 2 posts a day for some brands. While for others, it might be 4 times a week.

Even then, you need to nail down the right posting time for your brand. The best approach is to fix a time when your followers are online. Facebook itself suggests the same: “Go to your Insights and see when your audience is most active. Your audience may be in a different time zone. If you have a lot of Page fans in a different country, make sure you post when they're awake and active.”

#14 Get Verified

A verification badge shows users that your page is authentic and officially represents your organization. It reassures them that they are not engaging with imposters or fake pages.

Another advantage of getting verified is you rank higher in Facebook search results, making it easier for users to engage with your page.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to apply for verification:

• Go to the verification request form;
• Upload necessary documents as per your country guidelines;
• Select category and country;
• Add up to five articles, social accounts, and other links that show your brand is of public interest;
• Submit the form.

You can wait for a few days and if your request is rejected, Facebook allows you to re-apply.

#15 Avoid engagement bait

Facebook defines engagement bait as a tactic that artificially boosts post engagement by asking people to perform specific actions on a post. It puts engagement bait into five different categories:

• React baiting: Asking people to react to posts (like, love, care, haha, sad, angry, and wow).
• Comment baiting: Asking people to comment with specific answers, like, yes, no, emojis, etc.
• Share baiting: Asking people to share the post.
• Tag baiting: Asking people to tag others.
• Vote baiting: Asking people to vote using reactions, comments, or any other means.

Facebook also mentions that they would demote pages that repeatedly use these tactics to get engagement.

That said, it’s fine to ask a genuine question or ask your followers for opinions or feedback. You will only get affected if you ask for comments that indicate no real thought or consideration.

#16 Repurpose Popular Content

Why limit the results of a successful content piece by restricting it to one platform? It could be a highly engaging blog post, webinar, Instagram post, or TikTok.

For example, Trello regularly shares snippets of their top-performing articles on Facebook. Here’s how they show a sneak peek with a video on “Confluence and Trello integration” and then direct users to the blog on the same topic.

This helps your team as you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every post you share on Facebook.

Here are some more ideas:

• Create short videos or animations from webinars or your video library on the website.
• Convert customer testimonials into story or carousel posts.
• Repurpose white papers and statistical studies as visual data points.
• Transform insights from reports and studies into polls, surveys, and Q&A sessions.

Pro-tip: Track your top-performing content using Socialinsider. With this tool, you can easily see the top posts by engagement across platforms. And then you can go repurpose that content for Facebook.

#17 Build an employee advocacy program

You don’t have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. Why not turn to your employees and ask them to share your content through their personal accounts?

An employee advocacy program helps amplify social media reach and engagement. For example, KPMG Sweden had 1500 dedicated employees who participated in the launch of their employee advocacy program.

They ensured employees had the latest industry news, trends, and content they needed to position themselves as industry experts. The focus was on the quality of conversation and content employees shared on social media compared to the number of posts. The result? Employee-generated content reached 1.63M people within KPMG’s target audience. It also resulted in 1.74K shares and 12.9K unique clicks.

Pro-tip: Communicate the benefits of this program to your employees. For example, show them how they can build a personal brand by adding their own insights and experience to the post. Connect it to how this helps expand their network and position themselves as thought leaders.

#18 Run contests and giveaways

Who doesn’t like winning something? Contests and giveaways are a fun way to get your audience involved and boost Facebook engagement.

For example, Canva runs a lot of design contests to create buzz and get people to use their platform. This way, they increase engagement and user adoption. Here’s an example.

Before you host a contest/giveaway, familiarize yourself with Facebook’s guidelines so you adhere to their requirements.

Here are some tips to help you create an effective Facebook contest:

• Set simple and clear rules. The easier the steps, the more the participation.
• Use eye-catching visuals to grab attention.
• Encourage creativity. For example, Starbucks holds design-your-own-cup contests, like the “White Cup contest,” which attracts many participants.
• Choose an appealing and relevant prize. The prize should be valuable enough to encourage participation but should also relate to your products or services to attract potential customers.
• Promote across channels and funnel the traffic to your Facebook page.

#19 Keep updated with Facebook’s algorithm changes

What if you keep creating Facebook reels when the algorithm has started to demote it? You could keep thinking of a thousand reasons you’re going wrong with the content when the reason is something else altogether.

That’s why tracking Facebook algorithm changes is crucial.

Here are three ways to do that:

• Follow Facebook’s official channels – Facebook’s newsroom (official updates, algorithm changes, and policy changes) and Facebook business blog (updates to tools, ad policies, and targeting capabilities)
• Join Facebook groups and communities for marketers. You can either join general groups or industry-specific groups.
• Follow social media marketing blogs like Socialinsider and news sites.You can even use social media tools like ours to track engagement and key Facebook metrics. The moment you start seeing a dip, investigate further to see if it’s the content or some changes in the algorithm.

#20 Join trending conversations

Are you looking for an easy way to boost engagement? Just tailor your Facebook content to ongoing trends, discussions, and memes. Since these topics are already popular, you can easily jump on the bandwagon and boost engagement.

Other than covering relevant events in your industry, you can also create content around holidays. For example, if you’re a beauty brand, you can come up with makeup looks for Halloween using your products. You can even repost tutorials of customers or UGC creators creating their own looks.

Pro tip: Facebook releases a trends report each year to inform users of ongoing trends, customer perceptions, and values. Skim through it to create content on the most relevant topics.

#21. Partner with influencers

Piggybacking on influencers is a great way to reach a wider audience and boost overall page engagement. You might think, “But wouldn’t it be very costly?” If you’re thinking of influencers like Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez, sure.

But brands find collaborations with micro (10-100k followers) and nano creators (1-10K followers) equally or even more engaging.

To find relevant influencers for your industry, you can utilize tools like influencers.club, which has data on creators for every niche. You can input your filters and get a shortlist of creators with contact details to reach out to.

Once your list is ready, you can conduct outreach, finalize the collaboration details, set guidelines for content, and track results.

One company that has been successful with influencer marketing is HelloFresh, a meal kit and food subscription company. It collaborates with influencers to share reviews and personal stories of how HelloFresh makes their lives easier.

#22 Run a competitor analysis to get content inspiration

Analyzing your competitors’ content can give you valuable information. It can show you the kind of posts that resonate the most with a similar audience, content pillars the brand prioritizes, and best-performing tactics you can replicate.

Note that this isn’t about copying their content; it’s about using their strategies as inspiration to create something different.

Let’s take an example. Suppose you have an email marketing platform. You notice your competitor getting a lot of engagement on content around email marketing tips. Instead of following a similar route, showcase real-life examples or case studies and provide tips on replicating that success.

Instead of manually running a competitor analysis, which takes time, use Socialinsider. It provides information on your competitor’s top posts, engagement distribution, and a comparison report.

#23 Crosspost popular content, but with a twist

Cross-posting involves posting similar content across social media channels. It saves time and resources, and you can successfully drive traffic to your Facebook page.

As we already talked about before, avoid posting the exact same message across platforms. You don’t want to be the person who shares the same joke at every party. People would end up tuning you out or, worse, avoiding you.

Instead, modify the image according to Facebook’s size guidelines. Ask a question in the caption. Understand the character limit and tweak your captions. Remove hashtags that are not relevant to Facebook. Check if clickable links work.

Once you run a basic check, post the content and use tools to track if the same type of content is resonating with your Facebook audience as well.

#24 Create more zero-click Facebook posts

At the end of the day, Facebook, or any other social platform, is trying to keep you glued to it. So they tend to favor posts without links.

That’s why zero-click posts on Facebook get the highest engagement. It refers to content that provides valuable information to users without requiring them to leave the platform they are on.

Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, coined this term and said:

“We need to recognize that the platforms are pushing users away from clicks, which means we can no longer depend on earning that click. We need to optimize for impressions and make it as easy as possible for readers/consumers to convert in order to push our marketing forward. That means we need to spoon-feed them reasons to choose us, search for us, and hell, quickly find that link in bio. It doesn’t mean “never link,” it means we need to think bigger and more strategically than just dropping links in our social media posts.”

It’s no wonder our data shows 70.2% of Facebook posts being zero-click content.

#25 Test and measure everything

The Facebook engagement post ideas shared in this guide can only get you so far. To unlock real growth for your Facebook account, you need to be tracking your progress and adjusting your strategy along the way.

For example, you may see other businesses getting more engagement with Facebook reels. However, your audience may love high-quality images better.

One way to get insights like these is by using native insights available in Facebook page dashboard. It can show you overall Facebook page growth, follower growth, reach, page views & previews, post insights, and audience insights.

If you want to dig deeper, we recommend starting with Socialinsider’s free trial. You can identify top-performing content, run a competitive analysis, and get detailed analytical reports to guide your Facebook engagement strategy.

Final thoughts

Facebook engagement matters. But, at the end of the day, it’s not just about getting likes and comments on your posts. It’s about creating an effective Facebook marketing strategy that impacts your bottom-line metrics. Be it generating leads or increasing sales.

By keeping your audience at the center, you can tailor content that attracts the right people to your Facebook page. Then it’s more about how you interact with them, nudge them to act on your CTAs, and keep them coming back for more.

Looking to adopt a tool to get you all the insights on how to build a solid Facebook engagement strategy? Get started with a free trial of Socialinsider.

FAQs on how to increase Facebook engagement

How to grow a Facebook page?

To grow a Facebook page, post high-quality, engaging content regularly, focusing on visuals, polls, and videos. Encourage followers to share posts and leverage Facebook Live and Stories for real-time engagement. You can even collaborate with influencers and interact actively with followers by responding to comments and messages to build community loyalty. Keep optimizing your strategy by tracking your growth with social media tools like Socialinsider.

Facebook, besides being the most used social media channel, also integrates the widest variety of features that facilitate communication between brands and their social audiences.

From the Facebook Marketplace that allows direct selling and simplifies the buyer’s journey to chatbots that are extremely helpful for customer support, social media marketing for Facebook remains a tactic that can have a significant impact on sales generation.

To discover the ins and outs of an effective Facebook marketing strategy, buckle up and read our in-depth guide below.

What is Facebook marketing?

Facebook marketing refers to brands’ strategies for using the social platform to facilitate their products and services promotion. It implies a series of tactics and tools, starting with the creation of a Facebook Page, followed by content meant to be leveraged for promotion.

Extensively, Facebook social media marketing encompasses community management, paid advertising, and the usage of multiple of the platform’s versatile features that enable customer support and outreach, such as Facebook Messenger or Facebook Groups, or direct selling, such as Facebook Marketplace.

While engagement on Facebook has plateaued, and platforms like TikTok tend to generate higher interaction rates, Facebook remains an essential pillar of brands’ social strategies. This is primarily due to the vast, loyal communities built over years of investment in the platform, which continues to offer unmatched reach and targeting capabilities for businesses.

One key aspect of effective Facebook marketing lies in performance analysis, helping brands gain actionable insights and fine-tune their strategies.

A well-crafted Facebook strategy aims to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, generate leads, and boost sales, all while adapting to the evolving digital landscape.

In the end, it's about leveraging Facebook’s unique strengths to achieve business-specific objectives in a competitive social media environment.

Benefits of Facebook marketing

Using Facebook as a marketing tool involves a lot of strategic planning, which, despite the sweat and tears, usually results in tremendous gains.

Even with TikTok being so popular nowadays, Facebook remains the social media platform with the highest number of users. Therefore, with the network offering a great reach potential, the benefits of leveraging Facebook marketing are plenty.

• Improves brand’s visibility

By building a presence on Facebook for your company, you get to widen your horizon while more users will have the chance to find out about your business’ products and services.

Enlarging your audience means that you can also extend your sales. Once you get in front of your target audience, if your posts are engaging enough, they will become curious to learn more about your brand and products or services.

• Facilitates connections with target audiences

Being the social media platform with the highest number of users, Facebook offers great exposure potential in the case of multiple demographics.

According to data, the largest segment of Facebook’s users consists of the 25-34 age group, which also represents the second most active buyers category.

The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to proving why using Facebook for marketing is a great idea. Now all that’s left to do is to come up with the right creative concepts for your Facebook marketing campaigns. Look into what your target audiences are interested in and get the ball rolling.

• Direct sales that are easy to initiate

With Facebook allowing the creation of online stores directly within the platform, users’ buying journeys are shortened and streamlined, which leads to a win-win customer-brand relationship. While the consumers spend less time on the purchase process, brands increase their sales and revenue.

How to use Facebook for marketing?

Set up a Facebook page

To get started with Facebook marketing, you first have to create your business’ Facebook Page. To do that, you initially have to own a personal profile.

The first thing you need to do when creating a Facebook Business Page will be to log in to Facebook and choose “Pages” from your left-sided menu, then click on the “Create New Page” button displayed.

Then you’ll have to:

• Select your page name and business category
• Fill in your contact information
• Add design elements that include your profile and cover image.
• Additionally, you can even integrate CTAs, such as ”Call Now”, “Shop” or “Message”
  

TIP: don’t forget to verify your page (which means getting that blue check mark) that will appear near your page’s name. A verified page enables an increased level of trust within your business, which is extremely important for purchase initiation in today’s social media world.

Secondly, you might think about experimenting with some ads to expand your brand’s visibility and get closer to your target audience. For that to be possible, you need first to set up a Facebook ad account.

TIP: With Facebook being the social media platform with the highest ROI among all the paid marketing channels available, you should consider leveraging this promotion type when creating your Facebook marketing strategy.

Leverage multiple Facebook marketing features

Facebook comes with some native marketing features that are built to maximize brand visibility and engagement.

Facebook Messenger Bots

These bots facilitate connections with your audience by automatically responding to inquiries, showing that their needs matter and that you value their time. This instant communication tool enhances the customer experience, allowing for quick resolutions and boosting satisfaction.

Facebook E-commerce Manager

The E-commerce Manager allows businesses to integrate their product catalogs directly on Facebook, making it easier for users to browse, purchase, and engage with products without leaving the platform. This seamless shopping experience increases conversion potential and enhances the overall customer journey.

First, you'll need to determine which is the promotion type that best suits your business. Secondly, you'll need to learn how to efficiently upload your product's info, which should be creative, detailed, and descriptive in order to attract your customers to add them to their cart.

Lastly, you should select what category best describes what your brand sells. Make sure you complete everything as accurately as possible.

And there you have it. Through just a couple of steps, you've simplified your customers' buying journey. By leveraging this Facebook feature, your audience won’t need to click on your website and add to the cart there. They will be able to directly purchase from Facebook what their heart desires through the platform's e-commerce integrated feature.

Facebook Groups

Groups enable brands to foster communities where consumers can connect with each other and share experiences. By providing value within these groups, businesses can encourage consumers to become brand advocates, which strengthens trust and builds long-term brand loyalty.

Facebook Ads

With Facebook Ads, brands can reach highly targeted audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This ability to precisely target segments increases the potential for conversions and delivers a strong social media ROI, making ads a crucial element in your Facebook marketing plan.

How to create a Facebook marketing strategy?

After creating your Facebook business page, your next step would be to start planning your marketing strategies for Facebook. Or, if you've landed a new client with an already existing Facebook page, the next step you'll have to cover will be to run an audit.

At first glance, Facebook marketing might seem simple, but true success demands consistency and strategic thinking.

Run an audit of your current social accounts

Begin by evaluating the current status of your Facebook accounts. Running a social media audit will help you understand how your brand is performing and identify areas for improvement.

Look at key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the number of followers, engagement rate, and posting frequency. This will give you a baseline to measure future success and provide insights into what type of content resonates with your audience.

Set your Facebook marketing goals

For this part, you should start by asking yourself what you are trying to achieve by leveraging Facebook marketing.

Needless to say that any business’ end goal is to increase sales, but in the case of specific channels, such as Facebook, brands could establish goals that extend through the whole marketing funnel, from getting more brand awareness to loyalizing customers to generating direct sales.

Understand your audience

Facebook has a distinct core audience, but it’s important to identify which specific segments align with your brand’s target group.

Start by creating social media personas—fictional profiles representing your ideal customers—based on socio-demographic criteria. Understanding their needs and pain points will help you tailor your content to be more relevant and engaging.

Crafting posts that resonate with your audience is the first step toward achieving the goals you’ve set for your Facebook marketing.

Regularly monitor Facebook audience analytics using Facebook analytics tools to ensure your content is reaching the target audience. If it's not, adjust your strategy to improve results.

Spy on competitor’s strategies

Monitoring your competitors’ Facebook strategies can provide valuable insights into tactics you might be missing and help you uncover opportunities for gaining a competitive edge.

Facebook analytics tools like Socialinsider make this process easier by allowing you to track your competitors' performance, compare engagement metrics, and analyze the effectiveness of their content.

For example, by using Socialinsider to analyze the number of posts Mercedes-Benz shares and correlating it with their engagement and reach, you can see how their more active Facebook presence generates better results compared to BMW, which posts less frequently. This type of insight helps you refine your strategy and make data-driven decisions that improve your overall performance.

Create a content plan

When creating your Facebook content strategy, it’s essential to define several themes that your posts will cover. These content pillars—such as product promotion, behind-the-scenes moments, or posts highlighting your company’s values—will bring diversity to your content mix and keep your audience engaged over the long term.

Start by identifying what type of information is relevant to your audience and aligns with your brand’s positioning and mission. Then, determine which post formats will best showcase each content topic.

For instance, product promotions might work well with images or videos, while company culture can be highlighted through behind-the-scenes posts or Stories.

If you’re seeking inspiration, a great approach is to conduct a social media competitor analysis to see which content topics your competitors are leveraging and adopt the ones that suit your brand.

Also incorporating the latest social media trends into your strategy is another smart move that can boost your brand’s visibility and engagement.

Once your content pillars are in place, the next step is to establish a posting frequency and timeline. This ensures that your posts are consistent and timely, which is key to maintaining social media engagement.

Types of Facebook posts

To keep your content diverse and engaging, it’s important to use a variety of post formats. Here are several different post types you can incorporate into your strategy:

• Text-based posts are simple but effective, allowing you to share announcements, pose questions, or spark discussions with your audience. These posts are especially useful for engagement, as they encourage users to interact directly without leaving the platform.

• Static images are ideal for showcasing your brand visually. These posts might include product photos, customer-generated content (UGC), behind-the-scenes snapshots, or anything else that visually represents your business.

• Videos are versatile and can vary in length, making them perfect for a range of content, from product demos and tutorials to interviews and seasonal campaigns. Facebook videos are generally horizontal and longer, which makes them ideal for storytelling and in-depth content.

• Stories are short, temporary content that disappears after 24 hours and can include either photos or videos. These are great for quick updates, event announcements, or giving a real-time look behind the scenes. Stories also bypass Facebook’s algorithm, making them a more direct way to stay top-of-mind with your followers.

• Reels are short, engaging, vertical videos similar to TikTok content, designed to grab attention quickly. They are typically more playful and creative, using music, dynamic captions, and eye-catching visuals. Reels are great for showcasing entertaining content that drives high engagement.

Using a mix of these post types—text, images, videos, Stories, and Reels—you’ll be able to create a diverse content strategy that keeps your audience engaged.

Optimize your posting calendar

Once you’ve planned your content, it’s crucial to optimize your posting schedule to maximize social media reach and engagement, especially when implementing your Facebook ad campaign strategy.

The best time to post on Facebook varies based on the behavior and preferences of your target audience, which is key for effective Facebook social media management.

Analyzing audience activity patterns through Facebook analytics tools helps you identify optimal posting times, ensuring your content reaches the right people.

Also, consistency in posting at the right times boosts visibility and interactions, which are essential for successful Facebook marketing campaigns. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your posting calendar - as audience behavior and platform algorithms evolve - will improve your results.

Additionally, testing different posting times and monitoring performance are critical elements of refining your Facebook ad strategies to achieve the best outcomes.

Make data-driven improvement decisions

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) helps you to identify the best and least-performing content patterns and trends. Analyzing these social media metrics will enable you to make informed decisions on what type of content resonates most with your audience and use these insights to guide future efforts.

For example, Popeyes has found that content related to special offers and promotions tends to generate high engagement. As a result, the brand incorporates this pillar heavily into its posting strategy to maximize interaction and keep followers engaged.

By consistently reviewing performance data, you can refine your approach and focus on what drives the most value for your brand.

Experiment with ads

A successful Facebook marketing technique seamlessly integrates both organic and paid efforts to maximize reach and impact.

Organic efforts are focused on the long-term, as they build trust, credibility, and brand loyalty over time. While organic reach may fluctuate and take time to develop, its effect on brand reputation and customer relationships is invaluable. These efforts help establish an authentic connection with your audience, fostering engagement and loyalty that lasts.

On the other hand, paid social media is a performance-driven approach that prioritizes immediate results. It allows brands to quickly reach a wider audience, drive conversions, and achieve specific social media goals such as increasing sales or generating leads.

Facebook advertising strategies offer a targeted solution, ensuring that your content reaches the right people at the right time.

By combining both strategies, brands can leverage the best of both worlds. Investing in paid ads helps amplify your message, while organic content maintains the trust and connection you’ve built with your audience.

Paid ads also give you full control over who sees your content, allowing you to exclude irrelevant audiences and focus on high-potential customers, ensuring that your marketing efforts are both effective and efficient.

How and when to leverage Facebook ads?

When talking about how to use Facebook as a marketing tool, you need to understand there are two main directions, each with its specific set of strategies, and those are organic Facebook marketing and paid Facebook marketing.

For optimized results, it’s recommended to mix these Facebook marketing tactics.

While organic Facebook marketing represents the foundation for building your presence within the app, portraying consistency in addressing your community’s needs, which, in the long run, is crucial for brand perception, paid Facebook marketing provides you with extended reach. And by putting you in front of more people that belong to your target audience, paid Facebook advertising can help you boost sales more rapidly.

However, when deciding to leverage paid Facebook marketing to increase your chances of getting the results you’re looking for, you should make sure you checked off the following milestones of your list:

• You have a complete Facebook Business Page
• You gained at least 1000 followers
• You’ve been posting consistently for a while (try to have at least 20 posts)
• You have created multiple creative assets for each ad you’re planning on running
• You thought about an A/B testing strategy.
  

Another important aspect you have to keep in mind when creating your paid Facebook marketing strategy is that the platform enables multiple options for paid advertising, and you should carefully choose the formats that benefit you the most.

The basic level of paid Facebook ads is the boosted post option, which consists of investing some money in an already published post to (guess what) boost its performance.

The more advanced Facebook paid advertising feature consists of ad campaigns, which implies creating a particular set of ads for a specific campaign, such as a product launch, and it requires more handling and supervision.

For budget optimization, it is recommended to start your journey into the world of paid Facebook advertising with the simpler versions and gradually invest more into ad campaigns as you gain insights into how the platform’s algorithm works.

Depending on your business’ needs, you’ll have to focus your Facebook ads campaigns on the objectives you’re trying to achieve. For different goals, you’ll have to create different campaigns.

Now, based on your brand’s marketing plan, think about how Facebook ads can help you achieve the goals you’ve set. Facebook ads can be leveraged for multiple purposes, from awareness, engagement, and traffic to leads and sales.

Facebook marketing costs

As mentioned earlier, digital marketing on Facebook can be divided into “free” and paid tactics.

While organic Facebook marketing efforts don’t imply any costs (except what you’re paying to your social media agency, if the case, obviously), in the case of paid Facebook, there are no restraints on the budget you can spend.

When you’re setting up your Facebook campaigns, you’re in total control of the money you put on the line, as there is no threshold on either the lower or the upper limits.

To give you a hand when creating your Facebook marketing budget for paid ads, we’ve gathered below the average Facebook ads costs nowadays:

• Facebook Ads CPM (Cost Per 1,000 views) – $14.9
• Facebook Ads CPC (Cost Per Click) – $0.44

Facebook marketing tips

Engage with your audience

Social media is a two-way communication street, and actively engaging with your followers is key. Today’s consumers often choose brands based on their values and the experiences they provide. Responding to comments, messages, and mentions shows that you care about your audience, building trust and loyalty.

Leverage Facebook Live Events

Facebook Live is a great way to build meaningful relationships with your audience. Hosting live events such as Q&As, product demos, or tutorials allows you to connect with followers in real-time, answer their questions, and provide solutions to their needs.

Ask questions

Asking questions in your posts is a great way to engage your social media community. This shows that you care about their interests and allows you to discover their pain points, which your brand can address. Engaging with followers through questions also boosts interaction and keeps your audience involved.

Use albums to showcase company culture and events

Albums are, at the moment, the best-performing content format on Facebook. Thanks to their storytelling nature, which allows viewers to get deeper into the company's journey with every picture presented, these post types are great for revealing more about your company - from office traditions and team gatherings to event presentations.

Facebook marketing examples

To give you a bit of help when it comes to choosing the Facebook marketing strategies you should leverage for successful results, we took a peek at how some of the world’s most beloved brands handle their Facebook presence.

Starbucks

When it comes to gaining some inspiration for your Facebook marketing plan, one of the most creative and fresh brands you can check out is Starbucks. First and foremost, the brand’s marketing strategy for Facebook is centered around its core mission - that of creating a feeling of belongingness, a community whose members share the same values.

What makes the brand’s Facebook marketing campaigns stand out is its authentic, human vibe, which is achieved through relatable messages and also user generated content.

Last but not least, another reason why Starbucks is a great example of Facebook marketing done right lies in its strategy of creating diversified content. From Reels to GIFS and albums to the more classical formats, such as status, or image post types, Starbucks’s Facebook page has a highly dynamic and entertaining nature.

Booking.com

The brand’s Facebook success is based on its highly storytelling nature. By highlighting its holiday destination and accommodation options through vibrant creatives, altogether with suggestions of dream scenarios for travelers, Booking.com does an amazing job of charming and engaging its Facebook community.

Effective tools for successful Facebook Marketing

To run a successful Facebook growth strategy, having the right tools in place is crucial. Here are three essential tools to elevate your Facebook marketing efforts.

Canva: for design

Creating visually appealing content is crucial for Facebook growth and capturing your audience's attention.

Canva, a user-friendly design tool, helps marketers create high-quality graphics, images, and videos without advanced design skills.

With templates designed specifically for social media, you can easily craft eye-catching visuals for posts, ads, and stories that align with your brand.

Incorporating tools like Canva into a good marketing strategy ensures your Facebook content stands out, engages your audience, and drives better results.

Grammarly: for content

Nobody likes social media content with typos and grammatical errors.

Grammarly helps ensure your posts are clear, engaging, and free of errors. It checks grammar, spelling, and tone, ensuring that your Facebook content is polished and professional.

Whether you're writing captions, blog posts, or longer-form content, Grammarly is essential for creating copy that resonates with your audience.

Socialinsider: for social media analytics

To achieve sustainable growth in social media marketing on Facebook you need to track your performance.

Without tracking performance, it’s impossible to understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

To measure the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing efforts, Socialinsider provides powerful social media analytics.

With Socialinsider, marketers can easily track key Facebook marketing KPIs to gain deeper insights into their content's performance. Some of the key metrics include:

• Engagement by followers and by reach: This metric helps you understand how well your content resonates with your audience, both in terms of followers engaging with your posts and the overall reach of each post. It provides a clearer picture of your content’s true impact.
• Best performing and least performing content formats: Socialinsider allows you to identify which content formats—such as videos, images, or text posts—are driving the most engagement and which are underperforming. This insight is crucial for refining your content strategy.

• Distribution of likes, comments, and shares: This metric breaks down audience interactions, helping you identify the types of content that spark specific behavioral patterns. Whether it’s posts that drive likes, conversations, or shares, these insights can guide your strategy to create content that fosters engagement.
• Top and Bottom Posts: By highlighting your top-performing posts as well as those that fall short, you can learn which types of content resonate most with your audience and where improvements are needed.

Final thoughts

Marketing your company on Facebook requires a strong content strategy for Facebook that integrates both organic and paid efforts.

By leveraging tools like Socialinsider, social media managers can track key metrics, refine your approach, and optimize results.

Social media marketing for Facebook is crucial for engaging audiences, driving sales, and building brand loyalty.

With Facebook’s wide reach and advanced targeting, brands can maximize visibility and conversions, making Facebook in marketing a powerful tool for growth.

FAQs on Facebook marketing

How important is it to leverage Facebook video marketing?

Video marketing makes for an important element of a Facebook strategy, as most social media users nowadays appreciate the most this information-delivery method. In the form of Reels, or regular, in-feed posts, video content is one of the top-performing post types.

What does marketing in Facebook Groups mean?

Facebook Groups marketing refers to promoting your business in Facebook's private spaces, where the communities gathered around a certain topic are named groups. This can be done by creating special promotions for the members of a Facebook Group or simply providing the members of a group with information about how your brand's products or services can represent a solution (where the case) to various needs they may have.

According to Statista, a whopping 89% of marketing specialists use Facebook as part of their digital campaigns. And why not? More than a billion people connect with businesses on Facebook weekly, making it one of the largest marketing channels.

However, with 90% of brands having a presence on Facebook, generating revenue through this platform can be challenging for many companies. This is where a less commonly used yet effective Facebook marketing approach can make a difference: having a video marketing strategy.

Why creating video content is imperative for an effective Facebook strategy?

Despite representing only 15% of organic content on Facebook, videos—including both Reels and traditional formats—command the highest engagement rates across all types of posts.

This presents a unique opportunity for businesses to leverage the power of videos on Facebook to foster brand loyalty and connect with their audiences on a deeper level.

Despite efforts to boost engagement, Facebook Reels saw a significant year-over-year decrease in engagement by 46%. In 2024, the average engagement rate for Facebook Reels is 0.25%, trailing behind Facebook videos, which maintain a higher average engagement rate of 0.31%.

11 Facebook video marketing tips

When executed properly, video marketing for Facebook can become one of your most powerful strategies for maximizing social media reach and boosting engagement.

Let’s dive into the top 11 video content strategies for Facebook that every social media strategist should know about and add to their list of social media best practices.

#1. Opt for vertical videos to boost engagement rates

According to Socialinsider data, vertical videos (also known as portrait videos) consistently outperform other formats in terms of engagement. The chart below shows the average engagement rates by video format, clearly showing that vertical mode leads the pack.

For businesses with over 5,000 followers, vertical videos are particularly effective. While landscape videos may work well for smaller audiences, portrait mode is more suitable for larger business pages. This trend aligns with the fact that the majority of Facebook users—over 98%—access the platform via mobile devices. With such a significant mobile user base, vertical videos naturally fit the screen orientation, making them more engaging and easier to consume on mobile.

Choosing the right video format is among the top Facebook video best practices that marketers should implement in their strategies for optimized results.

#2. Create longer videos and Reels

In recent years, short-form video content has exploded in popularity thanks to platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. However, this doesn't mean that is all there is nowadays.

Actually, in Facebook's case, we tend to see that longer content actually performs better.

For example, when it comes to regular Facebook videos, data has indicated that the best-performing segment is the 3-minute interval.

How so, you might ask.

Well, if we think about it, it all comes down to Facebook's audience. If TikTok and Instagram are more appealing for Gen Z and Millenials, that tend to have more intense lifestyles that push them to be on fast forward, Facebook is a bit different from this perspective.

The need for a more slow-paced rhythm that will allow the platfiorm's audience to immerse itself into the videos is visible across Reels as well, with 60-90 seconds Facebook Reels being the most engaging.

Why longer videos work on Facebook:

• The platform's algorithm rewards content that keeps viewers engaged for longer periods.
• Users are seeking more value-packed or story-driven content.
• Brands can build stronger connections through storytelling, tutorials, and behind-the-scenes formats.

#3. Use different types of videos

Creating videos that yield high social media engagement requires more than just hitting record—you need to blend creativity with analytical insights to truly hook your audience.

One effective way to keep your content fresh and engaging is by using a variety of video content types for your video content strategy. Here are a few types of videos you can create:

• Product videos: Showcase your products in action to help potential customers understand their features and benefits.

• User-Generated video content: Sharing UGC video content created by your customers can build trust and authenticity, making your brand more relatable and improving brand loyalty.

• Q&As: Answer frequently asked questions or address common concerns in a video format, providing value while engaging with your audience.

• Interviews with experts/customer testimonials: Feature industry experts or satisfied customers to add credibility and reinforce trust in your brand.

• Weekly video series: Consistently release Facebook short videos on a specific topic or theme to build anticipation and keep your audience coming back for more.

• Tutorials: Educate your audience by walking them through how to use your products or solve a problem related to your industry.

• Company events videos: Highlighting company events can humanize your brand, offering a behind-the-scenes look that fosters a stronger connection with your audience.

Creating video content that covers different themes can help maintain audience interest, avoid content fatigue, and ensure your Facebook marketing videos remain dynamic and effective.

#4. Stir interest with a hook

On social media, capturing attention is a race against the clock. With the average human attention span for watching videos clocking in at just 8 seconds, you have a very brief window to make an impact before viewers scroll past your content. This is why starting your video with a strong, captivating hook is essential.

A well-crafted hook could be a:

• surprising fact,
• an intriguing question,
• or a compelling visual that immediately grabs attention.

The goal is to create something so engaging in those first few seconds that your audience feels compelled to keep watching. Whether it's through bold statements, eye-catching visuals, or an emotional appeal, your hook needs to resonate quickly and deeply.

Remember, if you don't hook your audience in those crucial first moments, you risk losing them entirely. So, invest time in crafting an attention-grabbing opening to ensure your message gets through and your video delivers the impact you’re aiming for.

Pro Tip: You can use AI-generated video content to create personalized, compelling hooks that cater to your audience's preferences. Using video content analytics software will help you identify the most effective elements to incorporate in your videos, improving video content consumption and boosting your overall video content in marketing strategy.

#5. ​​Leverage the "Aha" moment to segment your audience

The "aha" moment is that crucial point in your video content where your audience truly connects with your brand, understanding who you are and what you offer. This moment is essential in both organic and paid strategies, as it marks when a viewer transitions from being just an observer to someone who sees real value in your brand.

In an organic context, the "aha" moment could occur in various types of content, such as Facebook Live videos or well-crafted explainer clips.

Whether you're leveraging Facebook video optimization techniques to maximize reach or simply focusing on creating the best Facebook videos for engagement, this moment refers to when viewers see the value in your offerings.

In paid campaigns, particularly with Facebook video ads, the "aha" moment is more measurable. It’s when viewers reach a specific point in the video where they’ve seen enough to understand your brand and evaluate if your offering is interesting enough to proceed to purchase.

But regardless of talking about organic reach or paid ads, the goal remains the same: to deliver content that provides genuine value and sparks that moment of clarity.

Segmenting your audience around the "Aha" moment

To optimize your strategy, segment your audience based on their interaction with this "aha" moment, whether they’ve encountered it through organic or paid content:

• Before the "Aha" Moment: These individuals have yet to fully grasp your brand or the value you offer. For organic content, this might mean they’ve watched a portion of your video but haven’t engaged further. For paid campaigns, they might have watched less than a significant percentage of your ad. Focus on delivering more introductory content, both organically and through targeted ads, that clearly communicates your brand’s value. Consider using Facebook video optimization strategies to ensure these initial videos capture attention and effectively introduce your brand.

• After the "Aha" Moment: These viewers have connected with your brand and understand your offering. Organically, they might start engaging more deeply with your content—liking, sharing, or commenting. In paid campaigns, they’ve watched enough of your ad to have crossed the "aha" threshold. Once they reach this point, you can begin serving them with more tailored content. For example, after watching an ad, they may be more likely to engage further with follow-up ads or posts. When brands offer targeted content, such as personalized messages or offers, it can deepen their engagement even more.

Calculating the "Aha" moment

For paid ads, particularly on platforms like Facebook, you can use video engagement metrics to define this moment.

For instance, if your "aha" moment occurs around the 60-second mark of a 90-second video, you might create an audience segment of viewers who have watched at least 75% of the video, ensuring they’ve seen that key part. This is particularly useful when you aim to create Facebook videos that resonate deeply with your audience and drive conversions.

For organic content, while the "aha" moment is less quantifiable, social media analytics tools can help you identify when users tend to engage more deeply. Regular social media audits can reveal patterns in how your audience interacts with your content, helping you pinpoint these crucial moments.

Pro Tip: Regardless of whether your strategy is organic or paid, the true trigger for the "aha" moment is the value you provide. Focus on creating content that genuinely helps, educates, or entertains your audience. The more they learn or get entertained by your videos, the more they will engage with your brand.

Use social media analysis to gain deeper insights into your audience's behavior. Identifying how different segments engage with your content can refine your messaging and improve your retargeting strategies.

#6. Caption your videos for accessibility

Did you know that 75% of people watch videos on mute? Without captions, a significant portion of your audience might miss your message entirely. Relying solely on audio risks losing viewers who scroll past because they can't immediately understand your content.

While a captivating hook is important, captions are essential from the start. They provide immediate context, helping viewers decide if the video is worth watching with sound on.

Captions also make your content accessible to those with hearing impairments and improve comprehension in noisy environments.

Beyond accessibility, captions can boost your video's SEO, enhancing discoverability and driving more organic traffic.

In short, adding captions isn’t just an option—it’s a necessity for maximizing the engagement rate, reach, and overall effectiveness of your Facebook video strategy.

#7. Upload videos directly into the platform

While you can always post your videos on platforms like YouTube and then share them on your Facebook page using a link, native videos uploaded directly to Facebook tend to generate significantly more engagement.

According to statistics, Facebook native videos have up to 86% higher reach, receive 168% more interactions, and get 477% more shares compared to YouTube videos posted on Facebook.

The reason behind this is that platforms like Facebook are designed to keep users engaged on their site for as long as possible.

When you share a link to an external platform, like sharing YouTube videos on Facebook, it has the potential to direct users away from Facebook. This is why the algorithm tends to promote such posts less.

In contrast, uploading videos to Facebook directly keeps viewers on the platform, allowing Facebook to maximize user engagement and ad revenue. As a result, when you upload videos to Facebook, the platform's algorithms prioritize these native videos, leading to better visibility and interaction.

To fully leverage the power of Facebook video marketing, it's important to understand the different types of videos available on the platform.

Linked Videos: Videos hosted on another platform, like YouTube, and shared via a link on Facebook. These generally receive less engagement compared to native videos.

Native Videos: Videos uploaded directly to Facebook, which receive higher engagement due to algorithmic preference. Facebook native videos are available in the following formats:

• Regular Video Posts: Standard video uploads are ideal for long-form content.
• Facebook Reels: Short-form videos for quick, engaging content.
• Facebook Stories: Vertical videos that disappear after 24 hours.

Facebook Live Videos: Real-time broadcasts that are highly favored by the algorithm, often resulting in immediate engagement and interaction.

Facebook Video Ads: Paid video promotions that appear in users' feeds, offering targeted reach and the ability to drive specific actions.

While it’s possible to use the same video content across different platforms, make sure to upload the videos directly to each platform to maximize engagement.

Tailoring your content for each platform not only improves visibility but also ensures that your message resonates with the unique audience of each social media site, becoming an essential video content strategy for success.

#8. Integrate video content in multiple stages of the marketing funnel

If you've been keeping up with marketing trends, you're likely familiar with "the funnel"—the journey a buyer takes from discovering your brand to making a purchase. This powerful concept represents the journey a buyer takes, from the first moment they encounter your brand to when they finally make a purchase.

But here’s the thing: not all buyers are at the same stage, and each stage requires a different approach to messaging—especially when it comes to video marketing.

At the top of the funnel, where you're introducing your brand to potential customers, broad, high-level videos are key. These videos should be designed to capture attention, spark interest, and build brand awareness. They’re your chance to make a memorable first impression and plant the seed of curiosity.

As you guide prospects further down the funnel, your videos for Facebook need to become more specific. This is where you highlight what sets you apart from the competition. Why should they choose you over others? Address these questions with your Facebook video ads or even organic videos that show your unique value proposition, showcase your products or services in action, and start to build trust.

When your audience reaches the bottom of the funnel, they’re almost ready to make a decision. Here, the messaging should be laser-focused and include a strong call to action.

Whether it’s a limited-time offer, a product demo, or customer testimonials, these videos should push your potential customers over the finish line, turning interest into action.

Creating video content and tailoring them to each funnel stage ensures you speak directly to your audience's needs, driving them closer to conversion. Be it long-form video content or short ones, all should serve a purpose as per your funnel.

#9. Repurpose successful content

Repurposing is the practice of taking existing content and adapting it for different formats or platforms to extend its reach and impact.

Creating any type of valuable content, be it long or short-form video content, takes time and effort, and using just one platform to distribute your content might not help in getting significant results. And not just that, even user-generated video content should be repurposed so that maximum people can get a reason to trust your brand.

Facebook can be a powerful channel to capitalize on content you've already created, repurposing it into engaging video formats. However, repurposing content into videos requires a strategic approach to maximize impact.

How to repurpose video content?

Repurposing your most effective content pillars for social media across different channels is a great starting point for creating videos.

Since you already know there's interest in these topics, turning them into video content makes the information more digestible and engaging for your audience.

By repurposing video content, you can extend the reach of your content, engage different audience segments, and maximize the impact of your original material across multiple platforms.

Repurposing other content formats into Facebook videos:

• Transform blog posts into video summaries: Highlight key points from blog posts in video format to engage audiences who prefer visual content. You can turn these into short videos (reels) and post those reels on Facebook.

• Turn infographics into explainer videos: Animate data and add narration to make infographics more dynamic and shareable.

• Convert podcasts into video episodes: Add visuals or static images to podcast audio to appeal to video-focused audiences.

• Use webinar recordings for educational videos: Edit and shorten webinars into digestible clips for educational content on Facebook.

Reverse strategy:

• Create short clips for social media: Break down full-length Facebook videos into bite-sized clips for sharing across multiple platforms.

• Turn video content into a blog post: Transcribe video content and expand it into detailed blog posts for SEO and content variety.

• Use video content for email marketing: Feature video snippets in newsletters to drive traffic and engagement.

• Transform videos into infographics: Extract and visualize key data points from videos into infographics for easy sharing.

• Create a podcast from video content: Repurpose video audio into podcast episodes to reach listeners who prefer audio content.

Take Mailchimp Intuit as an example—they’ve effectively repurposed their social media marketing strategy video series into Facebook videos, podcasts, and shorter video clips, allowing them to reach different segments of their audience across various platforms.

For example, they create a series of videos that help people who want to run their own business. But they don’t just share the videos on their platform, they turn the longer videos into short ones and share it across multiple platforms.

Just like recurring emails in a marketing campaign, repurposing is a smart way to save time and resources. If you’ve already created great video content, repurposing it can help you squeeze even more value out of your efforts.

Pro Tip: Use social competitive intelligence to analyze how competitors are repurposing their content. This insight can help you refine your own strategy and identify new opportunities to reach and engage your audience.

Also, you can use ai video creation tools and other video content tools to create creative video content if you’re short on budget.

#10. Draw insights from your most engaging videos

Understanding what makes your videos successful is key to refining your overall video content plan.

Tapping into performance data, like video content analytics can help marketers explore valuable social media insights from their most engaging content. This process allows you to identify patterns in your top-performing videos—such as the themes, formats, or content pillars that consistently capture your audience’s attention.

For instance, through a video content analysis, you might discover that videos focusing on customer testimonials or educational content receive higher engagement rates.

Or perhaps certain video lengths or visual styles are more appealing to your viewers. Recognizing these patterns empowers you to create more of the content that works and less of what doesn’t, ultimately leading to better engagement and conversion rates.

Socialinsider makes this process even more effective by providing in-depth analytics, helping you discover your best video content and video content trends, and offering you the chance to improve your strategy.

With Socialinsider, you can track key metrics, compare performance across different video types, and gain a comprehensive understanding of what drives success in your Facebook video marketing efforts. Armed with these insights, you can fine-tune your strategy, ensuring that each new video you create is more impactful than the last.

Discover here a detailed list of Facebook analytics tools that will help you level up your reporting and strategic thinking.

Pro Tip: Conducting a Facebook audit to evaluate the performance of your videos on the platform is one of the video content best practices that will undoubtedly elevate your brand on social

#11. Establish clear goals for your Facebook video ads

With videos continuing to dominate social media, it's important to recognize how powerful Facebook video ads can be. In fact, according to a Databox study, 67.55% of Facebook advertisers say videos drive more ad clicks on the platform compared to other content types.

To make the most of your video ads, it's important to define what you want to achieve. Whether your goal is to improve brand visibility, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or boost sales, having a clear objective will guide your video content plan and help you measure success.

Best practices for effective Facebook video ads:

• Include a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Every video ad should have a clear and compelling CTA that directs viewers to the next steps. Whether it’s “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” or “Sign Up,” your CTA should align with your campaign goal and encourage immediate action.

• Run A/B Tests: To optimize performance, it's important to experiment with different versions of your video ads. A/B testing allows you to compare various elements, such as different video lengths, headlines, CTAs, and visuals, to see what resonates best with your audience. By continuously testing and refining your ads, you can improve engagement and maximize your ROI.

• Optimize for Mobile Viewing: With over 98% of Facebook users accessing the platform via mobile devices, ensuring your video ads are optimized for mobile viewing is one of the most crucial video content strategies. Use vertical or square video formats, which take up more screen space on mobile devices, and keep your videos concise to maintain attention on smaller screens.

• Focus on the First Few Seconds: The first few seconds of your video are critical for grabbing attention. When you create video content, ensure that you start with a strong visual hook or a compelling statement that immediately engages viewers. Since people often scroll quickly through their feeds, making an impact right from the start is essential to prevent viewers from scrolling past your ad.

Establishing clear social media goals and following best practices can help you ensure that your video ads for Facebook are not only visually compelling but also strategically effective in achieving your marketing objectives.

Conclusion

Facebook video marketing isn't just another fleeting social media trend (remember Clubhouse?); it's a crucial component of any effective social media strategy.

The reason is simple: regardless of who your target audience is, there's a high likelihood they're on Facebook, and videos consistently achieve the highest engagement rates.

So, if you're ready to start your video marketing journey on Facebook and boost your social media ROI, these tips will help you create impactful content, optimize your campaigns, and connect with your audience more effectively.

From understanding the importance of captions to leveraging the "aha" moment, these strategies will set you up for success in the competitive world of Facebook video marketing.

FAQs about Facebook video marketing

What does having a video marketing strategy on Facebook imply?

Having a video marketing strategy on Facebook implies planning, creating, and distributing video content tailored to engage your target audience, achieving specific goals (like brand awareness or conversions), and optimizing performance through best practices like mobile optimization, strong CTAs, and A/B testing. It's about using video to drive measurable results on the platform.