Facebook analytics can be overwhelming, am I right?

When I log onto our co-op Facebook page and download 27 excel spreadsheet pages of analytics, I seriously want to curl up in the fetal position and cry.

Surely there’s a better way.

Well, my friends, let me introduce you to my newest discovery… the engagement conversion rate. If you’re like a super analytics guru you probably already know this, feel free to skip ahead.

For the rest of us late adopters, here’s the skinny. This analytic (calculated as a percentage) can basically tell you how good of a job you are doing at engaging your audience while accounting for changes in reach over time.

At my co-op, engagement is our goal. Since I started our overall engagement has risen and I was feeling pretty darn good about myself. Until I found this little gem… My reach (not my content) is driving my engagement. Put simply, Facebook used to deliver my content to about 12,600 users per month and 2,400 of them engaged it. Now, Facebook delivers my content to 40,600 users per month and 3,000 of them engage it. Technically, my engagement has gone up. But, in reality, my ability to convert reach to engagement has gone down. Way down.

I think (read: hypothesis) that our engagement conversion was so good previously that Facebook assumed people really want this coop’s content so let’s start delivering it to more people. But, alas, they were wrong. They keep delivering my content to people who don’t seem to care at all (fools, all of them).

This information is solid gold! Now, I know that I need to seriously up my engagement game in order to keep up with all that beautiful (unpaid) reach that the Facebook algorithms have been gifted me with.

Want to discover your own engagement rate? It’s so easy! Download your crazy spreadsheet and delete all those extra columns.

Then, use Daily Page Consumptions divided by Daily Total Reach. It should give you a percentage you can track over time.

If you try it, sound off in the comments below. What was your score? How has it changed? Let me know how you’re doing, because just like you I’m trying to figure out how to be doing it better!