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Dominate the Data: Facebook Insights Helper

October 8, 2012 By 34 Comments
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facebook insights helper reach 600x228 Dominate the Data: Facebook Insights Helper

This is an example of a chart that was automatically generated to show a weekly trend for my Page.

Facebook Insights is both the most powerful and most underutilized tool of Facebook marketers. If you don’t use it, you’re marketing blind.

But the problem, of course, is that Insights is so deep and so difficult to digest that most Page admins don’t even bother. They may look at their Reach from the Page itself or they may view the top-level stats within the web version of Insights, but that’s simply not enough.

If you haven’t dug into your exports, you have no clue what’s going on with your Page.

But I know. You can spend hours digging through Insights, trying to figure out what it means. That’s why I spent hours building a spreadsheet so that you don’t have to.

I’m a bit of a spreadsheets geek, so I put that to work and created something that allows you to quickly view the daily, weekly and month trends of your Facebook Page covering 21 different metrics.

To get access, simply subscribe below. Whenever an update is made, I’ll make sure you know so that you have the latest version…

Watch this video to get a closer look at the Facebook Insights Helper and how you can use it.

Enjoy!

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Jon Loomer About Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer is a digital marketing consultant with a unique perspective on social media. He was introduced to Facebook in 2007 while with the NBA (back before Pages) and has been using Facebook for business ever since. Stay in touch by liking his Facebook Page (Jon Loomer Digital).

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  • Dirk

    It looks like a great tool! I tried to check it out, but I have Excel 2003 and it’s not compatible. If there’s a way to make it compatible with 2003, I’d love to give it a try!

    • Dirk

      I dug into this a little further and it’s not an Excel 2003 issue. I have a “Promote Page Posts” ad running with the option to “Keep my ad up-to-date by automatically promoting my most recent post.” So all my posts have a value >0 for Lifetime Post Paid Impressions, so the RemovePaid tab is stripping out all my posts. I’d love to see the sheet updated so instead of stripping out the entire post you just subtract out the Paid Impressions. Thoughts?

      • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

        Hey, Dirk! There are a few people like you who promote nearly every post, so the way the spreadsheet is currently structured it wouldn’t work for you. I’ll need to find a way around that, but it may be a matter of providing a separate option or tab. I still don’t think it makes sense to combine promoted and unpromoted posts, but there should be another solution.

        Thanks, and stay tuned!

  • http://www.facebook.com/margo.adams Margo Adams

    Put my email in and got nothing??

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Margo — Have you gotten it yet? I saw your message on my page, too. Based on that message, it looked like you had gotten your confirmation. Let me know if you still need help!

  • Guest

    Entered my email i.d and got nothing so far!!

  • Priya

    Entered my email i.d and got nothing so far.

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Priya — I’d check your spam just in case, but it may take a few minutes.

      • Priya

        Hey I got it. But am having excel 2003 and it says it doesn’t support that format. But even after file conversion, when I paste the key metrics nothing is generated. Do you have one for 2003 version?

        • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

          Hey, Priya! I think you’re all set now, but let me know if you still need help. Thanks!

  • Mitch

    I’ve downloaded the file. When I open it says the file has been opened as a read-only mode to protect the original file? One or more functions aren’t available and gives the infamous excel #NAME? error. Im using 2003 version of excel. Some versions of formatting and charts aren’t supported in 2003.

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Probably an issue with your version of Excel, Mitch. It’s 2012, my man!

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  • http://www.thedigitalpost.co.uk/ Jose Jimenez

    Thanks Jon, anything to help with Insights data is good! I’ve got it to work and when I get a chance I will spend some time looking at the data. I will also come back with any feedback.

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Thanks, Jose!

  • http://bit.ly/TinchLI Jeff Tincher

    Hey Jon, thanks for putting this together. Just received the welcome email and the Excel file. Something isn’t working 100% for me right now. What’s happening is the Date column on the Daily Trends tab just shows as #N/A. attached an image.

    I’m using Excel 2007 (office pc, I’ll check at home tonight with Office2010)
    a few questions:
    1. can we select less than 150 days? I know it’s not as good, but what about 100 days? just wondering.
    2. does your spreadsheet take into account multiple posts per day?

    thanks this looks like a great tool for reporting! looking fw to reading your blog for other great info!

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Hey, Jeff! The current iteration needs 150 days worth of data, but that’s something I’m going to clean up for the next version. On the main tab, there’s a little calculator to help you find the start date 150 days before your desired end date.

      Multiple posts in a given day are averaged out.

      Hope that helps. Let me know if you’re still having issues, but stay tuned! I’ll try to provide an update soon.

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  • Ahmed

    Hello John,
    I followed your steps however I am not automatically getting any charts for some reason.

    Can you advise?

    Thanks

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Ahmed — Could you send me your export (jon [at] jonloomer [dot] com)?

      • Ahmed Dawood

        Hi Jon, did you get my emails?

        Thanks

        • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

          Yes, I’ve sent this twice. Maybe check your spam?

  • http://twitter.com/nicolaslavin Nicola

    Hi Jon, I entered my email address and confirmed – should I automatically have been sent the spreadsheet?

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Nicola — Sorry for the late response. You should have received a confirmation email. Always possible it went to spam. Let me know if you still don’t have it!

      Jon

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  • AF

    Hi, I never got an email after subscribing, can you please help?

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Hey, did you check your spam? I show it was sent 15 minutes ago.

  • Reign Johnson

    Such a useful tool, thank you so much!

    A note for others who may have the same issue I did initially: It appears that the exported insights document now has an extra column entitled “permalinks.”

    Since this pushed the posted on date into a 7th column instead of the 6th, I wasn’t seeing any data in the charts until I deleted the “permalinks” column, at which point everything worked beautifully.

    Cheers!

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Thanks for the heads up, Reign! Adding this to my to-do list.

  • http://www.facebook.com/alessandro.rugge Alessandro Rugge

    This is a great tool! Thanks to Reign for pointing out the new column that needs to be deleted for the graphs to work (should consider updating the template).

    One key improvement would be to normalize these metrics in terms of % based on the number of page fans where appropriate. This would allow a more accurate metrics for reach and engagement and, more interestingly to me, allow for metrics that are normalized and may be compared across brands and pages. Another key improvement I suggest is break down by post type (perhaps using stacked columns charts)

    Normalization will allow benchmarking and understanding how we are doing relative to others (e.g. is 2% engagement per reached person good?) what are the pages that do better and worse than ours? what time of content do they post? how often and when?

    On this topic, can you recommend a repository of insights data voluntarily shared that we can analyze to benchmark our performance against brands similar to ours?

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Alessandro — Thanks for the feedback! The one obstacle around normalizing based on Fan count is that this data comes from a separate export. Doesn’t make it impossible, just more work for the user.

      Check out this tool from AgoraPulse:

      http://barometer.agorapulse.com

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  • http://aremi.me/ Caspar Aremi

    Jon, this worked for me when it was first released, but doesn’t seem to want to any more! Have Facebook changed the layout of insights reports?

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