Pages to Watch - Mining Facebook Insights for Content Ideas, Competitive Intel & Prospecting

We live in a world replete with data, statistics and analytics but that doesn't mean that all data are actionable or even worth our attention - given the daily grind.

In this post and the attached video I show you how to setup and use Facebook Page Insights Pages-to-Watch to keep an eye on competitors, find content ideas and even track prospects to be better prepared to close.

Adding Pages to Watch

Visit your Facebook page and click on Insights when logged in as a page admin. Then scroll to the bottom to add Pages-to-Watch, you have to add at least 5. Add competitors, sites you like/respect that are similar enough to you to be useful i.e. not USA Today or New York Times, and you can even add a few prospects.

You'll see data on how many Fans (Likes) they have, how often they've posted in the last week, and their 'engagement' which is the # of people who Liked, Commented or Shared a post.

This alone allows you to track and compare your efforts to competitors. If competitors are posting a lot but engagement is low it tells you a few things such as:

1. People don't care about what the page is posting
2. The page admins don't care about actually posting stuff their fans care to see
3. Few people are seeing anything - how do we know? Facebook posts perform better when engagement is high (or exists at all).

Check this out to learn how to improve your Facebook engagement - and watch the video

Building Content Strategy

In the video above you see that one publisher is killing it on engagement. You can see what their most popular posts are by clicking on their name. In this case you'll notice an array of high resolution images, specifically those of iconic or beautiful local scenes which plays well for publishers - less relevant for plumbers.

Learn from this a.k.a. copy them. But don't just copy, test variations to improve upon it and make it relevant for your business.

For instance, I encourage publishers to reach out to local photographers and ask for local image to feature - they give you images you promote them. Once you start to gain engagement start to ask for pictures from readers/fans then after those start pouring in - you may need to ask, and ask, and ask, but keep asking - then you can write articles with beautiful galleries and share them back to Facebook or even feature in print (if applicable).

Cycle complete.

B2B Prospecting

Prospecting this way is definitely more art than science but you can monitor businesses to see how much effort they're putting out on social media in order to determine who is likely in need of assistance and/or more apt to be interested in discussing how your local brand can help them grow their social media engagement. You may even pick up a thing or two.