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Understanding Facebook Post Performance Metrics

Facebook provides creators and business owners with data about how their posts perform. This information appears in a section called Facebook Insights, which shows numbers about who sees your posts and how they interact with them. Understanding these metrics helps you learn what kinds of content your audience finds interesting.

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The main metrics you'll see in Facebook Insights include reach, engagement, and impressions. Reach refers to the total number of people who see your post. Impressions count how many times your post appears on someone's screen—one person might see the same post multiple times, creating multiple impressions. These numbers differ because reach measures unique people while impressions measure total views.

Engagement metrics show how people interact with your content. This includes likes, comments, shares, and clicks. When someone clicks a link in your post, reacts with an emoji, or leaves a comment, that counts as engagement. Posts with higher engagement rates tend to get shown to more people in Facebook's algorithm. For example, a post with 50 likes and 10 comments has more engagement than one with just 5 likes and no comments.

Video posts often show different metrics than image or text posts. Video metrics include video views, watch time, and how far people watch before stopping. A metric called "average watch time" shows how many seconds the average viewer watches your video. If your video is 60 seconds long but people stop watching after 20 seconds on average, that tells you something about whether your video keeps people's interest.

Practical takeaway: Start by checking your Facebook Insights regularly to see which posts get the most reach and engagement. Write down which types of posts perform best—whether that's videos, photos, links, or text updates. This data becomes your roadmap for creating more content your audience enjoys.

How Facebook's Algorithm Decides Which Posts to Show

Facebook uses a complex system to decide which posts appear in people's feeds. This system considers many factors about the post itself, the person viewing the feed, and the relationship between the person and the page that posted. Understanding how this works helps explain why some posts reach many people while others reach only a few.

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One major factor is engagement velocity, which means how quickly people interact with your post after it goes live. If many people like, comment, or share your post in the first hour, Facebook's system notices this and shows it to more people. This is why timing matters—posting when your audience is online increases the chance of quick engagement. If you post at 2 AM when nobody in your audience is awake, you might get fewer early interactions, and the algorithm shows it to fewer people overall.

The algorithm also looks at what type of content the person usually engages with. If someone regularly watches videos and ignores image posts, Facebook shows them more videos. If someone often comments on posts from specific pages, Facebook prioritizes those pages' content in their feed. This personalization means the same post looks different to different people—your post might appear prominently in one person's feed but not at all in another's.

Post type matters significantly. Facebook's algorithm typically prioritizes video content and posts that spark conversation through comments. Posts with high comment counts get shown to more people than posts with only likes. Shares also signal importance—when someone shares your post, it reaches their friends and tells Facebook's algorithm the content is valuable. Text posts that ask questions often generate more comments than posts that simply make statements.

Page history also influences the algorithm. If your page consistently posts quality content, Facebook's system learns to trust your page and shows your posts to more people. Pages that post low-quality content or content that violates Facebook's policies see their posts reach fewer people over time.

Practical takeaway: Post content when your audience is most active, aim for content that encourages comments and shares, and maintain a consistent pattern of quality posts. Check your Insights to see what time of day your audience is most active, then schedule posts for those times.

What Different Types of Content Reveal About Your Audience

Different content formats tell you different things about what your audience wants. Video content, image content, links, and text posts each perform differently depending on your specific audience. By testing different formats, you learn what your followers prefer.

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Video content generally performs well on Facebook because the platform prioritizes video in its algorithm. However, not all videos perform equally. Short videos of 15 to 60 seconds typically keep more viewers watching until the end compared to longer videos. Videos with captions get more views because people often watch without sound. A video showing a product in action might get different engagement than a video of someone talking directly to the camera, even if both are about the same topic.

Image posts can perform very well if the images are clear, colorful, and show something interesting. Posts with multiple images in a carousel format allow you to tell a story across several photos. For example, a restaurant might share five photos showing the cooking process, the finished dish, and customers enjoying the meal. This format often gets more clicks and comments than a single image post.

Link posts—where you share a URL to an article or webpage—perform differently than native content created directly in Facebook. Sometimes people engage less with link posts because they lead readers away from Facebook. However, certain link posts do well if the preview image and description are compelling. A news organization sharing a major story with a striking preview image might get significant engagement.

Text-only posts work better when they ask questions or spark conversation. A post that reads "What's your favorite food from our menu?" will likely get more comments than a post that just says "Try our new menu items." Posts asking for opinions, recommendations, or personal stories encourage people to comment and share their thoughts.

Carousel ads and slideshow formats let you show multiple images or videos in sequence. Your audience can swipe through to see different options. These formats work well for showcasing variety, like displaying different product colors or stages of a process.

Practical takeaway: Create one post of each type—video, image, text asking a question, and a link—then compare their performance in your Insights. Do this for a month and note which type gets the most engagement from your specific audience. Increase your focus on whichever format works best.

Reading Your Insights Dashboard and What the Numbers Mean

The Facebook Insights dashboard shows information organized by date and time. The main page gives an overview of your page's overall performance, while individual post performance appears when you look at specific posts. Learning to read these sections helps you understand your content's success.

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The overview section shows total page reach, total engagement, and total followers over a selected time period. You can compare different weeks or months to see if your page is growing. If your reach was 5,000 people last week and 7,000 this week, your content is reaching more people. This comparison helps you see whether changes you make actually improve results.

The "Posts" section shows each post ranked by engagement. You'll see columns showing the post date, post type, reach, engagement, and engagement rate. Engagement rate is calculated by dividing total engagements by total reach. For example, if a post reached 1,000 people and got 50 engagements, the engagement rate is 5 percent. This percentage matters more than the raw number because it shows how interesting the content was to the people who saw it. A post that reached 10,000 people with a 2 percent engagement rate (200 engagements) is arguably less interesting than a post that reached 2,000 people with a 10 percent engagement rate (200 engagements), even though both got 200 engagements.

The "People" section shows demographic information about your followers. You can see the age ranges, genders, locations, and languages of people who follow your page. If most of your followers are women aged 25-34 in California, that tells you about your audience. You can compare your follower demographics to the people who engaged with specific posts to see whether different types of content appeal to different segments of your audience.

The "Followers" section shows when people follow your page, what devices they use, and what countries they're in. This helps you understand when your audience joins and what platforms they use to access Facebook—mobile, desktop, or both.

Video-specific posts have additional metrics in Insights. These include total video views, average watch time, and when viewers stopped watching. If your video averages 30 seconds of watch time but viewers stopped watching at the 15-second mark most often, you know your video loses people's attention halfway through.

Practical takeaway: Set a specific day each week to review