In this post, we’ll answer the question:

For a Facebook page – which post-type* is better at getting more Likes + Shares + comments

*Currently on Facebook page – you can have following Post-Type:

1. Images

2.Status Updates (Post)

3. Videos

4. Link

5. Question

6. Shared Content (i.e. when you “share” content from other Facebook page/user-account)

Now – If you have not seen “Facebook Insight”s for your Facebook page – I’ll encourage you to do that (assuming you have suitable admin role):

You’ll see something like this:

Off-Topic: I like how this report design, I really do: Five things I learned about “Art of report designing” from Facebook insights.

Now, Be a Kid – explore this Dashboard – see what else you’ve got: Likes Metrics, Reach Metrics, Talking about this Metric. There’s interesting Demographic information on each of the mentioned metrics. For instance I know that 60% of my fans are from India. Any-who this post is not about delving into what is available but it is about something that is not available via this Dashboard.

So Now I had this Question: What kind of post should I post more to get more likes/shares/comments? Should I post Images? Should I share Interesting Links? Thus, I wanted to know: For a Facebook page – which post-type is better at getting more Likes + Shares + comments

So as a Data Guy – since they didn’t provide that insight – I thought of a way to get it. Here’s how you can do that too in a step by step fashion:

Tool Used: Excel 2010

Step 1.

On your Facebook Page Insights Dashboard – Do you see Export Data button? yes? Go ahead click it:

– Select a. Post Level Date b. Select Start Time & End Time.

Step 2. 

Open the file in excel.

If you do not have access to file that you can use mine – after all the things I share on https://www.facebook.com/Paras.Doshi.Blog is Public! I don’t mind sharing metrics with you. Download the file: Paras Doshi Blog Facebook Page Post Level Metrics Jan1 Aug5 2012

Step 3:

There’s lot of data, right!? Remember: If you think about it, You can extract other actionable insights too and build cool reports.

Any-who to our questions here is what we need:

a. Data in “Key Metrics” sheet

b. Column C: “Type”

c. Column N: “Lifetime Talking About This (Post)”

*People Talking about this include

– Liked, commented or shared your post

– answering a question

– responding to an event.

FYI: if you looking to see number of likes, shares & comments a post gets – check out “Lifetime Talking about this..” excel sheet.
Step 4:

Create a COPY of this Excel File (For Backup purpose – Just in case we manage to mess up the data in this file)

AND then, Delete ROW 2 in Excel sheet: “key Metrics”. Just do it!

Step 5:

Now that we have identified the metrics i.e “TYPE” and “Lifetime Talking About This (Post)” – let’s select ONLY this data and create a new sheet. As you can see I have a new sheet titled “Only Important data goes here!”

You can Skip creating a NEW sheet – but make sure to select appropriate columns for PIVOT TABLE later.

Step 6

Make sure you are on our NEW sheet.

Go to Toolbar > Insert > PivotTable > Select Pivot Table

Step 7: No change, Just click on OK.

Step 8:

Now comes the part where we configure Pivot Table.

– Select All three fields from the “Choose Fields to add to report”

– Drag “Count of Post ID” and “Count of LifeTime talking about this” from Row Labels -> Values

Step 9:

We do not want the TOTAL number of “People Talking about it” – BUT we want On an Average – for a single post – How many people are “talking about this”.

So let’s change the function of “Life Time Talking about this” to AVERAGE.

Just (left) click on “Count of Lifetime Talking about this (Post)” > and select “Value Field Settings”

click on OK.

Step 10

Do you see this:

Now Look at your Pivot Table:

Can you see who won.

In the smack down of Status Updates vs Photo. Photos Won!*

*For my page: That may not be true for all pages! Just saying 🙂

And let me clean up the report a bit:

That’s about it!

Remember you can do MUCH MORE with the Data that you just DOWNLOADED! If you play with this data, please share what actionable insights you were able to extract out the data!

Have fun with Data!

Resource:

Facebook Page Insights Guide. From your Insights Dashboard: