Customizing Megalytic: The Facebook Page Likes Widget

By Megalytic Staff - April 12, 2016

“Do you like me? Circle Yes or No.” The concept of liking and being liked is a hallmark of affection and approval in our society, ingrained in us since the first notes we passed in childhood.
Likewise, one of the most consistent, pervasive and socially influential features in the advent of social media has been Facebook’s “Like” button. The thumbs up that lets you know whether or not you have garnered the approval of the masses.
Now, we’re excited to take our first in-depth look at one of the widgets built for our Facebook integration. The Facebook Page Likes widget allows you to break down page Likes by demographics, source, and other factors. This widget allows you to demonstrate the effectiveness of your social media posting and advertising in your reporting and helps with the process of analyzing what types of people are interested in your brand.

 

Megalytic Facebook Page Likes Widget

 

Adding the Facebook Page Likes Widget

In order to use this widget, you’ll first need to connect your Facebook business page to Megalytic. When you’re ready to add the Page Likes widget to your report, you’ll find it listed under the Facebook section of Megalytic widgets.

 

Finding Megalytic's Facebook Likes Widget

 

Click on the widget icon and drag it to your desired place within the report. You’ll see a prompt to choose the Facebook page for which you’d like to show data. Upon selecting the page, the widget will display, by default, a line graph showing total Likes over the last 30 days. This allows you to show, simply, the total Likes a page has and identify whether those likes have been increasing or decreasing over recent time.

 

Facebook Total Likes shown in a Megalytic Widget

 

Customizing the Widget: Time Series

As with other widgets, you can customize this to portray data in a number of ways. To begin editing options, click the gear in the upper left.

First, you can choose between two types of charts: a line chart and a time series bar chart. For example, if we want to show progression of likes on a weekly basis, the time series bar chart will help us to represent how the volume went up or down each week.

To change the chart style, select the icon for the new chart type. To change the timeframe you’re measuring, simply update the date range for your desired timeframe. In this case, we’ve expanded to gauge a two month period. Also note that we’ve chosen to show data on a “weekly” basis from the date selector.

 

Facebook Likes Chart in Megalytic shown using bars

 

Our final updated widget shows a trend of Likes increasing week by week for this page.

Showing Facebook Demographic Information

Quantity is important to measure, but it’s not the only factor when understanding social media effectiveness. Beyond counting total Likes, the additional value of this widget comes into play by showing demographic data about your page’s audience. This information will enable you to see if you’re reaching your intended audience. It can also help you identify other audiences that you may not have realized would show interest in your product. Within the widget options, the Dimension dropdown allows you to select from demographics and other factors to customize the data you show.

Age & Gender

In this instance, we’ll select Age & Gender from the dropdown, and we’ll change the graph type to a pie chart, visually demonstrating how much each demographic category makes of the whole. The final chart shows females 35-44 making up, by far, the largest portion of the Likes, joining with females 45-54 to make up close to half. Understanding this audience helps us tailor our content to appeal to it. If we’d like to engage more males, we now understand the need to spend more time and energy building content to reach that audience.

 

Facebook Page Likes by Age and Gender shown in a Megalytic Widget

 

Geography

Besides age and gender, you can also show geographic locations, including the cities and countries, where people who like your page reside. For small, local businesses, this data can help you pinpoint on a micro level what towns around you show the most interest in your brand. For national brands, this data can help to identify ideal metro areas for focused advertising and new store launches.

For this example, we’re showing insights from a page representing a legislative interest group in New York. The top cities represent areas where the messages from this group are being heard. This data can help show if the organization’s messaging is reaching the right legislative districts. Changing the Dimensions dropdown to City and updating the chart type to Table Graph allows us to list out the cities, showing the difference in the overall volume of Likes.

 

Facebook Page Likes by City shown in a Megalytic widget

 

It is now evident that New York City shows the highest number of Likes by far, which is not unexpected due to the vast population. But we can also point out that Buffalo and Rochester are the next largest cities by Likes, showing that the page is successfully reaching the western part of the state.

Language

Finally, you can show the languages spoken by the people who like your page. This insight can help you to know if you should be translating marketing materials for foreign speakers or even creating dedicated pages for other languages. We’ll use a setup similar to the Likes by City widget, selecting Language as the dimension instead.

 

Facebook Page Likes by Language shown in a Megalytic Widget

 

Here, it is evident that US English speakers make up the vast majority of page Likes. However, there are a fair number of Spanish speakers who follow the page, as well. In order to ensure that Spanish speakers are hearing the message and contacting their legislators, the interest group running the page may do well to translate resources into Spanish.

Showing Like Sources

Besides looking at total Likes and demographics, you should also analyze where Likes came from. Did ads directly focused on building Likes bring in the greatest results? Did people like your page indirectly from popular posts shared by your followers?

Choose “Like Source” from the Dimension dropdown to show this breakdown in your report. In this instance, we’ll choose a bar graph to be able to easily compare the Like sources.

 

Facebook Page Likes by Source shown in a Megalytic Widget

 

Now, the chart shows the sources that drove Likes within the chosen time period. By far, the top driver of Likes was sponsored stories, which are paid promoted posts. In a paid promotion, people can choose to like your page from ads specifically tailored to drive Likes or regular promoted posts that include a Like button. This also shows that a few people liked the page off of ads on mobile devices.

Outside of paid promotion, the majority of people liked the page directly from the page profile, meaning they navigated to the Facebook brand page and then clicked the “Like” button. Finally, a few people liked the page directly from feed stories, organic posts appearing in their News Feeds.

This data can help to inform your social media strategies. For instance, if you find that the ads you ran in a particular month were especially effective in building Likes from relevant people, you should analyze the messaging and targeting of those ads to see what you can apply in the future.

Conclusion

There are multiple ways to customize the Facebook Likes widget for better social media reports. By showing your clients overall growth, demographic data, and sources for likes, you can prove the worth of your social media marketing contracts. Studying this data as a marketer can help you identify patterns and trends to refine and strengthen your messaging moving forward.

If you haven’t yet connected any Facebook brand pages to Megalytic, now is your time to start building improved reports for your clients. Take the time to configure this widget (and others) to show the data that will matter to your clients and to make smarter social media marketing decisions

Content Offer

An introductory guide to inbound marketing

Get to grips with marketing in the digital age

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat.

Download Guide
Comments

We promise that we won't SPAM you.