Have you, as a Facebook Fan Page Administrator, ever look at Facebook Analytics for your Page and wondered ‘How am I doing?’

You’re not alone.

If you put out a post and it reaches 19% of your Fans, is that below average or better than average?

What if your viral rate is 5%?

What does all this mean and how do we decipher it?

This video below will help you better understand what the Facebook Analytic terms are

Facebook Fan Page Performance | Understanding Analytics

Facebook Fan Page Performances | Average Performance Numbers

On average, when you post on your Fan Page, how many people does it reach?  According to Mashable, the average reach of a Post is only 16% (http://mashable.com/2012/05/24/facebook-post-reach/).

This statistic means that if you have 1,000 fans, then only about 160 will see your post.

Now how many people actually create a story, or ‘Like’, comment, or share on your Posts?  This information can be found by looking at the Viral percentage on your Facebook Analytics.

Facebook defines Virality as follows:

“The percentage of people who have created a story from your Page post out of the total number of unique people who have seen it”. Creating stories can be from Likes, Comments, and Shares of content. Essentially, the more people engage with your content in relation to how many unique people have seen it determines a particular post’s Virality. –http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2012/03/what-is-the-average-virality-rate-for-a-facebook-pages-posts/

So what is the average viral rate of a Facebook Fan Page Post?  EdgeRank says that the average is 2.97%, but the more accurate statistical number would be a mean of 1.97.

So, how does your Viral Rate compete with others?  The data and chart below shows the average number of Facebook Fan Pages that achieve a given range of Viral Rate:

Viral Rate     % Of Pages That Achieve That Viral Rate

0-2.5%             61%

2.5-5%             24%

5-10%              11%

10-20%           3%

20%+               1%

What this means is that 61% of Facebook Fan Page Posts achieve a viral rate of 2.5% or less, while only 1% of Facebook Pages achieve a 20% viral rate.  The chart below illustrates the data above.

Facebook Virality Breakdown

Facebook Virality Breakdown

So what does all this information mean?

If you have a Facebook Page with 1,000 Fans, then the average amount of people who would see your posts would be about 160 and the average amount of people who would create a story from it would be 3.2.

The next question is How do we get above average?

Facebook Fan Page Performances | How To Increase Facebook Engagements

Or, in Facebook-speak: How do we improve our Reach and Virality?

Some important factors to consider are the type of media in which to use (Photos, text, links, videos, question, polls, etc…), the length of the post, and the timing of the post.  Here is an infographic that details some very helpful tips on how to increase your engagements on Facebook by Dan Zarella of HubSpot:

Facebook engagement tips

Facebook engagement tips

Facebook Fan Page Performances | Strategies for Engaging

So what does all this data and information mean?

Are you interested in finding out exactly what to do in order to increase your reach and your virality rate?

If so, click here for more information on how to increase your Facebook Fan Page Performance.