If you have a Facebook Page – not a personal page but a public business page for you and your books – (which we highly recommend) then you must use all the tools it provides to your marketing advantage.

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How does this work? Once 30 people have “Liked” your Page, you have access to Facebook Insights, the nifty little widget on the upper left hand side of your Page. Your Insights are a gold mine of interesting data. For instance, you’ll see how many new likes you get each week and learn how your following is growing. This is very helpful when you’re working on promotions because you can compare the numbers day to day and week to week to see what works best.

At first, Insights may seem intimidating. All those numbers and graphs! Essentially, Insights gives you vital information in two areas: Your users and the messages you post to your Page.

Who’s On Your Page and What Are They Doing?

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Once you click on Insights, you’ll want to check out the Page Overview first. Your users are broken down into categories: daily, weekly and monthly. The daily users are your bread and butter. They are the fans who can make your Page dynamic. You’ll learn the day or days of the week that have the most activity, which can be critical to your marketing efforts. If Wednesday is your big day, that’s the perfect time for you to do the biggest promotions, giveaways, contests, interactive posts, etc.  Don’t let all the colorful, squiggly lines throw you off; if you place your cursor over the lines on the graph you will learn the following:

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• How many “Liked” your page
• How many unsubscribed from your page
• How many commented on your page

If there are days that seem slow, perhaps you can take a break then, or make it a day when your blog feed appears on the page. A great way to do this is via the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook. Not only will your blog post automatically appear on your Page, but being part of NetworkedBlogs gives you additional exposure through Facebook.

If you’ve lost followers, you can check the day they left against the post you ran to see if there’s a correlation. Similarly, if you get an influx of new followers you can see what you posted on a particular day that brought them to your Page.

Are Your Posts Generating Activity?

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Your Insights also allow you to break out Page activity through user Interactions. You can click on the “See Details” link if you’re in the Page Overview, or you can click directly on the Interactions title in the top left hand corner. This refers to the number of views and feedback your posts get. You’ll see the title of your post, the date it appeared, the number of impressions (exposure on Facebook your post received) and the amount of feedback each message received.  This is a great way to hone in on what your followers want. Do they prefer links to blog posts? Videos? Or do they become active when you post a question and seek responses? Try different approaches on your Page and use the Insights reporting to fine tune your marketing.

What Insights Tell You About Your Users

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Want to know where your fans come from, how old they are and how they find you? Click on the Users links in the top left corner and you’ll see. Your fans are broken down by gender, age and location. In addition, you’ll see where they came from before clicking over to your Page. If you have a website or blog, you should expect to see many referrals from your site to your Facebook Page. If not, you should tweak your site so people who visit you there find the link to your Page and become a follower.

Your user data will also let you know where your fans like to hang out on your page, such as your Wall, your Info tab, Photo tab, etc.

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Once you become comfortable with Insights, you can delve into other areas. What we’ve covered is just the tip of the iceberg. Your Facebook marketing is much easier than you think – all the tools you need are available on the site at no cost to you! And, if you haven’t “Liked” us already, please click on over and join our Page: http://www.facebook.com/bookmarketingame?ref=ts.