FAQ: Measure


How far back in time can I view data in Measure?

In Measure, you will be able to see data for up to a maximum of two years and three months in the past. However, if you have only recently connected a channel to Social Media Management, the data we can retrieve historically may be limited and also varies per network (e.g. Facebook or X (Twitter)).

Find out how much historical data to expect following channel connection by visiting our article, How Much Historical Data Will I See After I Connect a Channel?

What is the difference between Facebook Paid, Organic, Viral, and non-Viral Reach (or Impressions)?

Your reach (and impressions) data can be split up into multiple types, which is the same in Social Media Management as it is on Facebook itself:

  • Paid reach counts all people reached as a direct result of one of your paid ads entering someone’s screen.
  • Organic reach is the direct opposite of paid reach and is defined as the number of people who had an unpaid post from your page enter their screen. This organic reach can be further split up into viral and non-viral reach.
    • Non-viral reach for your page posts means that a fan of your page has seen your post on their timeline.
    • Viral reach for your posts is the number of friends of fans of your page who see your content. This means that a fan of your page shared one of your posts and other users saw that share.

Please bear in mind that a user can see a paid post and one of your unpaid posts. It would count as one paid reach, one organic reach, and it would also count just once towards the total reach number that combines all reach types. Impressions are not unique and therefore any impression for a post always counts as one towards the total impressions metric.

What is the difference between Instagram organic data and paid data?

Any organic (non-paid) Instagram content is created on Instagram and the organic data appears in Social Media Management under a normal Instagram post.

If that Instagram post gets promoted, Facebook creates a copy of the post and makes it a Facebook dark post boosted by an advertisement, with an Instagram placement. All Instagram advertisements go through Facebook's ads network and will be Facebook dark posts.

You will find a Facebook dark post in your Dashboard, under the Facebook Page that your Instagram account is connected to. If the post has multiple placements, they cannot be separated in Social Media Management and your performance data reflects all placements at once. Therefore, if you wish to see only the paid performance of your promotion on Instagram, we recommend creating a promotion with only a placement on Instagram.

Given the above, only organic data appears for Instagram content in dashboards and any reach and impressions for promoted content will always appear under a Facebook dark post.

Note:

Instagram page-level metrics (as opposed to content-level metrics described above here) does include both organic and paid data. Instagram does not separate these out over their API, which means only totals are available for Page-level metrics (no breakdown of paid versus unpaid page reach, for example).

Tip:

To create an Instagram ad from scratch, you can build your own Facebook dark post in Social Media Management and add an ad set to it with a placement on Instagram. We recommend choosing only Instagram as a placement, to make your reporting more specific.

Tip:

We recommend using labels if you'd like to report on both Instagram organic and paid content performance. If you label your Facebook dark posts with Instagram placement the same as your organic Instagram content, you can easily capture them in one content performance dashboard by filtering for that Label.

What is the difference between paid Instagram data on page-level versus post-level?

As described above, Instagram post-level data comes only from your organic posts. Any paid content is always a Facebook dark post with an Instagram ad placement. Therefore, no Instagram post in your dashboard's content performance widget will have paid data in them.

Channel-level data (such as the total reach of your Instagram channel) does include paid content, in addition to your organic content. This means that your channel-level data includes the performance data of your Facebook ads that are targeted to Instagram, as well as your organic Instagram posts. Instagram does not separate these out over their API, which means Social Media Management cannot separate the data into paid and unpaid metrics.

How do promoted Facebook dark posts with multiple placements get reported in Social Media Management?

If a Facebook dark post gets promoted with any placement in the Facebook ads network (such as to Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, or news feeds), all of the performance data is attributed to the Facebook page. If your promoted post got any reach on WhatsApp, for example, it gets reported under your Facebook page’s total paid reach.

What is the difference between content-level engagement rate as a total and as an average?

The engagement rate for your posts can be displayed as a total number for all your posts in your content performance widget, or it can be displayed as an average.

First, let's define engagement rate itself. It is the rngagements divided by the impressions and expressed as a percentage. The formula is: 100 * Engagements / Impressions.

The total engagement rate first takes all engagements for all posts and adds them up. It then takes all impressions for those posts and adds those up. Those numbers get added to the above-mentioned formula to find the total engagement rate. The formula looks like this: 100 * Total Engagements / Total Impressions.

In contrast, the average engagement rate first calculates the individual engagement rate of each post. Those individual values are added up and divided by the total amount of posts. The formula looks like this: (Engagement Rate post 1) + (Engagement Rate post 2) + etc... / Total posts.

Tip:

The average engagement rate can be used to set a benchmark for your content. If an individual post has an engagement rate that is above the average engagement rate of your channel, that post is performing rather well and could serve as a template to improve your future content.

Which dashboard metrics are not available historically?

Once you have connected a channel to Social Media Management, we will automatically import a select amount of historical data into Measure. You can find out more about what data to expect in our  Historical Data article. Due to API restrictions, the following metrics can only be obtained going forward in time while a channel is connected and can’t be gathered from the past:

Instagram:
Fans, Fans by Country, Fans by Age and Gender, and Fans Online by Hour.
LinkedIn:
Fans and Net New Fans.
X (Twitter):
Only past posts (tweets) which have received engagements (e.g. favorites or reposts (retweets)) in the last seven days will show engagement in Social Media Management. Any past posts without engagement from the last seven days will be indexed but will not show any engagement metrics.

Note:

The above restrictions will also apply if your channel has been disconnected from Social Media Management. Following reconnection, these metrics will not be retrieved for the duration the channel was disconnected.


Tip:

Want to take your social media strategy to the next level? Social Media Management's strategic services team provides professional social media consultancy through workshops, audits, and reports. Contact your Account Manager to learn more.


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