How To Automate Facebook Page Reporting in Google DataStudio
Reporting on always-on Facebook page content can be a tedious task. Using reporting platforms limits abilities to customize the content within a social report.
An alternative approach to this can be using Google DataStudio to go beyond a dashboard and create several pages of report.
What will you need for creating this report in Google DataStudio?
1. Google DataStudio
2. Access to a Facebook page's Insights
3. Supermetrics data connector for Facebook Insights
As the first step, you need to connect your page as a data source in Google DataStudio
Once the page is connected, you then need to decide what content needs to go in your report via a report sketch. This helps reduce back/forth while using the actual tool. In this example, I'll share some of the metrics that can be used from the Insights API in Supermetrics to frame your report. You could go much more in detail.
Example 1: Knowing demographic breakdown of fans
You can create three different charts to slice your fan base in different ways.
Chart 1 uses the geo map widget to show fans by country.
Chart 2 has a doughnut chart to show the split between genders
Chart 3 has an age breakdown as a bar chart
Depending on your region, you can choose the zoom area for chart 1.
Example 2: Finding out top performing posts in the month
Let's use a common example of posts by engagement rate. Here, you can use a table widget to show the most crucial elements of the post; post copy, a thumbnail image to identify the content and a link while post metrics can include post reach [total reach] and engagement rate. You can obviously add metrics such as total likes/comments/shares, video-plays, link clicks etc. However, adding more columns here would make your table crowded. Perhaps, you can create a separate table to show engagement breakdowns while this one can focus on engagement summary.
Example 3: Knowing top performing posts by a particular market
Here, Filter control option can help. Drop the Filter control widget next to the table and group it with the table [by right clicking both]. Now, your table will respond based on the filter you choose. Previously, this would have lang + location targeting used while publishing posts but after Facebook removed lang. targeting, only location will show up in this filter.
Example 4: Understanding video performance
The Insights API has a lot of cool metrics on video. You can create a table to know which videos had the highest video views [3-sec] and then create calculated metrics for views-with-sound-on-% and clicked-to-play-views-%. This is because 'views-with-sound-on' and 'clicked to play views' metrics are available in the API.
Example 5: Comparing current year to previous year performance
You can obviously use this method to compare any metric but will use total likes [fans] as an example.
You can drop a time series widget and then use Month as a dimension, your selected metric and in date range, choose 'Custom' > This year , compared to Previous year.
These are just a few examples of what can be done in Google DataStudio. If you have more examples of what's possible using Supermetrics, share in comments.
