SMU Facebook Page Impressions vs SMU homepage pageviews

Facebook Impressions vs Webpage Pageviews

I manage the SMU Facebook page and over the summer I started looking closer at the stats for that page to find ways to improve. I quickly noticed the number of impressions our Facebook page’s content received was significant, more than 100,000 per month.

I wanted to place that number in context with our other digital marketing efforts to get a sense of how Facebook compares to other channels. I settled on page views as the closest relative to Facebook impressions and began comparing them to pageviews on the SMU website. It became clear that our Facebook page should rank in the top 10 of most important web pages at SMU.

About the same time our student worker completed a survey of peer institutions and what they were doing on Facebook. One clear discovery was that schools who posted content more often had more fans. So we started posting content more often to Facebook.

We average about 12,000 impressions for each piece of content that we post. So, there was a quick rise in our monthly impressions. In October we received 350,000 impressions from our Facebook content. Our Facebook page had eclipsed every  page on our website except one, the SMU homepage.

SMU Facebook Page Impressions vs SMU homepage pageviewsThen in January, which is typically a slower month for our website it happened the SMU Facebook page logged nearly 500,000 impressions beating the number of homepage pageviews by 4%. Now, we were left to ask, what is the value of an impression versus a pageview and what does this change about the way we market the University?

Quick Conclusions

  • Facebook as one of our most important communication vehicles and take that into account in the future.
  • Facebook impressions are not as intentional as pageviews so they should be valued less. More research would be need to be conducted to determine a ratio.
  • The Facebook page’s value as a channel is increasing faster than our website’s

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