Digging into Facebook Demographics

In the caveman days, scent played a big part in who you wound up with, but we’ve evolved since then, and most of us now prefer the latest perfume and/or cologne from some celebrity. The principles of attraction have also evolved. They now include attracting people online, on networks such as Facebook.  But without online olfactory aids available (at least not yet) to help you understand who you are attracting to your business page, you could be totally ignorant about who you’ve ended up with. Thankfully, Facebook has developed Insights to sniff out details from anyone visiting your page.   

You can find these demographics stats in your Facebook Insights while logged in as an administrator on your page. The section covering demographics of people connected to your page is called ‘Likes’, meaning the people that have ‘liked’ your page at some point.

The first section gives you the basic information about the people who have liked your page.  The top area shows male/female and breaks it down by age group.  You can see the overall gender split on the left-hand side and then you can see the age group breakdown for gender in each column.  The included example has mostly 25-34 year olds and primarily female users. 

Below this area you’ll see the location of the users that have liked your page.  For a local business, like a salon or spa, this section is crucial for understanding the potential revenue to be made from your efforts on Facebook.  If large portions of your likes are coming from outside your serviced area, then you may not be attracting enough local people to your page.  For example, promoting an event or an on-site special will be lukewarm at best if only 20% of your fans live close enough to take you up on it. 

Finally, on the far right side of this section, you’ll see the language they speak.  This can be important for some businesses if you live in a bi-lingual area, such as Quebec or even South Florida.  Don’t be worried when you see some that speak ‘Pirate’ as that is a legitimate language according to Facebook! 

This Insights section covering demographics brings a lot to the table when it comes to understanding what Facebook can do for your business.  It may be helpful to run a demographics report in your point-of-sale software to brainstorm the types of clients that currently come into your business.  Maybe even run a report on your big spenders to prioritize these client persona types based on who’s bringing in the dough to your business.  If your Facebook demographics don’t match these VIP client personas, then you need to re-think your efforts on building your ‘like’ numbers.  More on this in the next blog covering your ‘like’ sources.