First, it’s important to understand the lingo. There’s a big difference between Facebook pages, Facebook profiles and Facebook Stories.
Facebook Stories
Facebook Stories were introduced in 2017 as the company’s way of countering the immense popularity of Snapchat. Stories are collections of photos and videos from the past 24 hours, and after a day, they automatically vanish, in a manner reminiscent of Snapchat.
Users can see who has visited their Stories and even pinpoint which bits of content each visitor viewed. Story viewers, beware: We can see you.
Facebook Page Insights
Then, there are pages. Mark Zuckerberg & Co. allow business and fan pages to use varying kinds of analytics that allow operators to monitor page traffic and see where it’s coming from. Profiles, which are supposed to serve simply for social functions, don’t.
Facebook Insights is the easiest way to get a handle on your business or fan page traffic. Among other metrics, Insights tells users the number of people who like their page, how many people see a post and how many people clicked the post.
It’s already in the Facebook app directory, so simply search for it within Facebook, and you can have it installed with a couple of clicks. The problem, for those who want to stalk the stalkers, is that the company has imposed some limits intended to make it more difficult to determine precisely who’s viewing and clicking your page and clicking your posts.
For example, Facebook Page Insights are only available to pages with more than 30 likes and only provide demographic info once at least 30 visitors from the demographic have visited the page or post. There’s also a 48-hour lag in the information provided, meaning you can’t use it to figure out who’s looking at your page, say right now.
Basic Third-party Analytics for Your Facebook Page
If you want more full-featured analytics for your Facebook page, you’re going to have to get a little creative. One place to go for analytics is outside data monitoring sites like Webtrends.
Simply set up an account, and Webtrends will return somewhat detailed analytics about the number and type of people viewing your Facebook page.
With a little finagling, you can also can install the gold standard of Web-tracking services, Google Analytics. This bad boy allows users to get finite data, like date, time and location, about visitors to their pages.
But you won’t be able to identify an individual person viewing your page, since IP addresses — which are as close as you can get to a user ID number — change all the time. It’s therefore unlikely that the person you’re seeking has the same address every time they view your Facebook stories.
First set up a Google Analytics account, and then add a new profile for your Facebook page. This requires a number of steps to integrate Google Analytics with the particular page. The good news is that Google has been kind enough to provide detailed instructions for doing that, as well as using tracking services on other social networks like X (formerly known as Twitter).
Driving Engagement With Your Facebook Profile
It’s not the most precise method, but sometimes, if you’re willing to put a little work in, you can get a loose approximation of people who might be viewing your profile. The simple trick is to post in a more deliberate fashion to drive engagement.
Say you came across an interesting scientific discovery or some oddball news story; the kind of thing that’s all over the internet, every day. It can be a neutral but interesting post, or it can be something a little more provocative.
Wait a little while, and then take a look at who is viewing it. Chances are, if they’re someone who isn’t viewing your stories all the time, they might have also checked out your profile.
Novelty is one of the most valuable commodities on the internet, so an interesting Facebook story has a better chance of prompting a visit to your profile than a run-of-the-mill photo or video.
