Most small businesses now have a Facebook page, and many cite a figure with pride: page likes. Two thousand, five thousand, fifteen thousand. The number is often quoted like a score.
The other figure is almost never provided: how many bookings those likes generated.
Likes do not pay the rent. We explain this regularly to dive centre owners, who generally agree in principle but continue to focus on the like count.
Why are likes and followers the wrong measure?
A like requires very little effort. It costs the person a single tap and indicates almost nothing about whether they will ever spend money with your business. Some of your most active online followers will never visit, while some of your best customers never click like on anything.
The like count is also losing significance every month. Businesses that manage a page have likely observed this trend over the past year. Facebook shows each page post to a steadily decreasing share of the people who liked the page. A high like count combined with low reach is becoming common. We do not expect this trend to reverse, since Facebook's model favours paid reach to a page's own fans.
Measuring social media by likes therefore measures what is easiest to count rather than what matters. The question an owner needs to answer is simpler to state and harder to measure: did this activity bring in customers?
What should you track instead of likes?
Track clicks to your website. The first step is to move measurement away from the social platform and onto your own website, where bookings take place and which you control.
The tool for this is Google Analytics. Google is moving all users to a new version called Universal Analytics, still in beta, and both versions show visits from Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, along with what those visitors did after arriving. Did they view the course page? Did they complete the enquiry form? Or did they return immediately to their feed?
Setting up the booking or contact form as a goal takes about ten minutes and produces a meaningful figure: enquiries from Facebook this month. This figure is usually much smaller than the like count, and much more useful.
Why use UTM tags on shared links?
Analytics does not always identify where a visitor came from. Clicks from phone apps, emails or messaging apps often appear as "direct", which in practice means the source is unknown. A writer at The Atlantic named this phenomenon "dark social" last year, and the term is accurate. A significant share of social traffic is lost in this category.
The solution is UTM tags: short strings of text added to the end of a link that tell Analytics exactly where the click came from. They are not visually appealing, but readers rarely notice them.
What does a simple UTM routine look like?
- utm_source: the platform. facebook, instagram, newsletter.
- utm_medium: the type. social, email, paid.
- utm_campaign: what you were promoting. open-water-november, christmas-special.
Google offers a free URL builder for campaign links that creates the tagged link. Complete three fields, then copy and paste the result. If the link will be visible to readers, shorten it with bit.ly or a similar service.
Consistency is essential: every link should be tagged, every time, with identical spelling. "Facebook" and "facebook" appear as two separate sources. This may seem minor until the monthly totals fail to match.
How should bookings be compared by source?
Once tracking is in place, a regular habit matters more than a dashboard. Once a month, review a single table of bookings or enquiries by source: search, Google listing, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, newsletter, partner hotels and word of mouth.
Word of mouth is particularly important in a destination like Bali. Not every booking appears in Analytics. People see a post and then walk in, or they see a friend's photo and then ask at the hotel desk. We therefore recommend asking customers directly: include "How did you hear about us?" on the form and at the counter, and record the answer every time. The method is basic, but it fills the gaps that software cannot.
After three or four months, a pattern will emerge. Facebook may bring many visits and few bookings, while an email to past guests brings few visits and many bookings. This information allows you to decide where to invest your time, which is the purpose of any measurement.
What are Facebook's own statistics useful for?
Page Insights remains useful, but it answers a different question. Reach and engagement show which posts genuinely interested people. For example, a photo of a manta may be widely shared while a "10% off this week" post receives no response. This information is valuable when planning the next month of posts. It should not, however, be confused with revenue. Use Insights to improve your posts, and use Analytics together with your written records to determine whether posting justifies the hours invested.
Without a link between a post and a booking, decisions rest on assumptions. This may be acceptable for a short period, but not for several years.
What should be set up before the holiday season?
High season here begins in a few weeks. We recommend that small tourism businesses complete three tasks before it starts: goals in Analytics for the booking form, a tagged link for every post and every email, and a "how did you hear about us" field on the form, along with a notebook at the desk.
This requires one afternoon of work. By February, the business would have actual figures from its busiest weeks, rather than a like count and an impression.
Conversion tracking and analytics is not the most visible part of marketing, but it is the work that shows whether the more visible work has produced results.