Would you like to get more insight, analytics and information about the people sharing your content on Facebook? Of course you do!
The more you know about the people sharing your content the better you can improve your content overall to make it more compelling for them to consume and share. Or in other words, if you can measure it you can improve it.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Facebook knows a lot about you. It also knows a lot about the people sharing your content on Facebook. And if you want to take full advantage of the insights it has on the people sharing your content, you definitely want to create a Facebook app that integrates with your website content.
You’re probably saying to yourself, “Wait a second here, Dustin–I’m not an app creator. There’s no way I’m creating a Facebook app!”
Hear me out, it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think. In fact, it’s pretty darned simple–anyone can do it!
If you’ve ever shared a post on Facebook using our Social Warfare plugin, you may or may not have noticed that there is a Social Warfare link on the Facebook post right beneath your name.
It’s subtle, and tucked in between the time/date and privacy level icon.
If you click on that link it sends you to the Warfare Plugins homepage. This is a result of us creating a Facebook app and integrating it with the Social Warfare plugin.
The reason we’ve done this is twofold:
- Because it allows us to gather important information about the people sharing our posts on Facebook using their App Insights
- It allows us to allow you to add your own Facebook app integration so you can get those App Insights about your own audience
We could have just wrapped this functionality into our own site, hidden it in a custom version of the plugin or written another custom plugin just for internal uses. However, we know that our users love digging deeper and gleaning insights from the social sharing on their sites.
Further Reading:
So I’m going to show you exactly how we set up your own Facebook app. Then I’ll show you you how dead simple is is to integrate it with Social Warfare so that every time someone shares one of your articles, a link back to your homepage is created and you get to gather more insights from Facebook’s App Analytics.
How to Create Your Own Facebook App
The first thing you’ll need to do is register yourself as a Facebook Developer. You can start by going to the Facebook For Developers site and clicking on the Register button in the top right.
Once you’ve accepted their terms, entered your phone number and confirmed it for security, you can then select a Platform for your app. Choose the Website option.
Type a new name for your app—this is what will display on your posts, so choose wisely.
Facebook will then have you Create a New App ID which requires you to give a contact email address and then choose a category that your app/website fits into.
Once you’ve done that, you can click the Create App ID button in the bottom right.
You’ll then have to jump through one more security hoop to ensure you’re not a robot.
Once you’ve done that you will see the “Setup the Facebook SDK for JavaScript” section, which you can scroll right past because Social Warfare already handles that for you. Beneath it there will be a box where you can enter your website URL. Do that and click the Next button.
You will then move to a Test your Facebook Integration section which you can also scroll right past. Beneath that section is a section labeled Next Steps where you’ll want to click on the Skip to Developer Dashboard link.
On the page that follows you’ll be able to see your Facebook App ID in the top of the page. You can simply click to copy it to your clipboard.
But we’re not done yet.
As of now, your app is only in Development mode and can’t be used publicly until you’ve done a few more things.
Click on the App Review tab and you will see a box at the top labeled “Make [your app name] public?” Switch this to Yes and you’ll be prompted with a confirmation message.
Once you’ve done this, you can now go back to the Dashboard, copy your App ID and head over to your WordPress install.
Open up the Social Warfare settings page and navigate to the Social Identity tab. You can then paste in your App ID in the Facebook App ID input, Save Changes and you’re all set!
In less than ten minutes you’ve created your own Facebook app and equipped Social Warfare to allow it to integrate into your website. Wah-hoo!
Now, every time someone shares one of your posts or pages using the Social Warfare Facebook button your app will be listed instead of Social Warfare’s and it will be a link to your homepage.
You can continue to tweak your settings if you want (adding an app icon, privacy page, etc.) but it’s not necessary.
Wonderful, Dustin, thank you so much for outlining this! Now what does this unlock for me?
You’re so very welcome, and I’m glad you asked!
What Facebook App Insights Reveal
From your App dashboard you can click on the View Analytics link next to your App ID. You may see a brief walkthrough of what Facebook Analytics are if you’ve never seen them before.
Now, the only tab on this page that will be relevant for our purposes is the Facebook Platform tab. Within this tab is where you will find the insights about the people sharing your content on Facebook.
Referrals
This page will show you the amount of traffic or click-throughs on Facebook posts that link to your website for a given timeframe. You can adjust the time frame in the top-right corner.
One thing I recommend doing is using the Show By menu and selecting Platform. This will break down the chart by which platforms people are using when they clicked on the Facebook post that led to your website.
This is very helpful if you’re wanting to understand how your content is most consumed so you can create content that is more conducive to the most popular platforms.
Stories
This page will tell you how many Stories (Facebook posts) have been published using your app—in other words, how many times people have shared your content using Social Warfare’s Facebook button. You can also see how many impressions those Stories have gotten and how many clicks they have gotten as well.
Within this page you also have a number of sections that each have their own valuable insights to play with.
Story Distribution
In this box you can see a number of metrics that relate to how your content is being distributed in Facebook. In their own words,
You can use this to understand how stories your app published in News Feed are being seen by people on Facebook.
You can switch the chart to show:
- Click-through rate
- Impressions
- Stories Published
And again, you have some more detailed view options in the Show By menu to the right of the chart.
Positive Engagements with Stories
This chart shows you how many Clicks, Likes or Comments these posts are receiving.
Negative Engagement with Stories
This chart will show you if people are reporting posts as Spam from your site. The numbers represented are by volume of per 10,000 posts.
You can also switch this section to see if people are choosing to Block your app.
Demographics
This section can be fascinating. Here you are able to see the age and gender demographic breakdown of:
- Publishers: people sharing your site’s content
- Viewers: people seeing the shared content from the publishers
- People who Click: Viewers who actually click through on the content shared by the Publishers
From these you can glean exactly what audiences your content is resonating most with. Very valuable information.
Sharing Insights
This is one of my favorite tabs. This page is where you can see where your most popular content is and drill down on which demographics it’s most successful with.
The top chart is nice with the ability to see the trend of shares throughout the given time frame. You can then change the chart to show by:
- Overall
- Age & Gender
- Top Cities
- Top Countries
But the really great piece of this is the second section labeled Top URLs where you can see a list of all your site’s most shared pages and drill down by Share Type, Gender, Age and Country. This is really cool to be able to see!
You can then click on any one of the listed URLs and see more information about that specific URL.
Login
The last tab that will have relevant information to you is the Login tab. All this will show you is the number of Daily Active Users sharing your content and the number of Monthly Active Users sharing your content.
Over to You
That’s all there is to being able to harness the power of Facebook App analytics for your website using Social Warfare. I hope you can take what you’ve learned and give it a try very soon!
If you’re already trying this out, we’d love to hear what you’ve discovered in the comments below!
If I already had an account open, do I need to make another FB App ID for Social Warfare? Or can I use the App ID that I already have since I had already registered as a developer? I just don’t know if I should have an app ID for each product, like social warfare, that I’m linking to, or if my one app ID is good for everything. Can I just use the FB App ID that I already have? Do I need to find Social Warfare in the apps somewhere or something? Sorry, I’m a little new at all this! Do I add you guys as a product or do anything special? Or just copy my already-created app ID and paste it into my settings?
Actually I don’t think Facebook allows for this anymore.
This tutorial is now obsolete – Facebook has changed their settings, and I cannot connect following these instructions 🙁
Hi, Leigh! Yes, you are correct. Facebook changed its policy (they’ve been doing that a lot lately) and they no longer allow this type of tracking. Since this is a blog post and not official Documentation, we didn’t delete the article for historical purposes. Maybe we should consider deleting it now.
Facebook Developers page is now very different to this guide.
I have no idea what to choose on the “Add a product section” so can not continue.
Is there an up-to-date guide anywhere?
We have it on our list to look into the updated version of Facebook Developer Insights, but no set date yet.
Same issue for me.
Thank you for working on the up-to-date guide.
Hi Dustin. Just went through this process. Not sure how to know it is working but my main suggestion is that this article could use some serious updating. None of the screenshots on creating an app are current. Somehow I think I made it through but it was arduous. It is a very helpful article so I hope you can update it.
Thanks!
Unfortunately Sharing Insights are deprecated and will be removed Feb. 2018. 🙁
Hello!
Thank you for your article!
I have different Facebook Pages, is it possible to create an app for each of my Pages, or is it only one?
I’m not sure about this Sonia. You can definitely only have one app connected to your website though if you’re using the Social Warfare feature.
Hi,
I followed the brief above, although things have changed a little with the setup. But it appear to have created the app with my personal homepage ? It shows a little icon in the top right corner that is my homepage NOT my business blog page that is linked to my homepage.
How do I make it link the app to my business blog page and not my personal home page ?
Thanks
You just need to go to the app’s settings page and change the Website > Site URL.
Helpful post, Dustin!
I’ve followed all of the steps and I do not see any data yet (even though I know that many people have been sharing a particular URL from my website on Facebook). So I find myself asking some questions.
1. Are the analytics not retrospective?
2. How long does it typically take for Facebook to start showing the Facebook platform data for a new Facebook website App ID?
Hi Nick! No, Facebook’s analytics can’t be retrospective because until you add your own app id, they’re tracking to another app. I’m not sure how long Facebook takes to start tracking their apps. This would be a question for them.
Hey Dustin,
Thanks for the tutorial.
I *think*… I’ve created a Facebook App ID. I can’t remember though (I know I’ve done this some time in the paste… maybe for a different? Not sure)
Is there a way I can find out?
I was concerned I’d end up creating a duplicate. (Maybe the app ID is just for the one person behind the ‘account’ and not the ‘page’?)
Hi Drew! If you go to the “Manage Apps” link in Facebook, or just go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps/ and log in you’ll see if you’ve created any apps in the past.
An awesome post! Will implement it on my official websites. Thank you!
I was always curious about that. I can see that I have already add the Facebook App ID on Social Warfare, but I didn’t knew what it was. I now know, thank you Dustin!
Very informative post. Thanks a lot Dustin.
Very nice. Just set it up and will do the same with my clients.
Awesome Rob! Glad to hear you found it useful!