Tracking the geographic success of your Facebook page

Brent Renneke, associate editor, Boating Industry — As your Facebook page has matured, the “Likes” are starting to pile up, and it feels great to track that growing support in a quantitative manner. But, the true success of your Facebook marketing campaign may involve a deeper analysis.

For example, which “Like” are you most likely to profit more from: the boater who made a pit stop at your dealership halfway through his cross-country vacation or the boater who lives down the street?

A new (and free) Facebook tool called Roost Local Scorecard (http://www.roost.com/scorecard) allows you to distinguish between the two by breaking your “Likes” down into what city they are coming from.

On the Local Scorecard’s homepage, you can connect to the tool through your Facebook login. Once logged in, the tool will have you enter your industry and the zip code of the area you would like to evaluate your presence in. The whole process takes only a few minutes before your results are delivered.

The results will give you the percentages of the cities where your “Likes” are coming from.  Here is an example of what a typical scorecard looks like.

The top shows your “Local Coverage Index,” which is based on an algorithm that evaluates your Facebook marketing progress in relation to your local population, according to Roost. Below that, the “Audience Distribution” ranks cities based on the percentage of “Likes” that came from the area.

Based on your index score, Roost will recommend some next steps in furthering your local presence.  Even if you feel these recommendation don’t apply to your business, the Local Scorecard reveals how effective your Facebook page is in creating local consumer demand.

Currently, the Local Scorecard is only available for the United States, but a Canadian version is being planned, according to Roost’s blog.