Back in 2011, these were the Facebook Page updates we received as a Page admin. Very basic, right? There were more metrics than these obviously, but this was before the age of videos. We had to export CVS and Excel files to calculate our own engagement rates and other insights for reporting. What a bitch.
Social media analytics is much more convenient today but admittedly, it’s more complex as well. Page admins have so much more data to analyze but also more insights to uncover.
Just something I found while trying to clear one of my gmails. Thought it might be nice to share.
For context, Men’s Health Singapore was an award-winning online men’s portal I helped to launch. I was producer and associate online editor and (an unofficial) product manager from 2009 to 2012. I believe we helped pave the way for online publishing in Singapore because we didn’t just copy/paste the same articles from print online, but we adapted everything for the web, including our writing style, and we produced a lot of original content too.
Facebook Pages were new at the time but we realized it helped drive traffic to our site so we learnt to master Facebook (and Twitter). I honestly think we were the first to properly utilize social media in publishing then, at least in Singapore.
As another aside, I remember doing a lot of research and coding side-quests by myself to develop Facebooks apps for our Men’s Health Singapore page. Noone asked me to, but I just wanted to make cool things. A workout finder was one of the apps I worked on, linking back to the different types of workouts we had on our website. There were other side projects too, like a food trail (cos we did food reviews) and running trail (cos we did running shoe reviews). Can’t remember if I managed to launch any of these apps though. My self-taught HTML only went so far.
Man, I can’t tell you how much of my waking hours were devoted to the Men’s Health website. I was constantly thinking about how to make it a cooler experience that people would revisit, so that people would regard as a go-to partner and expert. It really was my baby in so many ways.
Unfortunately, they discontinued the license in Singapore a few years ago so everything got scrubbed, including the website. Sadly, I don’t have a proper archive of my life’s work from that era. Only via the WayBack Machine. Not having that work properly archived for my own sake is probably one of my biggest regrets.
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