Social media giant Facebook has upgraded its Page Insights Tool and launched a new metric for fan pages – ‘People Talking About This.’ The new metric is designed to display conversations happening about a brand or page owner across the Web.
This statistic will be visible on Pages below the total number of ‘Likes’ and will be one of the four metrics tracked by Pages Insights. It is to be understood that a Page with a high ‘People Talking About rating is one which has compelling content. It will also act as a motivation to content creators to make their Pages more comment-worthy.
The new metric, People Talking About, will measure user-initiated activity related to a Page, including posting to a Page’s Wall, ‘liking’, sharing a Page post or content on the Page, answering a question posed to fans, ‘liking’ or sharing a deal or checking in at your Place.
The other metrics which are designed for administrators of brand and media Pages, include ‘Likes’, ‘Friends of Fans’ and ‘Weekly Total Reach.’ While ‘Likes’ is self-explanatory, Friends of Fans is the actual number of friends your fans have.
Weekly total reach is an accurate assessment of how many people have posted something about your Page, how many news organizations, within Facebook, have referenced it and how much viral distribution elements of your Page has gotten.
Product manager for Pages Insights, David Baser says that despite a number of new activities that Facebook will be introducing soon under the Facebook Gestures banner, those four metrics will remain and the ‘Like’ will maintain its ranking as a top measurement. Baser says, “Likes are an expression of identity. It is a user saying that I have a relationship with this brand.”
In addition to keeping track of the four metrics, the upgraded Pages Insights will also analyze in detail the data and specific updates. Out of the list of your last 500 posts,
Facebook will count the total number of engaged users, People Talking About it and virality. Virality measures the percentage of users who commented on the post. However, it does not take into account, the quality of the comment. Whether a user praises or criticizes, it will be counted the same.
With the new Pages Insights, Pages can:
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See Total Likes, number of Friends of Fans of a Page, the new public and internal Pages’ metric, “People Talking About this’ and Weekly Total Reach of a Page.
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See how the posts they put on their Page reach people on Facebook, apart from their fans.
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Optimize content for Posts whether they are photos, videos, questions etc – see what is working best at reaching the most people and how to increase the viral nature of these posts.
About the new metric, ‘People Talking About This’, Facebook says the metric counts ‘stories’ or structured content that people choose to share through Facebook that is eligible to appear in a user’s news feed:
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Liking your Page
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Posting to your Page’s Wall
- Liking, commenting, sharing one of your Page posts or any other content on your page
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Answering a question you posted
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Mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page
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Liking or sharing a check-in deal, or checking in at your place
About the new Facebook Page Insights API, Facebook said, “To encourage third paty development and analytics innovation, Facebook is also announcing a Page Insights API for the analytics developer community, so that they can create a customized Page Insights Solutions for existing and potential clients.
Webtrends, Wildfire and Context Optional are already creating customized insights tools for clients based on the new Page Insights through Facebook Insights API.
Facebook also introduced a new expanded Premium ad unit that combines Page posts with social context from your friends when available. When the person viewing this brand’s ad has friends connected to this brand’s Page, Facebook will expand the unit to include a line about that shares which friends like the Page – thus combining the brand’s voice in the ad with a friend’s voice together.