Why the new Facebook insights might make you rethink your Facebook strategy

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...are talking about this
Check out this new metric underneath your Like's!!!
There goes Facebook changing things again. Due to these recent changes, the big question businesses have been asking over the past few weeks is “What’s in it for us?” or more specifically – “How will all of these changes affect our pages?” We’re beginning to figure that out as Facebook today has rolled out their new insights panel and the “…are talking about this” metric. Let’s dive into what these changes mean.

According to Facebook, this new metric scores engagement based on the last 7 days using this criteria:

The number of unique people who have created a story from your Page Post. Stories include liking, commenting on or sharing your post, answering a Question or RSVPing to an event.

Relevant content is still king.

Even though the metrics are changing, the way the game is played is not. If you spend your time posting random links or sales-y calls to action on your Facebook pages you will still continue to bore the crap out of people. That boredom will now be reflected in your “talking about this” metric for everyone to see. That’s the real twist here. Rather than keeping the metrics to yourself, you’ll now be sharing how good your engagement is with everyone who views your page.

So how can you figure out what content is working under this new metric?

Glad you asked. The data in Insights has changed and there are lots of great tools in here to help you figure that out.

New Insights
Click the normal Insights link and then you should see this new header. Click the 'Take me to the new page insights' link to get in.

Here’s our new insights page for our Maryland Management Properties Facebook page – no laughing, we’ve only been doing it for a few months:
Maryland Management Facebook Insights
Maryland Management Facebook Insights

Here you’ll see the potential of your network with the “Friends of Fans” number and your “Weekly Total Reach” which is the total number of unique people who have seen any content associated with your page.

Underneath this newly revamped section is the breakdown of your last posts. It’s now easy to see which posts worked and which were duds. The important stat to view is the “Engaged Users” and the “Talking About This” column. The Engaged users metric is any action a user has taken on a post, whether it’s Liking it or commenting or sharing. You can see our results here:

What's working on Facebook
This section shows what posts got people talking and what didn't.

You have different choices than before under your Insights link now too:

New Insights tab
Along the left side of your Facebook Page your Insights are broken down differently

  • Fans: Fans is the old demographic section. Here it breaks out who your fans are by age, gender, weight, country and where they liked your page from (News Feed, Recommendation or on the page).
  • Reach: This section tells you Who you Reached (by demographics and location), how many people you reached and what channel you reached them through (organic, ad), and how they found your page (what referrer did they use).
  • Talking about this: This is the brand new section:
    Who's talking about you
    How People Are Talking About Your Page

    Here’s the breakdown of this new panel according to Facebook:

    • Talking about this: The number of people who created a unique story about your page.
    • Viral Reach: This is the number of unique people who saw a story published by a friend about your page.

    Note that you can break these numbers down by All Stories, Page Likes, Stories from your post, Mentions and photo tags, and Posts by Others.

    What’s the bottom line?

    The new “Talking about us” metric is important because now there is an easy way to score how engaging your Facebook page is. The farther away that number is from your total Like’s the less engaging your page is. As more and more people begin to get used to this new metric, will you start being punished for having a low score? Instead of someone scrolling through your posts to see engagement for themselves, it’s now measured for them automatically. Content is king but good relevant content is God. What do you think?

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