Facebook announced a pretty significant update to Page Insights yesterday. Although it’s only available to a small group of page administrators at the time, all page owners are expected to have acess by the end of the summer.
What’s New About Page Insights
Modified Metrics: Breaking Out “People Talking About Us” and Swapping “Virality” for “Engagement Rate”
Before, there were two Page Insights metrics that weren’t exactly clear: “People Talking About Us” and “Virality.” Think about it for a second … what do those metrics actually tell us about our marketing? Not much. Lucky for us, Facebook’s new Insights implement a fix for both of these metrics.
Introduced in 2011, “People Talking About Us” (PTAT) measured how many people were Liking, sharing, commenting, or checking in on your page. Basically, a whole lot of interaction data, aggregated into one metric. According to the Facebook announcement, PTAT will be broken out into five different metrics in the new Insights: “Page Likes, People Engaged (the number of unique people who have clicked on, Liked, commented on, or shared your posts), Page Tags and Mentions, Page Checkins, and other interactions on a Page.”
Facebook also updated its “Virality” metric to take clicks into consideration. Before, it measured how many stories were created from one post — basically, any time someone Liked, commented on, or shared a story. Now, Facebook takes clicks on your post into account as well. To reflect this updated metric, Facebook has renamed it the “Engagement Rate.” You can see the metric in the new dashboard in the bottom right-hand corner.
Consolidated Post-Specific Data
Besides reframing some metrics, Facebook’s new Page Insights now feature consolidated data for individual posts. Before, data about engagement and reach for one post were scattered all over the Insights dashboard — and some even hidden in the CSV download. Now, you can view reach, engagement, and negative feedback for individual posts all in one place. Here’s what it looks like:
Launched “People Engaged” Analytics
The revamped Page Insights will also feature a brand spankin’ new “People Engaged” tab, featuring not only the demographic breakdown (age, gender, country, city, and language) of people you reached, but also who you’ve engaged. This update enables page admins to more easily identify which content is resonating with which of its audiences, and thus, make smarter decisions about their Facebook content strategy.
What This Means for Marketers: Wave Goodbye to Fluffy Metrics
Besides just being a shiny new toy, these updates are really exciting because they give us marketers what we crave: real, actionable data. With these new definitions and dashboards, you will have a little bit better insight into metrics that can actually drive your business forward.
No longer will you be trying to justify the time or money you spend on Facebook with impression metrics. Instead, you’ll be able to choose to examine engagement — Likes, shares, and now clicks — in a deep dive into each post or an aggregate of your overall page. While you may need some help tying your Facebook metrics to your bottom line, these engagement metrics are a huge step in the right direction.
With all these new metrics at your disposal, you’ll have a lot more ammo up your sleeve to justify your marketing when your boss comes a knockin’. So get excited!
What do you think of Facebook’s new Page Insights? How would you use them to improve your marketing? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
Facebook Logo Image Credit: cbhdesign / Screenshots Image Credit: Mashable and Facebook
