A POV on what Facebook's new Insights (analytics) mean to marketers... penned by me and my Razorfish team.

1. POV: FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
Version 1.0 – December 15, 2011

2. OVERVIEW
As of December 15, 2011 current Facebook Insights will no longer be updated
or supported (the “old” data will even be deleted in early 2012). Facebook
Brand Page metrics will now come from the new engagement-based
analytics, released at F8 this year. This POV will review the major changes to
they way brands can track Facebook efforts and provide implications of each.
- Engagement becomes an even more important variable in the somewhat
mysterious Facebook newsfeed algorithms.
- Facebook has adjusted the way it tracks and reports on your page and
content to better focus on this shift.
- Smart marketers will use this new data to optimize content publishing for
maximum engagement and resulting buzz
THE (NEW) MAIN DASHBOARD
Total Likes: The number of unique users that Like the page. (Fans)
Friends of Fans: The number of unique users that are friends with the users
that currently like the page. (Total potential reach)
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3. People Talking About This: The number of unique users that have created a story
(spread the word) about the page through Likes (of the page or content), comments,
shares, wall posts, photo tags, etc. Stories are created through the various types of
Facebook engagement that will become more diverse when more “actions” (read, ate,
ran, etc.) are allowed to be incorporated into more apps.
Weekly Total Reach: The number of unique users who have seen content within a
seven day date range. This number includes Ads and Sponsored stories.
Effects on Social Marketing: Growing new page Likes via
organic means via current fans has always a brand goal.
Friends of Fans and People Talking About This help quantify
that goal; however the emphasis on sharing and interaction
with posts provide new opportunities for brands to connect
with users. When brands focus campaigns on Word of
Mouth, they are now provided a calculable metric.
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4.
INDIVIDUAL POST METRICS
Say goodbye to Impressions and Feedback. Their successors are Reach and
Virality, respectively. Joined by the metrics Engaged Users and Talking About
This, brands can further analyze individual pieces of content, optimizing their
content calendars for reach and gather insights on what makes content
spreadable on Facebook. Also notable: These new post performance metrics
only graph the first 28 days after a post’s publication. However, you can can
all historical data via a data export.
Reach: The number of unique users that have seen a specific post. More on this
in a moment.
Engaged Users: The number of users who have clicked on a specific post.*
Talking About This: The number of unique users that created a story about the
page through Likes (of the page or content), comments, shares, wall posts, photo
tags, etc. *
Virality: The percentage of users (from the Reach) that created a story about the
post.
*Engaged Users includes users who click on a specific post. This does not
necessarily mean the user commented, liked or interacted with the post.
Effects on Social Marketing: The previously missing
metric, Engaged Users, bridges Reach and Talking About
This. Feedback Score was based solely on Likes and
Comments on pieces of content. However it overlooked
what Engaged Users now addresses: the users who took the
time to read and engage with the comment but did not
interact further. In addition, Virality provides a metric to
assess which posts resonated most with users. After all, how
many users read specific blog posts but do not leave
comments on the thread?
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5.
REACH
Facebook breaks Reach down into 3 categories: Organic, Paid and Viral. Pages
can now decipher where most of their engagement comes from. Overall this
alters how brands must view their content. At first glance, it appears the new
algorithm adversely affects Impressions. But in exchange, it provides useable
insights that help identify which content is innately spreadable.
Organic: The unique users that saw page content from their News Feed, the
Ticker or visited the page. These users are being served content directly from
the brand or opting to view the content from the page.
Paid: The unique users that viewed page content from an ad or Sponsored
Story.
Viral: The unique users that viewed content from a story published by a friend.
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6. OLD
NEW
REACH AND FREQUENCY
Facebook also expands on reach via the paired, “old school” metrics of Reach
and Frequency, sortable by All Page Content,Your Posts and Shares by Others.
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7. EXPECTED CHANGE:
Major changes in the Facebook algorithm redefine the standard for content
visibility. There appears to be a significant drop from the change in
Impressions to Reach. In this sample, over several posts, it appears the
average difference is approximately -77%.
Date Impression Reach %
Change
27-­‐Jul-­‐11 7,687 1,734 -­‐77%
08-­‐Aug-­‐11 7,464 1,369 -­‐82%
06-­‐Oct-­‐11 5,190 903 -­‐83%
19-­‐Oct-­‐11 4,455 956 -­‐79%
26-­‐Oct-­‐11 4,631 1,169 -­‐75%
04-­‐Nov-­‐11 4,354 1,211 -­‐72%
15-­‐Nov-­‐11 4,078 1,208 -­‐70%
Conversely, there is an increase in the Feedback/Virality Score. In the old
Insights, posts fought for a rating of 0.10% or higher. Now these numbers are
significantly higher. From the initial data it is an approximate increase of
312%
Date Feedback
Score Virality %
Change
27-­‐Jul-­‐11 0.92% 3.06% 233%
08-­‐Aug-­‐11 1.80% 7.45% 314%
06-­‐Oct-­‐11 1.40% 7.86% 461%
19-­‐Oct-­‐11 1.80% 8.16% 353%
26-­‐Oct-­‐11 0.91% 3.93% 332%
04-­‐Nov-­‐11 1.70% 5.86% 245%
15-­‐Nov-­‐11 1.10% 3.81% 246%
Effects on Social Marketing: Brands will now have a better
understanding of “engageable” content. As the brand
collects data over time, posts that have high readability
versus high comment and likes will make themselves
apparent. Again, this helps the brand optimize and craft their
future content calendars and strategy.
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8. LIKE SOURCES
This reflects the number of times your page was liked, broken down by where
the like happened; a useful tool to track the effectiveness of your (possible)
multiple Like Button locations and mobile apps/sites.
Likes can come from on and off Facebook.
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9. DEEP INFO (OR TMI?)
Although not visible via Facebook’s primary Insights dashboard, a very, very
in-depth look at brand page statistics is available for download (one would
hope a newer query-based interface would make for easy cross-tabulating of
variables).
A sample of the ways marketers can slice data:
Daily, weekly or monthly breakdowns of each metric – further broken
down by location or another variable – examples include:
• Daily breakdown of users who liked your page from their mobile
• Monthly (28 days worth) number of people who saw your page posts via a
story from a friend
• Weekly number of impressions of stories published by a friend about your
page by story type
• The number of people your page reached broken down by how many
times people saw any content about your page
Insights go as far as a noting the daily top referring external domains which
send traffic to your page – broken down by site – in total, over 1,000 columns
of data are available.
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10. CONCLUSION
Overall, the new Insights help brands focus on one thing: Post Engagement. It
is counter balance to the aggregated News Feed. Only relevant, engaging
content will get prime placement at the top of a user’s feed. Insights provides
the necessary tools to optimize in order to secure that location.
“Advertising on the web is less about hitting someone with
a message… it’s about engagement. “
-Mark Zuckerberg
For more information on social media, please contact us at
www.facebook.com/Razorfish or on Twitter @razorfish
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