Yes, Facebook: More Data Please!

Tweet

Facebook has offered the rather limiting Page Insights tool for about three years now. In a recent blog Facebook stated that they have been paying attention to what we, the customer, want! The news: They're rolling out a newly revised Page Insight tool to just a few page administrators (more to follow soon?). In a nutshell:

“People talking about this”, or PTAT, data will be further broken down; more data for you! Page Likes, People Engaged (likes, comments and share), Page tags and mentions, check-ins (great if you are a physical location) and “other” (no idea what that may be). 

And there’s a new metric, Engagement Rate, based on the already existing Virality measure. Facebook believes that the current metric wasn't a true indicator of positive post engagement in the past and they are now including clicks; does this mean clicking on a link associated with a post but not liking or commenting on the post will now be counted. If so…hurray!  I've often wondered about those folks who go “under the radar”.

For the record, Virality is defined by Facebook as “the percentage of people who have created a story from your page post out of the total number of unique people who have seen it.” Creating a story happens in a number of ways: Likes, Comments, and Shares.  

The last paragraph of the blog discusses how Facebook “rewards quality posts with greater reach”. Funny then how every time I create an event invite that it seems to be withheld from the majority of fans from the page (more on this in a separate blog). Perhaps the above is true, however, Facebook would certainly like to see the post promoted (and therefore see me PAY); no? 

The very last point discusses “positives” and “negatives” and Facebook says that metrics will now be available on a post by post basis via a score card. Sounds good indeed if Facebook data can be put together in a way so that any user (or rather admin or owner of a page) can understand it easily, quickly summarize it, and take action based on their findings. 

We all want to increase engagement on our pages without paying for the privilege. So, yes, any free data is welcomed, especially if it’s better than what was available previously. However, we're still looking for the more visual experience that you toted months ago, so based on your past promises, when are we actually going to receive something that we can start working with?

Dishwalla was onto something when they were counting blue cars (see video below). Count on us! Visit our website, or say hello on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.