Insight in to new Facebook Insights Part I

Continuing our discovery of the new Facebook Insights, we would now look at growth measurement tools that have been incorporated.

Section 3: Growth Measurement

3.1 Like Sources

Facebook included Like sources in the previous iteration of analytics, but this is now more advanced. This number used to be fairly arbitrary as organic Like sources within Facebook were simply expressed as ‘unknown’:

This has now been expanded upon to give a much more accurate view of how people are not only finding the Page, but also how they Like it. Importantly, this is split down for the different functionalities within Facebook. So, for example, one can now see how many Likes the page is getting as a result of another Page posting a link to the brand Page :

3.2 Demographic Reach

While Facebook offered access to the demographic breakdown of fans, now it gives the admins the ability to see the demographic breakdown of active fans. This shows information on age, gender and location for anyone that was exposed to the content, whether they are a fan of the Page or not. As this gives a more accurate indication of who is actually engaging with the content, one might find that if the demographic breakdown here is different to the demographic breakdown of the fans, then you need to adjust the content to better suit these engaged fans.

3.3 How you reached people?

This graph will allow admins to plot different visits to the Page based on how people were exposed to it. That is to say that if most people are finding the Page through ads, then there is a need to improve the organic content.

3.3.1

Another insight is ‘unique users by frequency’ that gives the average number of times someone engaged with a piece of content. So, for example, one can now see how many people were engaged with your content once, versus the number of people who were engaged with the content 3 times. This counts people that viewed the content, as opposed to commenting or Liking for example.

Verdict:

Overall it seems that Facebook has really jazzed up their insights with tools that give more or less a complete picture of the expanse to which the page admin can monitor developments without having to rely on external softwares. The various new tabs, sub tabs and sections introduced give a real time happening about the brand’s engagement with not only its primary audience (users) but the secondary audience too.

This development also means that as an owner one can gather various data and analytics and determine the course of the page. What kind of content is a hit with the users, what’s not, what will perhaps be received with much enthusiasm, by whom, how etc.

With features such as the Timeline and Subscribers already gaining popularity, carefully integrating the insights with these could only spell wonders for brands. Of course, it does not take away the fact that it becomes a little too complicated from a strategic viewpoint and the results are yet to be seen.

Facebook Insights had always been a handy tool for page owners irrespective of the size they command. It always provided information about how to make the page even better. Last month Facebook launched a new version of Facebook Insight. Many had speculated it to be a paid service, but so far Facebook is not charging anyone. Here is a look at how the insights have evolved.

Section 1: Reach Measurement

1.1 Friends of Fans

Facebook advertising provides the option to target friends of fans. Essentially this means that the ad will only be shown to friends of people already on the brand page. Now through Page Insights, one can see the total reach of ‘friends of fans’. This is an important number to keep an eye on, as it will ensure that when someone engages with a piece of content on the Page, their friends are being alerted to it. It gives a more accurate reflection of your ‘ambient’ audience. i.e. those who might not be fans of your Page themselves (as this number excludes current fans) but who may have been exposed to your message :

1.2 People Talking About This

This is the most hyped feature that Facebook has introduced. It gives a figure, for the time period that one selects, of the number of times a post was generated about the Page, including links in personal profiles, or posts in which the Page has been tagged in.

Within this new metric, one can see a demographic breakdown of people who are talking about the Page by age, gender and location. One can also compare the viral reach (the number of people who saw your Page), compared to ‘talking about this’ (the number of people who actively created a story). As reach just takes into account people that were exposed to your content, this figure will always be a lot higher than those people talking about it. Individual ‘story’ can be compared, for example the number of times someone tagged the page in a post or photo:

1.3 Weekly Total Reach

Earlier for a post on Facebook Page one could see the individual number of impressions, but not the cumulative total. Now Facebook has introduced a feature that gives the weekly total reach, which is the number of times someone has been exposed to the Page, either through a post, a friend commenting, or through an ad. One can see the percentage change over time, thus, if there is increase in fans but the reach is going down, brand may need to think about creating more engaging content, so as to grow organically:

Section 2: Post Insights

2.1 How viral is a post?

Facebook ranks the posts in order of engagement, as before, but this has been massively expanded on. Now, ranks also show a number of different metrics, which cover : Reach (the total number of people that saw your post) ; Engaged Users (people who interacted with the post in some way, such as clicking on the post in their newsfeed or leaving a comment) ; Talking About This (the number of people who have created a ‘story’ from your post, such as leaving a reply or sharing with friends) and Virality which is slightly more complex. The ‘virality’ of a post is expressed as a percentage of people that created a story about the post, against the total reach. Seeing the posts in this way allows brands to see the content that clearly worked, or didn’t work:

2.1.1

One can then expand on a particular figure, to get more detailed insights. Clicking on ‘reach’ reveals a breakdown of whether that reach came directly from your Page activity, Facebook Ads, or whether it was viral (fans generating stories)

2.1.2

Clicking on ‘engaged users’ shows: Other  clicks (clicks on other parts of the post, such as the name of the person that posted it) ; Link clicks (the number of clicks in a link on your post) ; the number of stories generated from the post, by fans :

2.1.3

Clicking on ‘talking about this’ allows people to see whether these stories generated were someone who likes the post or sharing it:

Click here to read part two of this post.

Facebook has made a radical change to its user interface- the first since the launch of Google +. While it would take some time for the entire gamut of changes to make a marked difference to our experience, let us peep under the hood, at how the Facebook is set to change.

Timing the changes

The most striking feature is the new Timeline, a chronological layout of the profile/page which shows everything that the user/page has done since getting on to Facebook. It is a more simple and efficient way of checking out a profile or a page. The interface itself is far neater and clears a lot of clutter. One interesting feature is that now a lot of options have been put in a drop down rather than a separate button.

Each friend is important

Facebook has also introduced new friend lists, which is an optional feature, and is essentially a redesign of a feature it’s had for years—Lists. The original Lists were difficult to navigate and tedious to update, which was the reason for the revamp. If you choose to activate the lists, Facebook will generate four separate lists for you: work, school, family and city. Facebook puts people into these lists based on information they have in their profile. For example, if you list Harvard University as your alma mater, and so do 25 of your Facebook friends, they will be grouped under "school." In addition to this you also get two lists that you curate on your own to distinguish close friends from people you don’t know well.

The news maker

Before these changes, when you logged into Facebook you could toggle between two views of your News Feed: Top News and Most Recent. Now, Facebook combined these two in a single News Feed. Now, what you see when you first log in depends on how frequently you log in. If you don’t visit Facebook regularly, the next time you do you’ll see top photos and status updates that were posted since the last time you visited the site. These are marked with a blue corner. If you log into Facebook frequently, such as several times a day, you’ll likely see the most recent stories first.

1: Top Stories 2: Side Panel 3: Recent Stories

News keeps trickling

Another addition to the system is the Ticker. This is a smart move as all the updates which are not direct interaction with an individual will show up here. Thus, clearing the wall for more direct status updates and relegating your friends Farmville exploits to the ticker. Furthermore, note the updated photos. New Facebook interface is now enlarging its size so it looks more clear and comfortable to view while users navigate and have fun.

Know more than just friends

Subscriptions, another key feature launched recently, lets you see people’s public posts in your News Feed, without having to friend them. And while Facebook Subscriptions is an interesting way to broaden your network and connect with people you otherwise wouldn’t have contact with, it also gives people who had a page and a profile to merge it.

The Verdict

The changes are intended to help you keep up with people that matter to you, regardless of how often you visit the site. The new Timeline interface is beautiful and a major time sink. Overall, Facebook has made profiles more personal. Users are going to be spending hours in their friends’ Timelines. The addition of the Cover Photo makes the Facebook interface more beautiful, and the timeline is easy on the eyes. While it will take some time to get used to the two-column layout, it actually is easier to navigate than the old Facebook. Facebook thought hard about the design of this change.

As a business entity, this means more display space for the brands. The cover photo can actually be used as banner ad space for which they won’t have to spend anything. Also, with expected time spent on Facebook going up, it can only be good news for the brands. What is most interesting though is the fact that Facebook seems to be quite sure of the changes and that could be a worry for Google.

Over the past few years, social media has become an important tool of marketing. Big brands have invested in the new media hoping to hook the audience to their products. And, with the success of the platform, the brands are now looking to leverage the tool for enhancing their brand equity via social causes’ route.

Social responsibility goes social

With growth of Facebook and twitter and the rise of social media marketing, it is no surprise that then this medium would now be used to promote corporate social responsibilities (CSR). While the brands are slowly starting to embrace this route, many social causes have already been promoted to good result via Facebook and other social platforms.

Social Causes Promoted via Social Media

Not just local public cause, social media has played key role in national causes. The public led campaigns against issues in countries like Libya, Egypt and India has shown what this medium is capable of. And if harnessed properly, the medium can deliver like none other.

Reaching the masses

In India, there are 31 million Facebook users, while the total number of active users on social media is expected to be 45 million by year 2012. This platform is growing and how. There is no denying that social media provides the easiest, and most cost effective route of reaching such an audience.

Engaging the influencers

A key tool for any cause based program is to have the experts opinion put forth. A doctor talking about a health related issue makes the cause look that much more credible. Social media provides this opportunity to all the brands.

With over 40000 active bloggers who have built a major clout with their writing, brands can engage with these writers while talking about the cause and make them understand their fight. They in turn would then promote the cause and bring credibility to program.

Philips LinkedIn Innovation in Health

Not just blogs, lot of professionals are on social media, who can be engaged through their inputs and dialogues with general public in order to make the cause support that much more real and beneficial for normal people.

Key Benefits:

It also provides key benefits that any brand looks from a CSR or cause promotion. It helps brands in:

• Improving Social Welfare
• Establish differentiated brand positioning
• Create strong consumer bond
• Enhance brand equity
• Boost internal morale
• Drive Sales
• Drive market value of firm

Acceptance of the campaign

A lot of skeptics have questioned the acceptance of a social media campaign. The fact that it is perceived as a youth platform makes them feel the whole seriousness of the issue would be lost. What they are not realizing that in a country like India, 66% percent of the population falls in the youth category. Thus, addressing them on their choice of platform is key to making them talk and think about the cause. And that’s not about it. 

End Cause

The result of a social media campaign can be gauged through response generated either through number of people who have registered for the cause or amount of money donated through the program. Also, the success of the program can be gauged through how well the program has been able to improve the lives of people who supported the campaign. There are no shortages of examples of the same in India. Brands like Fair and Lovely have contributed majorly towards growth of the society via this platform. The Fair and Lovely Foundation has reached out to over 300 girls in just 7 years and changed their lives.

Brand led campaigns

Similarly Aircel has managed to build a support of over 300,000 people for save the tiger campaign. The major highlight of this campaign was making people believe that they can contribute to a cause which previously they though they can’t do much about.

And that is the victory that social media can lend to a corporate social responsibility or a cause promotion by a brand. It can make people feel important; it can make them feel like a responsible citizen. That they can make a contribution to any cause that they feel for through this channel makes it that much more powerful.

If you have seen the film, The Social Network, you would know that Facebook was not looking at putting any advertising on its clean image. Unfortunately, with time and growth, advertisements have crept into the website.

However, Facebook is now making the ads part of the page. Early this year, they launched a new advertising mechanism that promises to make ad units more social and in fact become a true word of mouth promotion rather than pure advertising.

A story to tell

Sponsored Stories, a new advertising technique launched by Facebook, takes news feeds and converts it in to a display unit. This display unit pops up on the right side of your page as you navigate through Facebook. Interestingly, Facebook has placed these stories above ad units. Just goes to show what Facebook hopes to do in the future.

Sponsored Story Placement

What Facebook Sponsored Stories does is that it highlights the activity of a user’s friends who have interacted with a given brand on the site. For example, if your friend checked into an ITC Hotel’s on Facebook, the hotel could buy an ad that highlights that fact on the right hand side of your page layout.

Feed the need

People are naturally interested in things their friends care about. That’s why the News Feed is such a central part of Facebook. News Feed stories give friends an easy way to show each other what they like. Now with Sponsored Stories, you can increase the visibility of these powerful News Feed stories when they relate to your organization or business.

The dynamic nature and unique algorithm behind each person’s News Feed means that each person’s experience is different on Facebook. For Page owners, this means that some of your fans do not see your valuable Page posts (status updates, videos, photos) in their News Feed. Sponsored Stories for Page Posts allows Page owners to ensure your fans see the content that your Page publishes.

If an individual has liked or interacted with Yardley of London, it may carry more clout [among his friends] than if they see an ad that simply says Yardley of London is releasing new fragrance. Sponsored Stories seem to be driving the most engagement for verticals where word of mouth works the strongest in the real world, like sports, entertainment, and music. (Engagement is defined as a user taking some action on the ad: clicking on it, Liking it, entering a comment when a comment field is available.)

Typical Sponsored Story Layout

And in real sense, this is true word of mouth promotion. Sponsored Stories promote the organic interactions between people and your business. This new ad format takes social content and turns it into a marketing message, blurring the lines between content and advertising, but doing so in a way that’s still transparent to users.

A different story

While setting up a sponsored story and the bidding process is similar to Facebook ads, there is a remarkable difference between the two. While advertisement is targeted to an unknown audience whose numbers can only be approximated, sponsored stories goes to every page member and their friends. It is more direct and more personal. And it has a definite number gauging mechanism associated.

While this may be the critical differentiator, it also makes the Sponsored Stories a more effective and true representation of word of mouth promotion through paid mechanism. With seven different types of stories to choose from, brands and page owners can now look for organic growth via a paid model.

Types of Sponsored Story Feeds

Effective Story Telling

One Facebook advertising platform provider has found that Sponsored Story ad units have click-through rate that’s 46% higher than standard Facebook ads, according to a post on Inside Facebook. TBG Digital conducted a test over the course of ten days and 2 billion ad impressions, which showed that the Sponsored Story ads performed better in terms of click-through rate and cost per click.

These results aren’t all together shocking. Since people tend to trust their friends more than they do marketers, it’s no surprise that tying the two together would be more effective than other forms of advertising. Granted, this is only one study and with three advertisers participating, it wasn’t a huge sample but these early data suggest that there may be a future for the Sponsored Stories ads.

According to Vice President of Advertising and Global Operations David Fischer, the units, which cost the same as standard Facebook ads, are performing, on average, twice as well. "The key reasons it works is that it is engaging, it is social, and it is reflective of what brings people to Facebook overall, which is to share and connect," Fischer said.

Sponsored stories are allowing us all to become marketers by default of our Facebook actions. It’s influential and a natural referral based type of advertising as well. It will be interesting to see what new forms of social influence type marketing Facebook comes out with in the future.