For those of us running company Facebook pages I thought I’d use Spin Sucks to break down the new impressions and feedback data and how to best use this new information to your advantage in your online marketing campaigns.

You’ll notice now when making a post to your company page, Facebook is supplying you with changing impression numbers and feedback percentages per post. What does this mean?

According to the Facebook help center, below are some of the most common questions:

  • Is the impression number the number of users who have seen the post?
    No. This is the raw number of impressions that have been shown to users. These impressions can come from a user’s news feed, a visit to the Page, or through an Open Graph social plugin.
  • Why is the impression count higher than the number of followers my Page has?
    This is because many users refresh their homepage and visit their homepage multiple times during a session, and each time the post is rendered, it counts as an impression.
  • What does “feedback %” measure?
    It only measures comments and likes, and no other actions (such as video plays and link clicks). The percentage is computed as (comments + likes)/Impressions.

When it comes to impressions, internally we use the information and take more of an in-depth look at what they are telling us. If you want to track and help your posts gain more attention, I suggest creating your own chart. This way you can track which days and times your posts seems to be at peak hours and to see when your fan base and audience is most active.

We also suggest tracking which type of posts you’re creating; this is where the feedback percentages come into play. Are you linking to news articles? Asking questions? Pushing products? Tagging friends and other pages? Take note on when you’re getting high feedback.

By reading in-between the lines you can adapt your page to fit your audiences’ needs. Hopefully this helps stop readers from blocking your news feed and will gain more engagement within a few months.

How are you using the new analytics?