Key Facebook Insights Metric Pulled

How will we know who’s “talking about us” now?

Those with a Facebook business Page should already be familiar with the “Insights” tab the website provides. Insights allows a Page owner to analyze their page’s activity in close detail; from their most popular post to the specifics of their audience’s demographics.

An infamous feature of Insights for the past three years has been the vaguely titled “People Talking About This” (PTAT) parameter. Many have argued that this measurement is misleading and does not provide accurate enough data, while others have claimed PTAT is the most important metric.

Facebook has finally acknowledged this debate and officially decided: there will be no more “People Talking About This” within Facebook insights by the end of the year.

Yes, the site is scrapping the parameter altogether and instead providing a detailed breakdown to help Page owners calculate much more accurate measurements of their audience’s content interaction. PTAT will now be split up into these separate elements:

• Page Likes
• People Engaged
• Page Tags
• Page Mentions
• Page Check-Ins
• Other Interactions on Page

Why is this a Positive Change?

Although many marketing firms, including Infinity Dental Web, have actively utilized the PTAT data, it is better that this benchmark is gone. The trouble with PTAT is that many people did not understand what PTAT actually meant.

Many assumed that PTAT was literally the amount of users discussing the Facebook business page and product. Or that PTAT was a combination of users liking, commenting and sharing the page.

In actuality, a lot more was calculated into PTAT, such as when users:

• Like a post
• Like a comment
• Comment on a post
• Comment on a comment
• Share a post
• Answer a question/poll
• Respond to an event
• Claim an offer
• Post on the page wall
• Mention the page in a post
• Tag the page in a photo
• Check in at your place/page
• Share a check-in deal
• Like a check-in deal
• Write a recommendation
• Like a page

All of this data is useful, but not when the numbers are combined into one giant, misleading, lump-sum. By removing PTAT and providing a detailed breakdown, Page owners will be able to understand their fan base a lot more.

What does this mean for Infinity Dental Web clients?

Since Infinity has used PTAT in our measurements of Page activity in the past, obviously this means data moving forward will look different. However, I don’t think this is a bad thing. With the elements provided we will now be able to calculate helpful details from our client’s Pages. Some suggested new ratios we will be able to calculate would be:

• How many users actually saw your content?
• How many users engaged with your content?
• How much of your page content results in a Facebook story?

These are only a few ideas being discussed within the marketing community. The point is, by studying this information we will be able to recognize patterns within your page’s fan base. We will see what content engages users and what content falls flat. This leaves room for your Page to improve, rather than hide behind a misleading large number.

To sum up, change can be scary – but in this case we are learning so much from Pages that we will truly be able to advance our marketing strategy to the next level.

Did you study PTAT on your Facebook page? How do you feel about this metric shift? Is this a positive or negative change?