Facebook launched the newest addition to its Insights Page Analytics called People Talking About. The People Talking About metric enables users and page admins to view a fan page’s various interactions such as Likes, Mentions, Photo-tagging, and Sharing a post which are all fused into a single metric. While Google now thinks like a “publisher” with the launch of its new content-enhancing tools, Facebook’s making marketers think like publishers through the People Talking About metric.

Like I’ve said on one of my previous blog posts, the new Facebook metric seeks to bring out more quality content out of brand’s fan pages because any user can easily view if the page’s engagement is doing well. But as the new metric rolled out last week, I have yet to see the value the new metric brings to page admins and community managers.

Where’s The Value Then?

As much I don’t want to make a comparison, whenever Google Analytics releases a new metric it presents its value right away. Does the same goes for Facebook? Another column called “Virality” will be added on the Insights page that will gauge the reach of a particular content posted on a fan page. You can attain Virality figures when you have the numbers of People Talking About then divide it to the content’s reach.

The great thing about this Virality metric is if it can let page admins track the posts that bring more user engagement and increase interactivity levels within the page. Page admins can easily ascertain which videos entice more conversations or blog entries are shared the most.

More Content to Increase Engagement

As businesses become more social, Facebook page content isn’t limited to what a company announces, promotes, or shares. User-generated content is what fuels every social media platform. But for pages to receive a plethora of UGC fuel, community managers should always be the linchpin of a conversation.

While posting a photo or sharing a video could merit a Like or Share, it’s a must for community managers to increase user engagement levels through thought-sharing. Why? While Facebook mentioned that People Talking About metric will only classify every comment whether positive or negative as one, Sentiment Analytics is a crucial factor in determining consumer behavior towards a brand.

My Take As A Page Admin

One of my colleagues mentioned that People Talking About will pressure page admins to increase interactivity. It’s true, getting 10k fans every week to increase fan page count is already passe. Marketers and community managers should begin thinking like publishers because content triggers UGC which fuels virality in order to increase brand awareness.

My only concern is that, how a page admin can identify who shares content or mentions the brand in order to generate a comprehensive demographics report. I know this brings another privacy issue to the table. Anyway, for page admins and community managers, I’d like to leave a message in relation to the People Talking About metric – Is the right target niche talking about your brand?