Facebook: What Are People Talking About?
In the past, many people would judge a Facebook page based on the number of likes that it had. This is still sort of true today, but the fact of the matter is that likes alone doesn’t make your page successful. What makes your page successful is having an engaging fan base. What constitutes an engaging fan base you ask? Don’t worry you came to the right place to learn more about it. I will go over what Facebook analyzes to come up with that pesky # of people talking about number!
How Does This Metric Work?
Facebook measures the amount of unique users who have created a “story” about a specific page within the last 7-day period. That’s all well and good but what constitutes a story on Facebook? Well, according to Facebook a Story is created when a person:
- Likes a Page
- Posts something on the Page Wall
- Likes a Post on the Page Wall
- Comments on a Post on the Page Wall
- Shares a post from that Page’s Wall
- Answers a Question Asked on the Page
- RSVP’s to an Event On that Page
- Mentions the Page in a Post
- Tag’s the page in a photo
- Checks-in to the Page
- Share a Check-in Deal from the Page
- Like a Check-in Deal from the Page
- Write a Recommendation for the Page
The Metric only calculates unique users; therefore if one fan leaves more then one comment or likes and shares a post, it will only count as one point toward the overall People Talking About This number. Two important things to note is that the number changes daily and that the number is delayed by two days. The number you are seeing currently is for the time period of seven days, that ended two days ago. Yes, this is super confusing and no clue why Facebook would have it like this, since likes are calculated in real-time. Hopefully they can get this metric to update in real-time to make it a lot less confusing and accurate.
How You Can Increase This Number?
Great Question! We have just the solution for you! In order to increase this number you have to take proactive steps to engaging your audience. A couple of basic things you can do to make your fans engage more with you page are:
- Ask Questions?
- Share Interesting, Funny, Relevant Info, Pictures and Videos
- Use Call to Actions in Your Posts
- Be Personal in Your Post and Be Direct
- Make Sure to Post During Peak Hours: 7am-9am, p.m.-7 p.m., p.m.-1 am
I hope this cleared up some confusion for some of you as well has helped you to realize what you need to do in order to get that number up. Remember the more engagement you get from your fans, the more visibility your page gets! Remember its not just the number of likes your page has but also the number of people who are talking about it!
One of life’s joys is lively discussion with friends. Nobody wants to be left out of a conversation, whether it’s at a party or around the watercooler at work..
Didn’t realize the check-ins were included in this metric. Good to know.
Great post Marieke! I was just contemplating what sharing a story meant. These are awesome tips and I can’t wait to try them out.
While this metric is the best we have, it’s still pretty meaningless. Including ‘new fans’ in it means that brands can pour money into Facebook ads, acquire a ton of fans and therefore have a high “Talking About This” number, even if their page has no engagement.
It’s pretty deceptive and I make sure all of my clients take it with a pinch of salt.
When someone who is a friend of someone who commented on the page, us that person included in the metric as well?
I suspect so because I’ve seen pages with more Talking About score than fans.
I have inquired about this number and was told it is not a unique number and instead totals all the actions on the page. Would be nice to have clarity.
Even with unqiue’s engagement on Facebook is so low that Brand Pages really have been a mega failure for marketing vs say research and customer service. Most pages even if unique talking about’s have less then 0.5% engaging each day of total fans.