From Vitrue: Facebook Insights Improvements

One thing I liked about Facebook was it's simplicity when it started. But after the Facebook boom in 2010, our clients started looking for better metrics to track activity on Facebook pages. Facebook's Insights definitely paled in comparison vs something like Google Analytics and the rest of the paid analytics tools out there.

So, it's a welcome surprise Facebook is stepping up on giving us marketers more data to analyze. Facebook is still pretty much a closed-wall garden, and while Google has been working on getting Facebook content into its search results, it looks like Facebook is doing the same by going out of Facebook to provide analytics outside Facebook, which usually is Google territory.

I just can't wait to see how these developments pan out.

Read below an article describing the new features of Facebook Insights from vitrue.com.

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Santa Came Early This Year - New Facebook Insights Features!

It appears that Facebook was in the holiday spirit this morning and delivered an unexpected gift to the little boys and girls at Vitrue…new Facebook Insights! As an analyst, this Christmas present was almost as good as my pink Hot Wheels Corvette circa 1991…almost.

The new updates make Facebook Insights much easier to interpret. New features, such as “Like Sources” and auto-calculating Weekly Active Users, provide valuable information about where new fans come from. Brands and marketers will now be able to make more educated inferences and utilize Facebook Insights exports in a more manageable fashion.

Filtering by Date Range

Previous functionalities would only allow you to export data by date range, instead of having the ability to view date-constrained metrics within native Facebook Insights. This enhancement packs loads of holiday cheer because the native graphs, charts, and metrics within Insights can be constrained and customized. This new feature affects metrics like Tab Views, geo-centric data, and Stream Posts performance data…in a very merry way. In a red and green nutshell, this feature allows you to use Insights-generated graphs and charts to the fullest extent.

Like Sources

Having a sleigh-full of fans is great and all but where do they even come from? This added feature is invaluable to brands and marketers. Why? Because gaining insight to where new fans are coming from allows admins to execute educated future promotions and understand their new fan base. For instance, if Santa’s fan page received 18,362 new fans in the past week from Search, this would give Old Saint Nick a good idea of the interest in his page.

Media Consumption

This new feature allows admins to see how media is performing on the page. So, if Santa decided he wanted to post more videos in December than he did in November, he could compare the performance of the greater number of videos to the lesser number of videos in the previous month.

Get Insights for your Domain

Facebook appears to be expanding their reach to the North Pole of the internet by allowing Facebook users to use Insights analytics for their own non-Facebook domains. How do you think this will affect use of Google Analytics?

Analytics-inspired Yuletide cheer is spreading all around Vitrue today. Thank you Facebook, your gift is in the mail.

For more information on Insights, visit Facebook’s developer entry here.