This evening Facebook began rolling out the new post insights product that we wrote about earlier in the week. The service is extremely simple. It lets Page administrators find out how many impressions each story on their Page receives and what percentage of those impressions result in action (likes, comments, or clicks). While not all administrators are seeing them yet, Facebook is expected to roll them out quickly.
Often times when you post something to your Facebook Page, you have no idea how many people are seeing your story and/or clicking on it. It’s a minor upgrade but it presents a ton of value and it’s something that the competing service, Twitter, doesn’t provide for brands. Knowing your impact is critical. How accurate the new post insights are actually is unknown since Facebook is the one providing the analytics and the one controlling the stream.
We’ve found a fairly narrow range of impressions among our own analytics (as pictured below), however we haven’t had the chance to speak with other administrators about what types of numbers they are seeing. We also don’t know what Facebook is considering an “impression”. For example, if I load a stream which includes a story but don’t scroll down far enough to see that story, is it included as an impression?
There are still a lot of unknowns about the improved post insights product but we’d expect Facebook to provide more details about the upgrades in the near future. Are you seeing the new post insights? Do you find think they are accurate? What sort of numbers are you seeing?
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Where exactly i suppose to see those insights, are they going to appear on my wall or inside the admin insight's diagram?
Comment by Kobi Gamliel — January 20, 2010 @ 11:02 pm
No they appear underneath each post as shown above. Great feature although it'd be great if we could get a better definition on the terms for the impressions.
Skimming through my impressions, I'm quite impressed on the high numbers, but the feedback level seldom gets above 1%.
Comment by Deniz Vural — January 21, 2010 @ 12:44 am
That's great news, thanks for this post.
i see fairly amount of impressions, and they look quite accurate, considering the number of fans in the HP Israel page.
keep us posted!
great job Nick
Comment by ilan peer — January 21, 2010 @ 1:11 am
What is an impression for Facebook? If the post doesn't completely appear on the first screen shot, counts as an impression?
Comment by okilopez — January 21, 2010 @ 5:25 am
lmao im just trying 2 get on facebook in school haha ..:P
my school sucks ass man. wish school was done. …:D
Comment by sidney — January 21, 2010 @ 8:23 am
Maybe you could clear something up, does this post insights product only appear on stories in group pages that I am an administrator off, or will it appear on my personal profile? Would be great if it is the later and I get to see how many people where interested in the story etc. that I posted.
Comment by Graham Gilbert — January 21, 2010 @ 8:59 am
It would be far more beneficial if Facebook would give Admins the ability to receive email notifications if content is posted on Walls, or to be able to send Updates to Fans that Fans can actually see (like Groups … where they appear as a Message in your Inbox and you're notified by email if you so choose). I can think of a dozen improvements that are badly needed for Pages … and haven't a clue as to why FBook is spinning its wheels on these things.
Comment by Jeff Crites — January 21, 2010 @ 11:33 am
Jeff +1
In looking at the impressions count for one of the pages I administer, the count for all recent posts is about twice the number of fans. One of the posts indicates impressions = 4xfans. Not sure what to make of that.
Comment by Irene Koehler — January 21, 2010 @ 1:44 pm
Post insights are available only to "authenticated" pages with more than 10K fans. Sucks for small businesses.
Comment by Facebook User — January 21, 2010 @ 3:28 pm
I'm using Chrome, all the links for "like", "comment", etc are now buttons and the rendering looks horrible…
is this related to this new change?
(chrome version 4.0.249.78)
Comment by Joe — January 21, 2010 @ 7:38 pm
Unless a Fan Page has a fan base of at least 10k, this is utterly useless. FBook should at least tow it down to 1000 fans.. otherwise this would be the sole property of big players!
Comment by Maneet Puri — January 21, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
This is going to be so useful when it come to the measurables for clients, initially the number of fans, or followers was enough, but if Facebook Insights can inform us on the percentage of participation and feedback it'll really help us to know how successful a social media FB campaign is! Looking forward to this kicking in
Comment by SocialMediaStylist — January 22, 2010 @ 6:20 am
A definite improvement, but what about knowing how many visitors then went from your fan page to your site, or followed the links within your posts. That could be more useful than ‘likes’
Comment by Vertical Measures — January 22, 2010 @ 10:20 am
If you mouse over the data, Facebook gives an explanation:
IMpressions: # times story has been seen on your wall and in fans newsfeeds
Feedback: comments and likes per impression
Comment by Carie Lewis — January 25, 2010 @ 10:24 am
Is Facebook continuing to support Insights for smaller pages with less than 10K fans? The data hasn't been updated since Jan 17th.
Comment by David Sanger — January 26, 2010 @ 8:19 pm
I've only recently started a page (up to 1200 or so fans now) but have noticed a severe 'lag' on the insights. I've not got this new type up and running, but looking at the basic page insights they're a good 3/4 days behind, if not more, and that's not a great deal of use at this time.
Anyone else experiencing big delays with insights?
Comment by Garreth — February 3, 2010 @ 8:53 am
looking for new friends in all 50 united states
i'm in asheville n.c.
Comment by oswald — June 23, 2010 @ 4:41 am
i still don't know what an impression on the page is — what qualifies as an impression??? there are more impressions on the page than fans. i still don't understand impressions. great blog. will subscribe.
Comment by redbpower — December 8, 2010 @ 12:42 pm
I have been seeing impressions for awhile now, then suddenly last week they pilfered out, with a message that says Post Insights not yet available, please check back later – but three days later – nothing, and I know that is incorrect. I liked the feature, it was great incentive to let people know how many may be viewing their event we had posted. Hope it gets tweaked back into service. – thanks heidi
Comment by heidi — January 6, 2011 @ 5:08 am
I have had the same thing happen and I cannot locate a valid answer. They seemed to stop on January 4th…
Comment by Newton James — January 9, 2011 @ 4:58 pm
Our insights are very important, are we going to get them anymore? Last one on January 1st. Our non-profit depends on these numbers.
Comment by Chris — January 10, 2011 @ 6:12 pm
Same here… our stopped sometime 7:30am and 2:30pm on January 3rd. No impression reports on anything since then…
Comment by MariahLB — January 10, 2011 @ 10:28 pm
"Post Insights" have not been available since Jan 5th, 2011. Is this a known or unknown issue?
Comment by Debbie Waters — January 11, 2011 @ 7:04 am
Post insights have stopped appearing on some pages and not others. Couldnt find any answers on Facebook help.
Comment by @lswink — January 12, 2011 @ 1:04 pm
I have a page for my blog. Last week, each post was getting hundreds of impressions (I have 270 likers). Now, all of the sudden I have almost none-my most recent post supposedly had just 9 impressions!
I know not all posts become "Top News," or get seen by all likers, but this seems impossible-at least I hope it's impossible. Does anyone have any insight or similar experience? I'd be super grateful.
Comment by Maegen — January 22, 2011 @ 3:10 pm
i have the same problem! insights disappeared about january 15th and have not resurfaced below each post
Comment by karen — January 25, 2011 @ 9:52 pm
Has anyone found out why post impressions are missing? I was getting them regularly within 24 hours of the post date. Last week, they began showing up much later in the afternoon the following day. This week, I still don't have impressions for posts from Monday on two of my fan pages. I can't find an answer to this on Facebook or anywhere else.
Comment by Valerie — April 6, 2011 @ 10:28 am
I ddid not about this facebook feature. It is very interesting. Is the feature turned on automatically or do i have to set it on on the settings ?
Comment by Anthom — July 21, 2011 @ 11:08 am
To be honest I really dont see that much of a diffrence between what has been offred before and what is being offered now by Facebook. They are trying to turn it commercial but it does not seem to work. To make it more commercial the ads should probably be a bit more prominent and still not detract users that much from the content. I guess this insight feature tells you how many people looked at it and therefore how promonent your page it. Lets see what eles they will have.
Comment by SEO service London — August 7, 2011 @ 7:08 am
This is a great feature. Now they have something that tells you how many people are talking about your company.
Comment by Mr. Chewy — October 11, 2011 @ 4:44 pm