As a marketer, wouldn’t it be great to know how many people are talking about your brand?   On Facebook, this has never been a measurable metric, until now. Facebook has introduced a new metric in their fan page insights where you can now see the number of “People Talking About” your page.

A page with a high People Talking About rating will be considered one with engaging and captivating content. This new metric will measure user-initiated activity related to a Page including:

• Posting to a Page’s Wall
• “Liking”
• Commenting
• Sharing a Page post or content on the Page
• Answering a Question posed to fans
• Mentioning a Page
• “Liking” or sharing a deal
• Checking in

The 4 key metrics Facebook will track are “Likes”, “People Talking About”, “Friends of Fans” and “Weekly Total Reach”.  The insights will also let the page administrator know the total number of friends their fans have.  The Weekly Total Reach will provide page administrators an accurate measure of the amount of people who have posted something about their page, and the total number of references that have been made about their page.

Another change Facebook will be implementing is a more in-depth summary of the data surrounding specific updates. The most recent 500 posts will be listed and you will be able to see the total number of engaged users.

We’re wondering if Facebook will soon implement sentiment analysis as a value added feature?  We think it’s not only something that’s relevant to what brands want to know, but it’d also be a value added service brands wouldn’t mind paying for.