Facebook has overhauled its Pages Insights analytics tool and added a new metric to gauge the health of a page: “People Talking About.”

That statistic, which users will see on Pages below the total number of “Likes,” will be one of four tracked by Pages Insights. The idea is that users will understand a Page with a high People Talking About rating is one that has compelling content. Likewise, content creators will be motivated to make their Pages more comment-worthy.

People Talking About (that might not be the final name for the metric; at press time, Facebook wasn’t sure) 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 or checking in at your Place.

via Facebook Launches New Metric: “People Talking About”.

News organizations that have turned to Facebook to power their website comments say they are seeing a higher quality of discussion and a significant increase in referral traffic.

How does Facebook Comments reduce the endemic name-calling and invective of unrestrained online forums? By tying a real name to every comment.

“Trolls don’t like their friends to know that they’re trolls,” explained Jimmy Orr, online managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. “By using Facebook, it has made a difference.”

via News sites using Facebook Comments see higher quality discussion, more referrals | Poynter..

Mark Zuckerberg spoke to me last night as I jogged through Central Park. He had parted the water in the pond perfectly, in five unique circles, and was cleverly allocating brightly colored fish to each circle. During this close encounter, he telepathically shared with me four stern warnings for marketers, as he was fearful of appearing to share publicly, given his latest run-in with GQ.

via Four Things Mark Zuckerberg Should Tell Every CMO | DigitalNext: A Blog on Emerging Media and Technology – Advertising Age.

People interact with their favorite brands on Facebook far more than on any other social network, according to a recent study of online consumer behavior.

The study, conducted by Constant Contact and research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey, analyzed the behavior of 1,491 consumers ages 18 and older throughout the United States and revealed a number of details about how people interact with brands on the world’s largest social network.

via How Consumers Interact With Brands on Facebook [STUDY].

Facebook Pages that automatically publish content to the news feed through third-party apps such as HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Networked Blogs receive an average of 70% fewer Likes and comments on their posts per fan, according to a new study by Applum, developer of Page tool EdgeRank Checker. The study says the difference is likely due to Facebook reducing the prominence of posts published by third-party APIs, and Facebook collapsing updates from the same API from across a user’s friends and Liked Pages.

As Likes and comments increase a post’s prominence in the news feed — thereby driving more impressions and clicks — all Pages using auto-posting apps should look to switch to manual posting if possible.

via Study: Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70%.

But Facebook didn’t just add ease of use to contests, it totally changed the motivation behind entering them. Nowadays, the prize seems secondary. The main appeal of Facebook contests is to communicate something about yourself.

These four highlighted contest campaigns illustrate this. In each case, users get more out the program than a gift certificate or whatever the nominal prize is: They also get a forum to define themselves to like-minded people. Maybe the best prize you can offer these days is bragging rights.

via 4 Successful and Creative Facebook Contests.

At Socialbakers, we analyze hundreds of thousands of Facebook pages to bring you the best stats out there. What do we do with so much data? For starters, we built Socialbakers and its sections for top brands on Facebook, so you can monitor the top brands, and even suggest if Facebook pages should belong into brands or different local ranks.

Second, we built Socialbakers Engagement Analytics – the best analytics tool out there for Facebook pages, that you can use to analyze what works for you and your competitors.

Thats exactly where we looked to analyze the TOP 100 pages on Facebook, to see what content is being posted, and what works in terms of Engagement Rate. We already explained engagement rate earlier, but its the number of LIKES and COMMENTS divided by the number of FANS – and its an average across all the pages posts. That means the Engagement Rate is much about quality.

via What types of posts work best on Facebook pages? – Socialbakers.

Facebook deletes hacked Pages, destroying years of work • The Register.

Businesses and individuals using Facebook Pages are getting booted off their fanpage with no way back on, and it’s costing some of them money.

Typically, the administrator tries to access the Page, only to discover that someone else has managed to get admin privileges and then deleted their admin status.

Ali Naqvi, owner and director of 123vouchercodes.co.uk, lost his Page around three months ago at great cost to his business.

“We had 6,000 fans who were genuine followers interested in our updates and clicking away. The clicks brought in about 10 to 15 per cent traffic every month,” he told The Reg. “My webpage does about 50,000 unique visits a month – it’s not huge, but at the same time, whatever traffic is there, 10 to 15 per cent is a big chunk of that.”

After months of trying to get help from Facebook, Naqvi has resorted to starting a new Page, but it’s not a solution he’s happy with.

“I’ve actually started a new Page already, but the take-up is slow,” he said. “I spent two years building the 6,000 fan base and I’ve just started now so it’s only a couple of hundred on there. It’s not the same, it’s not going to bring the same amount of traffic.”

A survey by ComScore in conjunction with Facebook looks closely at what the potential reach of not only the “fans” but “friends of fans” . This what you call the ‘secondary effect’. These friends of fans represent a much larger set of consumers (34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages)

While Bing with a fan base of approximately 1.7 million fans on Facebook, the number of “Friends of Fans” is 232 million – more than 130 times the size of its Fan base

via http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/07/28/is-this-the-holy-grail-of-facebook-marketing/