Figuring out Facebook’s ‘Post Quality’ Rating – Simple Ways to Measure Fan Page Success

Today’s blog post is brought to you by Kate Lee, an account exec here at Affect.  Kate works on both public relations and social media accounts for our clients – and has become quite a pro at measuring engagement and success on social media campaigns.

If you’re a page administrator for a business’ Facebook Fan Page, you may have noticed a “Post Quality Rating” in Facebook’s admin-only “Insights” application. With measurement as a key part of any business’ social media program, this rating was a welcome tool to determine a page’s success. The rating, as described by Facebook, is an “important indicator of how fans gauge your posts.”

But what does this really mean? If you’re a Math pro, then Facebook’s algorithm is for you. If you’re not, it might be less obvious. In ‘basic’ terms, Facebook uses an algorithm that calculates your number of posts, total interactions received on posts, and your page’s total number of fans as well as “other factors” over a rolling seven day period – and generates a single number. This is your post quality number, while the “stars” directly below the post quality indicate how your page’s posts rank up against other pages with a similar number of fans. But there are potential pitfalls inherent in using just the post quality number as measurement of a page’s success – including that the score is ultimately unlimited and can fluctuate greatly from week to week. You could also have fans that simply aren’t active on every single post, further lowering this rating.

Instead, much of the information about the content of your page can be broken down to provide real-time information and results – and it’s the kind of concrete information that really drives improvement of your page.

You can start calculating your success on Facebook by thinking about, and executing on the following ideas:

• Monitor the interactions (comments and ‘likes’) on each post – which type of posts generate the most interactions? Continue to post similar content to create an ongoing conversation
• How many people are viewing your Facebook Fan Page? Facebook does generate a total number of page views/week as part of the Insights program, and it’ll give you a good idea of the number of impressions on each of your posts
• How many total fans do you have each week? Are you gaining or losing fans?
• Track the number of clicks on each link you’ve posted – are your fans and page viewers interested in the content, but just not commenting? Remember that driving traffic is definitely a measurement of your success
• How many fans unsubscribe from your feed each week? You’ll be able to gauge interest in your posts depending on how many people continue to stay plugged-in to news feed updates from your company

By continually measuring and creating ongoing reports with these metrics, you’ll be able to see quickly how your posts (and your page) measure up over time. Got any other tips? I’d love to hear your ideas below.

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Tagged as: affect strategies, facebook, PR Blogs, social media measurement, Tech Affect