The 'talking about' metric available on Facebook Pages is probably the most important metric available to you as a page owner, not least because it's clearly the most visible reflection of how engaging your Page is.
Before we get onto some ways you can increase this number however, lets outline just how this number is derived. To register as having 'talked' about your page, a user must have done one of the following:
- liked your page
- posted on your wall
- liked a post
- commented on a post
- shared a post
- answered a question
- mentioned the page in a post (in @pagename style)
- tagged the page in a photo
So you can see there are lots of ways for a user to be added to the talking about metric. The stats are counted over a rolling 7 day period, and are generally a few days behind live.
There are obviously lots of ways of increasing this metric, I'm going to focus on some of the more effective ways.
- Ask relevant questions. Questions are a great way to up engagement, both by getting people to like/comment and by getting them to vote. So think of some questions that are relevant to your fans and get asking.
- Provide a range of content. Share interesting articles you've found, ask questions, post photos and videos, and of course encourage fans to post things they have found. If you can offer a range of content it helps to keep your Page fresh.
- Thank users. Apps such as Fan of the Week are a really nice way of both thanking your active users and encouraging others to get involved. You'd be surprised how pleased people are to be named fan of the week.
- Comment live. Are there any live events for your area that you could cover? On my Everton fan page for instance we provide live commentary of all games, and hundreds of fans participate during the 90 minutes.
- Make it fun. Suffice to say formal competitions are a great way of boosting engagement, but you can add some simple games to your Page very quickly. Things like caption competitions or 'fill in the blank' status updates can easily ramp up engagement. Don't make these the staple of your page, but for a bit of fun on a Friday afternoon, why not?
Hopefully this post will give you some insight into how Facebook calculates this metric and how you can go about improving it.
What other tips do you have for fan engagement?
Giving people special offers has worked really well for me. I mean ones that aren't offered to anyone else. Make them feel special and loved 🙂
Thanks. I need help here.
Has to be remembered that not all platforms are right for some things. Apart from the really big names I haven't seen many serious topics gain traction on Facebook. Do you do much on LinkedIn David?
I do a linkedIn answer every day. That generates contacts.
All my tweets are paralleled on LI. (I use hootsuite). I get the majority of clicks to my blog via LI. Overall, I like it.
I'm still learning how to use Groups best.
You may find that a better use of your time than Facebook. With most social networks being free in financial terms, the only real cost involved is your time, so that\’s how you should figure out your opportunity cost.
About the number of people talking about. I want to ask small question. When I tag my friends to my post, it also counted in people talking about, is that true? Or only when they answer it will be counted.
That's correct. Anything that appears in a persons timeline will count in the talking about stats.