Today is the day that Facebook (FB) stopped collecting their old stat insights in the next step to the conversion to their new platform. If you have a corporate FB account and watch statistics on your site, you might have noticed their old insights, particularly Post Views, don't exactly line up with what they are now calling Reach in the new insights. According to the FB Help Center, the old Post Views were defined as "The number of times people (Fans and Non-Fans) have viewed a News Feed story posted by your Page..."¹ The new Reach is defined as "The number of unique people who have seen your post."² Call me dense, but it sounds like Post Views and Reach are the same thing. They both count the people who have taken a look at your posted content on your FB page. However, if you have been watching the numbers, you will see that the new Reach has significantly lower numbers than was reported on the old Post Views. In fact, we have seen numbers drop as much as 85% between the two statistics.

Something seems to be askew. It seems we are measuring apples to oranges. Actually, it is more like we are measuring fruit still on the tree to fruit that has been picked and is in the market. It is the same fruit, it is just being viewed a bit differently than before. This boils down to what FB is doing with the content you are posting on your corporate site. In the old format, you gathered a list of fans who liked or commented on your posts. Whenever you posted new content, this was added to all of those Fan FB pages as a News Feed. So if Sally became a Fan of my corporate FB page, she was sent a News Feed of my new posts until she unsubscribed. FB counted Sally as one Post Viewer for that new posting AND it counted all of Sally's Friends who took a look at her News Feed. Sally may have 100 people look at her News Feed. They were counted as a Non-Fan Post Viewer.

The new insights seems to be a bit more honest about who is actually looking at the content of your posts. They are now measuring the number of people who come to your corporate FB page and view your posts. If they come to your site and take a look at your post, they are measured in the Reach category. If they click a link on your post, they are measured as an Engaged User. If they post a comment, click the "like", forward it to another FB Friend, accept an invitation to an event, etc. they are measured in the Talking About This. This is where FB tips the scale. Since there are more FB users than there are people in most countries, there is great potential for your posts to go viral. That potential has always been there, but the new format does a much better job of measuring these actions and reporting them back to you. They also break down your potential reach through your fans by letting you know how many FB Friends they have. They also measure demographics like age and gender of those people looking at your FB posts.

The marketing potential of this is huge. For instance, if you post a link to a special you have on a product - let's say it is the form of an online coupon - you will know the exact number of people who took a look at your offer vs. the ones who actually clicked to get the coupon. You will know how many of them sent the link to their Friends. You will know the age of the people who clicked and whether they are male or female. All of this becomes critical to the success of your future marketing efforts.