The following is a post from Brian Bagel, TIG Global Social Media Manager.
Social media measurement is a black hole so filled to the brim with metrics, strategies, theories 
and junk that it seems like anything that gets floated out there swirls around and gets sucked into the murky soup of information overload. So while this post may very well end up in the ether, I think it’s important to inform our readers of the most important metric in social media, summed up in three words. News feed impressions.
Chances are if you’re on social media as a business, you likely have a Facebook Page. And chances also are that your Facebook page is your main social media presence if not your only social media presence. So of course, the most important metric should be a Facebook metric.
Back in October
of 2010, Facebook introduced a “new” insights section for page admins. Part of these new insights was a section for “news feed impressions.” Now those impressions are nothing new. Facebook has been giving information on those below individual posts on the page’s wall for some time. But the ability to see these impression numbers in one place with the new Facebook insights puts the icing on the cake.
For some time, we’ve known that a healthy Facebook page doesn’t just have a lot of “likes” but also has an audience that wants to participate in the conversations on the page. We’ve also known that while the Facebook page may be the hub of the conversation, much of the activity happens right from people’s news feeds (the stream of stories that’s the first thing you see as a user after you log in).
News feed impressions marries this all together into one nice (hopefully big) number. Not only do you get a really great idea of just how many people are viewing the items you post on your page’s wall, but you’re also getting a great idea of just how your message is spreading. It’ll not only pick up impressions from people that already like your page, but also from those that may not yet have seen the message via their friends’ activity with the page.. So if you write a wall post and a few people like, or comment on it, you’ll see a healthy number of impressions. But as your posts get more like and comment activity, you’ll see those news feed impressions skyrocket as people who comment or like it spread it to their friends via the news feed.
Having this news feed impression data is essential for optimizing your posts for the news feed. By knowing which posts garnered greater news feed attention, you can use that information to recognize what kinds of messages, content types and calls to action gain the most traction. From that, you can constantly try to replicate and improve what you post on your page.
Facebook has since stopped allowing admins to view the data from “old” insights, so hopefully you’ll take a look at this news feed impressions data, and get a true idea of how many people are actually seeing your message.
Is there a more important metric out there? Sound off in the comments section.
Interested in ramping up your social media strategy? Learn more about the full suite of interactive tools from TIG Global, send us and email, or give us a call at 301-841-0507.
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As a PR Manager, I can personally say that promotion in the social media is very effective, the only thing that it works only if you are capable of targeting the audience properly.