Facebook to Relay to Brands What Fans Talk About

For a long time marketers counted rising Facebook “likes” as a means of determining the success of the page and its content. The more likes, the better the brand’s overall performance. More recently, the tide has shifted to learning more about each “like” and which likes are more loyal to the brand, engage more or have a higher lifetime value, and may even spend more on the brands products.

Now, Facebook has decided to help out. On Tuesday, the social network announced that it would launch “Topic Data” in the U.S. and UK. It’s a new data product that will relay to marketers what Facebook fans are talking about, including brands, events, products and other specific topics. Brands on Facebook will be able to access the data—free for now—to better understand the people behind the likes and to improve marketing communications and conversations with these fans.

The data is being mined with help from brand analytics company DataSift and will prove a goldmine for marketers. Facebook accounted for 81% of all shares among U.S. users in Q4 2014 and has expanded its share by a whopping 8.2% year over year, eMarketer recently reported. Many of those shares are likely related to product information, events and other topics of interest to brands.

Twitter’s tweets have long been a keen source of information for brands to better understand how to tweak marketing, improve products and just listen to what’s being said about their brand or related subjects. Now Facebook is in the game too.