Facebook stepped up its game last night by adding insights to specific posts on fan pages. The metrics included are total impressions and percent of interaction among those impressions (this includes clicks, likes and comments).

This new feature will make it easier for page admins to track what information is making the largest impact with their fans and make adjustments to their content.

Here is a sample of what the new insights look like.

Naturally, the impressions and feedback percentage is only visible to page admins, and apparently Facebook is still in the process of rolling this feature out. If your pages don’t have it yet, don’t worry - they will soon.

A question that remains a mystery, is how Facebook is counting impressions. On a number of pages we administer, there have been instances of impressions outnumbering the total number of fans a page has, which would lead one to believe that Facebook is counting total impressions, not unique. I am sure as the days pass, Facebook will release more information on what an “impression” really means.

In the mean time, go and bask in the glory of knowing that thousands of people are hanging on to every word you post!

-Rusty

@RussWalters

In recent months, movie premieres, concerts, and red carpet events have attracted millions of viewers, which isn’t a surprise, by any means. The game-changer is the medium through which viewers have been tuning in - live video streaming. Online broadcasting isn’t a new tool, but the numbers for these entertainment events show potential for its popularity and use as a marketing device.

Live streaming means providing content to end users as it happens, as opposed to downloading a video that was previously recorded and then uploaded.  This eliminates valuable processing time and, thanks to interactive features provided by many live streaming host sites, allows broadcasters to engage with viewers in real time as well.

It’s not hard to see how live streaming has promise as a marketing tool. Broadcasts have the ability to reach a huge audience - anyone with an Internet connection can tune in. They’re also easy to set up and free, although that doesn’t mean they should be used by every company all the time. The key is to share what’s worth sharing, in a way that benefits your company and engages viewers.

Before jumping on a live streaming channel and broadcasting day-to-day operations, meetings, or company updates, consider whether the target viewing audience - and your business - could benefit from the extra level of transparency. Giving away trade secrets wouldn’t be smart, but broadcasting a conference could give a unique opportunity to for viewers to participate, ask questions, and contribute ideas to discussions through the host site interactive features. Weekly informational broadcasts, such as how-to shows, could be another option to build a positive following for your company.  But again, the key is to use live streaming in a way that benefits your company, not just because it’s how everyone else uses the tool.

Mashable predicts that 2010 will be a big year for live video. Will you be streaming along?  Check out popular online broadcasting sites like Livestream and UStream for more information.

Google has once again stepped up its game in a race it was already winning - the search engine superpower now offers real-time search, bringing in results from the web as they happen.  Switch your search options to “Latest” to view Tweets, blogs, news, and other web content with the promise of relevant content that Google has always offered.  The announcement from the official Google blog states:

We’re introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.

Real-time search isn’t new to the Internet though; Twitter has been offering it since late 2008.  Facebook caught on earlier this year, offering some advantages since its searches cover any content posted by users, including links, status updates, videos, photos, and notes.  FriendFeed includes updates from a variety of networks, and Bing recently signed deals with both Twitter and Facebook to include their content in search results too.  But despite the best efforts of its competitors, combining real-time search with the most powerful search engine on the web gives Google a tremendous advantage - and you can guarantee Google will find a way to innovate the feature in some way to stay ahead of the rest.

So what does real-time search mean for marketing and advertising?  Social media is now more important than ever before, thanks to word of mouth publicity that happens through various networks.  Now that Google harvests content from the web as it happens, reviews and opinions from around the world are shared and accessed instantly.  This is great if you’re offering a product or service getting rave reviews, because the publicity could go viral and do great things for business.  On the other hand, bad publicity could be devastating just as quickly.  The most important thing is to monitor your Internet presence and be aware of what the public has to say, and to deal with bad reviews before millions of Internet users have been influenced.  Fortunately, real-time search makes these tasks easier than ever before.

Check out Google’s video below for more information on real-time search: