• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 26, 2011

What's a brand page on Facebook worth? To find out, Millward Brown and its digital practice Dynamic Logic on Tuesday debuted FanIndex -- a service for measuring the impact of brands' pages on any social platform.

Specifically, FanIndex will attempt to offer brand clients quantitative measurement of Facebook fan page performance, along with various diagnostics to help them improve page content.

"Our analytic construct uses traditional attitudinal metrics ... adjusting them for Facebook," explained Ali Rana, senior vice president and head of Dynamic Logic's Emerging Media Lab. "Marketers can now get deep diagnostic insights into fan motivations, their expectations and their resultant change in perceptions."

In addition, FanIndex hopes to help clients understand how Facebook fans compare to target audiences, their expectations as fans, and why they became fans in the first place.

FanIndex will also explore the impact of fan page content on overall impressions of a brand, giving clients a FanIndex rating. That includes a composite score of fans' overall opinion of the page, attention to brand posts and the likelihood to recommend and revisit the page.

Diageo is already using the new service. "We now have a much clearer view of what our fans are looking for, and what the implications are for us to drive engagement," says Christene McCauley, global consumer planning director at the spirits powerhouse.

FanIndex is backed by recently released findings from a research study, "Value of a Fan," where Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic identified best practices for increasing brand equity within fans.

The findings suggested that the size of the fan base isn't the main driver of higher FanIndex ratings. Rather, pages need to deliver on common fan expectations -- i.e., regular posts, authentic dialog, transparency, and latest brand news -- and then as many competitive differentiators as possible.