Maybe the first question here should be: do you know what list "churn" is?

Basically, "churn" is the term used to describe the rate at which subscribers – be they in your email lists, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, etc. – leave your list, by either unsubscribing, un-liking, un-following, etc.

When it comes to your organization's Facebook page, you've probably already been doing a good job at tracking your number of fans; it's right there on your fan page for everyone to see! Thanks to the eBenchmarks research series NTEN has partnered with M+R Strategic Services to create, you can now impress your boss and colleagues with your knowledge of not only how to calculate your organization's fan page churn but also what kinds of goals you might want to set for your Facebook strategy around this metric.

Thanks to the eBenchmarks Extra on Facebook findings from our latest study, we found out:

• You'll need to factor both "un-likes" and "un-subscribes" into your calculation of the churn rate for your Facebook page.
• The average churn rate in 2010 for nonprofits in our research sample was 14%.
• You need to think about quality of your Facebook posts to make sure you're not driving folks away – just like you already think about tone, topic, and frequency with your email messaging to avoid unsubscribes!

You can download the complete Facebook eBenchmarks Extra from, where else, our Facebook page!

To whet your appetite for the full report, here's a great peek at the charts regarding Facebook page churn: