We distinguish between daily/weekly and absolute growth.
If not said otherwise, we use “Growth” as the average weekly growth rate of a Facebook page. The growth rate does not compare the number of fans at the beginning and the end of a period, but it answers the question “How much had the page to grow in a week on average to get from value A to value B?”. That makes sense, because it gives you a more “stable” impression about the growth without being too vulnerable to sudden spikes or extreme differences.
Example for the weekly growth rate:
Page A has 2000 fans, when two weeks ago it only had 500. Just the difference is 1500 fans or 300% of the starting value of 500. The calculation of the average weekly growth rate “only” equals to 100%. The page grew by 100% in the first week, which is 500 fans: 500 fans + 500 fans = 1000 fans. For the second week it’s another 100%: 1000 fans + 1000 fans = 2000 fans.
Example for the absolute growth:
To calculate the absolute growth, you have to note, that all values for „number of fans“, that are visible at Fanpage Karma, are based on the UTC time code from Facebook, at 0:00 am UTC, at the beginning of the day.
Page A had a growth of +712 fans in December 2016.
– On December 1, at the beginning of the day at 0:00 am UTC, the Page A had 106.191 fans.
– On December 31, at the beginning of the day at 0:00 am UTC, the Page A had 106.877 fans.
– On January 1, at the beginning of the day at 0:00 am UTC, the Page A had 106.903 fans.
Therefore, during the day of December 31, the Page A got 26 fans, at total 106.903, at 11:59 pm UTC.
To get the growth of December, we take the first value of December 1, at 0:00 am UTC (106.191) and the last value of December 31, at 11:59 pm UTC (106.903), the difference is 712.