How To Track Your Competitors on Facebook

Facebook being the #1 social media marketplace and home to nearly 2 billion active monthly users might come across as an easy place to run marketing campaigns. A recent survey shows that 140 million businesses use Facebook to reach their audience. Source. But, Wait! It doesn’t mean that all these businesses are reaping benefits just...

Facebook being the #1 social media marketplace and home to nearly 2 billion active monthly users might come across as an easy place to run marketing campaigns.

A recent survey shows that 140 million businesses use Facebook to reach their audience. Source.

But, Wait!

It doesn’t mean that all these businesses are reaping benefits just because they use this particular social media platform. 

If you think that you can get your way with posting a few pictures and creating a couple of posts, you are wrong.

Marketing on Facebook requires careful planning, research, and the right strategy.  If you do not develop and follow a comprehensive Facebook strategy then you might not generate leads as expected.

A working strategy will do more than gain you followers.

  • It will increase your brand visibility
  • Help you take down your Facebook competitors and
  • Make your business scale new heights.

So, how do you come up with a Killer Strategy that will crush your competitors on Facebook?

Follow these 6 steps to go straight to the top. (Now, remember that this process will not give you immediate results and it all depends on how consistently you monitor and engage with your audience.)

Things to do before you begin:

  1. Make a list of keywords that your brand associates with.
  2. Make a list of all your competitors.

To take down your Facebook competitors, you should know what, how and when they are doing things.

Competitor mapping and competitor analysis will give you insights on what to do and what not to.

If you cannot find who your competitors on Facebook are, follow the steps below.

  1. Type in your focus keyword on Social Animal’s Facebook search.
  2. Click “Top Pages” and you’ll be presented with a list of Facebook pages that rank at the top for that particular keyword. (Use filters to choose pages based on the posts they share or the page description)

Click here to find Top pages for any keyword now. 

With Social Animal’s Facebook Search, you can perform competitor’s page analysis by typing in the name of the profile/page. (If you cannot find your competitor’s page on Social Animal, just add the link to the page or profile and wait for Social Animal to deliver results)

Here’s how you can take down your Facebook competitors,

Step 1:

Enter the page name or link and click on the options to select the page you want to analyze. You will be able to see the most engaging posts of the page. You can filter this based on the types of posts and the time period you want. For deeper analysis, click on “Save” to look at the posts later and to monitor the performance of these top-performing posts. You can view saved Facebook posts on your Dashboard under Projects. You can also create separate projects for different competitors. 

Step 2: 

Why do all the hard work when you can discover strategies with a click?

After Step 1, select “Analyze page” to get a detailed analysis report. Here’s what you’ll see and learn at a basic glance. 

  • The page’s description, the number of likes or followers, type of the page, and the verification status. 
  • This will be followed by the Total number of posts, the Best day to post (calculated based on audience engagement), the Best time to post and the type/kind of post that works best
  • And then, an overview of the page’s posts. A graphical representation shows you the number of posts published and engagement received over a period. You can use filters to choose the types of engagements (likes, comments or shares) and the time period. You can also see average engagements as opposed to total engagements. This shows when the page was active the most and received the most interactions. 

Here’s what you will learn from all this data,

  1. The maximum or the minimum number of posts that you must create to engage your audience.
  2. The type of content you must focus more on.
  3. The day of the week when you must try to engage your audience.
  4. The time when your audience is usually online or engage more with that page.

Step 3:

As you scroll down, you can see how people have reacted and the top posts of the page. Pay attention to these top posts as these have received the maximum engagement. Notice the type of the post: Image, link, status or video and the tone of the words used. This will tell you the kind of posts that work best. (You can click on them to view the original post on the page) 

Step 4:

It is important to analyze sentiments of the page to know how they connect with their audience. Select “Sentiment Analysis” to see the sentiments of the posts published by that page. Use filters to see the types of interactions on posts with a different sentiment. Example: It is clear that the Neutral sentiment is used the most here, and has the most engagements. 

Step 5:

Take a look at the top engaged posts for each sentiment. (Click on these to view the original post on Facebook) Focus on the total engagement per post and if you want to dig in deeper, click on it to view the actual comments of the audience to see how they’ve responded. 

Now you’ll notice the kind of sentiments that you should concentrate on. 

Please note: This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use the other sentiments. It just means that you should focus more on the sentiment that will work best for your niche.

Step 6:

Timing is everything on Facebook!

There is no use in posting content when you don’t have people online to see. You’ll have to observe when your audience finds the time to come online. This means looking at a competitor page’s publishing schedule. Select “Post Analysis” to see the types of posts, days published and even the time with the most posts. Some pages share posts throughout the day while others share more posts during a particular time when they know their audience to be active. This could help you in creating your own strategy.

Be warned: There might not be a constant best time to post as it may vary according to the topic that you want to share and the location of your audience. The time given here is purely based on engagement metrics and it is suggested that you schedule some of your posts to be published in intervals throughout the day to provide something for everyone.

Bonus: Discover Content

Now that you know how to develop your own strategy, here’s something more for you to take away.

Find top articles to share or curate by typing in any keyword/search term and select “Posts”. The search also allows you to look at the number of likes, comments, and shares per post. 

To beat your competitors, learn from their mistakes. But while you are at it, don’t forget to share quality content and do not expect results immediately. It takes time to become a star!

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Sowndarya Kishore is a Content Marketer at Social Animal. A marketer by day and a reader by night, she loves to discuss herself in the third person. Follow her on Twitter.