How to Research Your Competition on Facebook

How to Research Your Competition on Facebook

Being a success at Facebook marketing, or being successful at marketing your brand on Facebook is not easy. It requires a lot of dedication, planning, and precise execution of a marketing plan. One of main components of a social media-marketing plan, (in this case Facebook marketing plan) is competitor analysis. Competitor analysis gives you the advantage of knowing what it is your competition is doing differently, gives you further insight into what you can do to better your marketing plan, and gives you further insight into what the audience respond to.
How do you research your competition on Facebook? Are there techniques that work better than others do? Here are the various ways and tricks you can use to “spy” on your competition and analyze their success.
Method #1- Using Facebook pages to watch
The fact that Facebook pages to watch is underutilized is an advantage that you shall have over your competitors. It is stealth because while using it, you can wave goodbye to the worry that the competitor will learn of your “spying”. The “competition” will simply get a notification that “someone” has them on their pages to watch list. Here is how you set up Facebook pages to watch.
1- Log into your Facebook page and navigate to the overview section of Facebook insights. Scroll down to add pages and select this option. Facebook may have an option for you, but this does not mean that you cannot search and add a specific page.

2- Add all the pages you would like to watch; the limit is 100 pages. I would also suggest that you also add some pages from industry leaders in your niche. Ideally, you should check out your pages to watch regularly so that you can get insight into what is working for them, which kind of posts are most popular etc. On your Facebook to watch pages, you can click on the specific page you want to get data on; this will call up data on their last week’s top post with the most engaging at the top.
3- After this, you should navigate to the post sections of your insights. You can then click on the option of top post from all the pages you follow to get the five most popular posts from all the pages you watch. Depending on the kind of insight you want to get from “spying” on your competition, you can adjust the criteria. You should also dive deeper by clicking on the specific post to get the type of engagements, comments, and shares. This information will go a very long way in boosting your own marketing strategy.

Method #2- Setting Facebook interest list
Facebook interest list is another great way that you can use to monitor your competition without alerting them of your “spying”. Additionally, Facebook allows you to put a page on the interest list without being a fan (liking it). To set it up:
1- Navigate to your interest option that is located on the left sidebar of your home page. You should then select the add interests option, create a list and proceed to search for your interest pages specific; you can add a few pages to the list. After adding the pages, click on the next option; this will offer you the option to name your list. I suggest that you set up the privacy setting to “only me” to make it private and restrict who can see the list. However, if you do decide to make the list public, use a descriptive name in the “list name.”

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