How do I use the Facebook Competitors Report?

New to Sprout Social? Learn more about how our Facebook Competitor Report fits into our suite of competitive analysis tools here.

This report enables you to track metrics for any Facebook Page and compare against your own Pages. You can also benchmark your efforts against the average of the Pages being compared.

When you add a Facebook Page as a competitor, Sprout starts tracking that Page for changes in important activities like Fan growth posts, and comments. When there’s enough data to generate metrics, they appear in the report. The information is stored indefinitely, so in the future you can analyze trends over time.

You may occasionally see the following messages:

Gathering Data: Sprout started gathering data for a new competitor for you and doesn’t have any data at this time. Sprout monitors activity and displays data within a few hours to a few days, depending on the metric. 

Data Unavailable: Sprout doesn't have any data for the competitor for the selected date range. As a result, Sprout can’t compare this Page to others.

Note: You must have the Manage Competitor Profiles Reports feature permission to add competitor profiles to this report.

This article contains the following sections:

• Filter Menu
• Overview
• Pages
• FAQs

Filter Menu

The Filter Menu is where you can customize the data you want to see in the report. Select your Facebook Pages that you want to compare against your competitors using the Your Pages dropdown.

Then, use the Competitor Pages dropdown to search for and manage the competitor Pages.

If you want to review competitors only, you can hide your Pages from the bottom of the Your Pages dropdown.

Select the date range using the date picker in the upper right corner.

Use Share to download a CSV or PDF, send a PDF or schedule regular delivery for a PDF version of the report so you can keep track of competitor activity.

Overview

The Overview tab provides a high-level look at performance metrics and averages between you and your competitors.

In the Summary widget, you can view the:

• Fans Average - the number of users who liked the Page as of the last day of your selected time period.
• Public Engagements Average - the number of times that users engaged with your posts during your selected time period.
• Public Engagements per Post - the number of engagements for posts published to the page during your selected time period.

In the Audience Growth widget you can see how your audience grew compared to your competitors. Competitor Average metrics display the average values for all the pages you select. Metrics that appear in the chart when at least three days have passed since you initially connected the page.

This widget also shows your averages against your competitors, including:

• Fans - the number of users who liked the page as of the last day of the selected time period.
• Net Fan Growth - the number of new users who liked your page (organic or paid) minus the ones who unliked your page during the selected time period.
• % Fan Growth - the percent change in fans from the beginning to the end of the selected time period. This is equal to net fan growth divided by the fans on the first day of the selected time period.

In the Publishing Behavior widget you can view different types of posts you and your competitors published during your selected time period. You can view posts by day and use the chart to get a breakdown of posts by content type against your competitors. 

In the Top Posts widget you can view the top posts based on public engagements. The posts that appear in this section are based on lifetime public engagements. If you’re a Premium Analytics user, you can view reactions, comments and shares for the selected time period.

The Engagement widget helps you evaluate how people are engaging with your and your competitors’ posts during your selected time period. You can view engagements by day and use the chart to get a breakdown of public engagements by engagement type against your competitors. 

Pages

The Pages tab provides aggregate activity for pages and the posts published during the time period you select. The chart provides an overall average of your pages and then compares against your competitors average. You can view data on fans, engagements, published content types, shares and reactions.

If you’re a Premium Analytics user, click to customize the chart and organize the most important types of data. 

FAQs

Are ads counted in the report metrics?

No, ads don’t count, but boosted posts are counted.

Why can’t I find the competitor Page I want to add through the competitor search box?

Some Facebook pages can’t be discovered through public search if they have high privacy settings. 

Why don’t the same Top Posts appear in the Facebook Competitor Report and the Facebook Pages Report?

The Facebook Pages Report uses private data in the overall engagement calculation. The Competitor Report uses publicly available data to ensure all pages are compared equally. In the Competitor report, public engagements are defined as reactions, comments and shares.

Why did my competitor data stop showing?

This could happen because the Page was made private or had restrictions applied to it.

Why can’t I add a competitor to the report?

You must have the Manage Profiles permission. 

What post types are included?

The Report includes:

• Video Posts
• Single Image Posts
• Text Posts
• Post containing a link

Posts with message call to actions (CTAs), shared posts and ads are not included.

What posts types aren't included in the Report?

Due to API limitations from Facebook, Sprout can't ingest Facebook Competitor multi-image posts, album posts or Facebook Reels.

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