Facebook is not just a social networking website anymore, it has become part of the everyday life of millions of people.
Their official website says that Facebook has 1,000,000,000+ daily active users (1.04 Billion to be precise) on an average, as of December 2015. Approximately 83% of them are outside the US and Canada. You can imagine the global impact of this company.
As a business or nonprofit, you might already be using your Facebook page to reach out to your audience who are a part of these millions of Facebook users. But is your Facebook page helping you spread the message? Are your posts working? How effective is the reach of your page? How are people engaging with your posts? Wouldn’t it be better if you have some free Facebook tools to help you measure these key metrics?
Knowing what works on your Facebook Business Page and optimising it according to your audience need is important for your success. Facebook Insights is a useful analytics tool that comes bundled with your page, but as an entrepreneur or a busy executive, most of us do not have the time to look at all the detailed numbers in the CSV export file format from Facebook insights. We need dashboards with graphs and charts that can quickly tell us what we need to know about our page and help us take action. As an agency that predominantly works with Startups, SMEs (small & medium enterprises) and Nonprofits that are run by busy executives and small teams, we find this approach to analytics more effective for our clients.
We did some research and put together this list of 5 free tools that can help you track the performance of your Facebook Page and help you optimise it to increase reach. All of them are Free (or Freemium, which means you can access the basic features without having to worry about monthly subscriptions. You may have to pay for advanced features.)
5 Free Facebook Tools to Measure the Performance of your Business Page
1. Sumorank:
Sumorank is a free tool that comes from the house of BuzzSumo. This tool helps you analyse what performs best on your Facebook page – post types, interaction, engagement, post time, etc.
Step 1: Visit the website www.sumorank.com
Step 2: You are asked to verify that you are human by clicking on a Captcha link (a really simple verification step)
Step 3: After verification, you are taken to their home page, where you enter your Facebook page URL and click Submit
Step 4: Within a few seconds, you are presented with a graphical representation of your page performance with the following data
- Estimated monthly total interactions
- Average engagement from post type
- Average engagement per character range
- Posts per 3rd party tool and average engagement
- Day posted and average engagement
- Time posted and average engagement
- Estimated average monthly interaction
- Top posts
2. LikeAlyzer:
LikeAlyzer is a free tool from the Meltwater group. This free tool helps you measure and analyse the potential and effectiveness of your Facebook page. It even helps you identify issues and fine tune your Facebook posts.
Step 1: Visit the website www.likealyzer.com
Step 2: Enter your Facebook URL and click the ‘Search’ icon
Step 3: In a few seconds, you get the following information on the screen
- A score of your Facebook page. You can compare your score with the average in your industry and with similar brands (this is a useful feature)
- Recommendations on what you can do to improve your score and make your Facebook page better
- Analysis of your posts
- Page performance number
This tool is not quite visual with many graphs and charts etc but we like their scoring system and the ability to compare it with other industry players.
3. Simply Measured – Free Tools Page
Simply Measured is one of the top social analytics companies today. Apart from their premium products (that are very expensive), they have a great collection of free tools that you can make use of.
Warning: Unlike the other 4 tools, which are straightforward and easy to use, they make it a little bit hard to access the reports. You need to go through 5 steps and share your email id more than once before you can access the free report given by these tools. So you need a bit of time (and patience).
The reports are limited to a specific time period, but they are visual and are value-adding with useful information. For example: Their Facebook Insights Report Tool has a ‘Facebook Engagement Megaphone’ that gives you a visual funnel of how your posts reach your audience.
Step 1: Visit the website www.simplymeasured.com/free-social-media-tools and select any free tool
Step 2: You will be asked to connect to Simply Measured Facebook App that can access your information, etc. So ensure that you read all the terms before you give access.
Step 3: You are asked to sign up to their newsletter
Step 4: You are asked to share a post on Facebook (a bit annoying)
Step 5: AGAIN you are asked to enter the email id and name to receive the report (more annoying, especially since we already entered the email id)
But if you endure all the 5 steps, you get an email in your inbox with free beautiful graphical analysis and data about your Facebook page performance.
4. Facebook Page Barometer from Agorapulse:
Using this free tool, you can measure the performance of your Facebook page by benchmarking it with more than 11,000 Facebook pages in the database of Agorapulse. The percentage values are based on the last 50 posts on your page, so you get an idea of the impact of your recent activity.
Step 1: Visit the website barometer.agorapulse.com
Step 2: Click on ‘Benchmark your page’ button
Step 3: Authorise the app to access your page data
Step 4: In a few seconds, you have a nice visual representation of the following
- Average percentage of fans reached by each post, along with a minimum and maximum percentage
- Average percentage of users who have engaged with your post
- Average percentage of users who are talking about this
- Average percentage of users who react negatively by hiding your posts, etc.
- Line graph of monthly organic reach
- Line graph of monthly viral reach
5. AdEspresso Facebook Ads Compass
If you run Facebook Ads, then this free tool from the AdEspresso team is a great starting point for analysing the ROI of your campaigns. Facebook inbuilt ads tool gives you a lot of data, but this tool presents it in a more visual format. Visual representation gives you more clarity, saves time and helps you make meaningful decisions quickly. For example, with this tool you can compare side-by-side factors like Age, Gender, etc for your campaigns that can give you meaningful insights. (And the reports are colourful, something I like better than the serious-looking monochromatic Facebook dashboards!)
Step 1: Visit the website www.adespresso.com/academy/free-tools/compass
Step 2: Click on ‘Generate your Report’ button
Step 3: Authorise AdEspresso Campaign Rater app to access your Facebook ads account
Step 4: Now you go through a 3-step process – First you select the ad account in the drop down.
Step 5: Then you select the campaign from the second step screen
Step 6: You can leave your email id in the last screen to be notified when the report is ready.
Apart from the colourful visual charts, the report also gives you a benchmark comparison for you to analyse how your campaigns are performing.
Additional tip: AdEspresso has a collection of more than 18,000 ad samples with a neat filter. If you are serious about Facebook ads you should check out this collection to get an idea of what agencies and businesses are doing with the different types of ads.
I hope these 5 free tools will help you improve the performance of your Facebook page and help you add value to your Facebook audience. If you know of any other useful tool or if you like to share your thoughts on this topic, leave your comments below. Thank you.
All the very best!
