Facebook is always a go-to for brand promotion.

It's an easy-to-use channel that does everything content-wise. Planning to publish a long-form post? You can freely do so – Facebook doesn't have character limits. Creating video content for your target audience? Facebook has all the tools you need.

Similar to other social media channels, you'll need to streamline your Facebook posts to get the performance you're expecting. There are many moving parts to consider, including social media trends, audience pain points, and Facebook's own algorithm. So, how do you counter these challenges?

That's where social media analytics enter the picture – particularly Facebook analytics.

You don't want to launch a Facebook marketing strategy blindfolded with your hands tied. What you need is strong data you can use to improve your social media campaigns and reach the right audience. By detailing the unique features of each Facebook analytics tool, this guide could help you achieve your business goals, both short-term and long-term.

Let's get to it.

What are Facebook analytics tools?

Facebook analytics tools provide valuable insights into maximizing the reach and engagement of your marketing campaigns. Ultimately, the goal is to capitalize on your brand's potential to engage the platform's large audience, which currently stands at more than three billion monthly active users. That makes Facebook the largest and most popular social network.

Facebook's legacy reigns strong. But how can you make it work for you?

Let's say you created episodic content centered around one-on-one interviews with industry experts. You didn't hold back on the production costs, starting from the celebrity host you hired down to your professional graphic design and video editing team. However, you discovered that you're not getting as many interactions compared to your competitors' Facebook posts. That's where Facebook analytics tools come into play.

Developing quality content is just one step (although essential) in executing your social media strategy. Remember, great content is useless if your target audience can't see it. Using a Facebook analytics tool helps resolve that dilemma, particularly in driving engagement from people who are genuinely interested in your brand.

There is more to social media analytics that most people are unaware of. Read on to find out how analytics can boost your Facebook performance.

Benefits of Facebook analytics

Hit the sweet spot in your marketing campaign by leveraging Facebook analytics tools. Data analytics, like the following, provide audience-centric benefits that can naturally bring sustainable growth to your business.

Performance tracking

We all know that likes, comments, and shares are just the tip of the iceberg in social media management. A Facebook analytics tool provides insights far beyond common engagement metrics, including post reach, impressions, click-through rates, conversion rates, etc.

Analyzing these advanced Facebook metrics shifts your focus to the right path. For instance, focusing on generating high-quality leads and increasing conversions is recommended for a Facebook page aiming to drive sales. It's easy to track these important metrics with proper analytics tools.

Audience insights

Creating an ideal buyer persona is an essential practice in social media marketing. You describe the demographic and behavioral traits of your high-value potential customers, whether these are individual consumers, decision-makers, or other businesses. 

By using Facebook audience insights, you can input those traits (even highly specific ones) and let the tools do the work. This helps local businesses target the right audiences or determine if they have the correct buyer personas in the first place.

Competitor analysis

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Well, in social media marketing, you're not just imitating your best competitors. You take the good and the bad from their Facebook marketing strategies and turn these to your advantage.

The best competitor analysis tools allow you to benchmark your performance metrics to those of your competitors. Identify content gaps, shared audiences, and other actionable insights that could catapult your business to the top of the competition.

Ad performance tracking

You can place your ads in just about every facet of Facebook, including the Marketplace, Messenger, and even in the My Day feature. Through the Meta Business Suite (Facebook's native analytics tool), you can track essential ad metrics, including ad impressions, cost per click, CPM, and ad quality (or relevance score).

Enhanced reporting

Take control of the Facebook page metrics that you want to prioritize. The best Facebook analytics tools allow you to select key performance indicators and visualize them through easy-to-understand charts, graphs, and customizable reports. For example, you can go to Custom Metrics on Meta Ads Reporting to create a new formula or calculation for social media metrics.

Improved engagement

Improve your Facebook performance by focusing on content topics and formats that resonate with your audience. Through Facebook analytics data, you'll discover your top-performing posts and the best times when your audience is mostly active during the day. These tools help you hit two of the most important social media engagement factors: time and relevance.

Top 11 Facebook analytics tools in 2024

Are you still not seeing the game-changing effect of Facebook analytics tools on your social media campaign? One of these 11 innovative tools could help get you there.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a must-have analytics platform for businesses scaling their Facebook performance. It's already one of the best social media management tools out there. Factor in its powerful analytics features, and you got a one-stop platform for all your social media needs.

With a whole host of conversations happening on Facebook, you can use Consumer Research to track up to 400 days of historical data for owned, non-owned Facebook pages. Track the likes, comments, shares to view how your audience is talking about your brand. 

You can analyze all this data through Brandwatch's customizable dashboard, which offers live updates on the data relevant to your brand.

Facebook Insights

If you want a straightforward, no-onboarding tool, Facebook Insights could be your go-to analytics platform. You can access Facebook Insights directly on your Facebook page, which is easier than learning how to navigate a third-party app.

Facebook Insights is a free, built-in tool that offers essential analytics data. This includes post insights, audience demographics, ad or boosted posts' performance, and the overall reach of your Facebook pages. As a part of the Meta Business Suite, you can also integrate your data findings with your campaigns in other Meta platforms, including Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

However, Facebook Insights is still a basic analytics tool. It doesn't have advanced Facebook data capabilities like other third-party platforms. But if you're looking for an easy platform to manage, Insights, as well as other Meta business tools, can do the trick for you.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a full-suite social media analytics tool that can help optimize your Facebook page performance. It's one of the first tools to dive into hashtag analytics, which is a huge component of Facebook marketing campaigns. 

Viral posts rarely happen, even on major social media platforms. The good news is you can increase your chances with Sprout Social's ViralPost technology. This patented technology calculates the best times to post your Facebook content, analyzing user behavior and engagement patterns. 

Do you have a banger content that you think can go viral? Sprout Social's ViralPost tech and hashtag tracking can help you capitalize on this golden opportunity.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite sticks in people's brains with its orange owl mascot branding, which is named Owly. In fact, it's even made its way to the brand's products, including the Ow.ly link shortener and the OwlyWriter. Impressively witty, right?

But Hootsuite, obviously, is much more than a cute mascot. It can serve as your dedicated Facebook analytics tool, especially when managing your paid ads and organic posts. You can schedule posts — directly from Hootsuite — and then track their performance in the dashboard.

Speaking of analytics dashboards, Hootsuite offers a user-friendly platform. You can see everything in one sitting, including key metrics and competitive analysis. This is quite a relief for social media managers, especially when dealing with large-scale marketing projects.

Buffer

Buffer is another all-in-one social media management tool that offers a full suite of resources. In terms of analytics, though, it's one of the easiest to use. 

You have Buffer Analyze, which not only tracks Facebook metrics but also provides recommendations for audience growth. It even gives you information on the most optimal days to post your content. You can reserve your best content for these days, especially your boosted posts or paid ads.

Emplifi (previously Socialbakers)

Emplifi is one of those full-suite analytics tools that can cater to any team size.

What sets them apart from the pack is their Unified Analytics platform. This AI-powered unified platform covers custom metrics, competitor analysis, and cross-channel campaign data. Plus, you can automate reports and other repetitive tasks. That's a big help if you're scaling up your Facebook campaigns.

On top of that, you can customize your own dashboard widgets. Select data points for both organic and paid posts, competitive insights, and customer intelligence. 

Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a Facebook analytics tool that actually offers a free audit of your Facebook page. Just head on to their Instant Facebook Audit page. They'll do a performance check of your Facebook page, and then share the results with you.

Moreover, Iconosquare is one of the social media analytics tools that offer community analytics. You can track your community's growth and pinpoint user demographics. This is very helpful for Facebook pages trying to expand their followers or diversify into a new audience.

Rival IQ

Is there a Facebook business page that you want to emulate or compete with? Rival IQ might be suited for your needs. 

Even from its name alone, you know that Rival IQ specializes in competitive analysis. Rival IQ's Facebook Head-to-Head Report is one of its key features. With it, you can see how your own Facebook analytics metrics stack up against your competitors.

What's more, Rival IQ can automate important tasks like spotting your competitors' trending posts. You don't have to visit each of your competitors' pages — Rival IQ can do that for you.

Brand24

Brand24 is more than adequate for businesses aiming to improve their brand reputation. It's not just a social media analytics platform. Brand24 can uncover brand mentions on blogs, podcasts, and even video content.

Brand24's key features include a Mentions Feed and an Alert System. If your brand is in hot waters on social media, you can quickly respond to people's Facebook comments and posts. 

You can even access the platform's Influencer Score feature. You'll discover prominent people who are talking about your brand. It's a good way to find relevant influencers when running an influencer marketing campaign.

Keyhole

Keyhole is an emerging player in the Facebook analytics software space. It covers a lot of ground, including influencer marketing, social listening, and market research.

Among its key features, Keyhole's Historical Insights immediately stands out. It's a reporting tool that uses social media patterns to predict shifts in the market, especially consumer interests. You're in luck if you have a seasonal product or service.

However, Keyhole doesn't do a lot as a social media management tool. But it's an excellent choice if you just want to uncover the usual Facebook analytics metrics.

SocialPilot

SocialPilot is one of the best Facebook analytics tools for teams and agencies. You can easily onboard clients and assign team roles and detailed tasks. If you have a remote team, SocialPilot might be suited to your needs.

There's also a lot you can do with SocialPilot's analytics platform. You can monitor your Facebook follower growth, reach, and engagement. Then, you can create a ready-to-share White Label report with all your social media data. 

And another important thing: SocialPilot offers a free 14-day trial. You can test it out, all-you-can style, on your social media accounts.

Facebook analytics tips for the best results

Investing in Facebook analytics tools is not a cheap venture. That's why you must maximize these tools' key features, as you can do so if you follow these tips.

Focus on the right metrics

Is raising brand awareness your immediate business goal? Go and track your brand reach, mentions, and post shares. Are you using social media platforms to directly increase sales? Monitor your post clicks, landing page traffic, and conversion rate.

Identify your goals and find the right metrics to address those objectives. That's a top priority in Facebook and social media analytics.

Track audience demographics and behavior

Itemize every demographic and behavioral trait of your ideal buyers and audience. Consider everything, starting from age and gender, down to their unique interests and activities. 

Through a Facebook page analytics tool, you can track these traits and monitor seasonal patterns. This way, you can predict which types of content resonate the most with your audience.

Analyze competitor performance

You can't ignore your competitors, whether they're doing good or bad in the market. Always monitor your competitors' movements on major social media channels like Facebook. Do they have strategies that you can add or remove from your marketing playbook? The right Facebook analytics tool can answer that for you. 

Regularly monitor and optimize ad campaigns

You can monitor your ad campaign performance on Meta Business Suite and other third-party platforms. Be careful in your analysis — don't fall in love with surface metrics like impressions and clicks. Dive into more advanced metrics, including click-through rate, cost per conversion, and ad frequency.

How to track Facebook analytics with Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a user-friendly platform for tracking Facebook analytics and other social media data. You just connect your Facebook account, customize your dashboard, and see results in real-time. 

The next steps will depend on your current business goals. Are you aiming to optimize your content strategy? Focus on Brandwatch's Content Insights tool. Are you trying to find the best Facebook influencers for your brand? Brandwatch can do that for you too.

Flexibility is one of the key features of Brandwatch, as you'll discover when you try it out.

FAQs

Why should I use Facebook analytics tools?

Here's the simple answer – Facebook analytics tools can provide data-driven insights in optimizing Facebook performance, both for organic posts and paid advertisements. That means these tools help you understand your target audience's demographics, interests, and behavioral patterns, maximizing the performance of your content and ensuring that it reaches the right people.

How can I access Facebook analytics tools?

You can access Facebook analytics tools through the Meta Business Suite, which covers all of the Meta-specific platforms like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. Alternatively, you can also connect your Facebook account to third-party analytics tools like Brandwatch.

How do you know if your Facebook ads are doing well?

To know this you need to do some data digging. Go ahead and analyze the performance of your Facebook ads through ad-related metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and post engagements. You can monitor these metrics through Facebook analytics tools like Brandwatch, which allows you to track more advanced data like cost per conversion, relevance score, and ad fatigue.

What are the best Facebook reporting tools for a small business?

Free analytics tools like Facebook Insights and Meta Business Suite are just fine for small businesses, particularly in analyzing basic performance metrics and audience demographics. You can also use third-party analytics platforms like Brandwatch – these tools can scale up or down depending on your current business needs and are particularly useful for larger businesses.

How can I export Facebook post data?

Exporting post data on Facebook could be easier to do through specialized social media analytics platforms like Brandwatch. These third-party platforms allow you to export a wide range of data, including key performance metrics, audience insights, competitor analysis, and predictive analytics.