Facebook provides publicly available qualitative data that can identify key insights. Through a qualitative Facebook analysis, you can analyze competitors to determine best practices for your brand. This analysis will help you to see what your target audiences are saying about a brand or topic. From there, you can draw conclusions about audience sentiment and uncover brand health. 

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One advantage of a qualitative Facebook analysis is that you can explore a brand, topic, product or industry. Maybe your brand is a start-up or has not posted a lot on social media yet. You might not have quantitative data available to you. If your brand is already using Facebook Audience Insights for quantitative data, this type of analysis will be a beneficial addition. Facebook analyses are free of cost and can be saved for later use. Unlike other forms of data, this data is permanent.  

 

Some potential sources of data:

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• User-generated videos, images, reactions, and text on the timeline.

  • Shows the interests and values of your audience

• Posts generated by a brand

  • Shows what content the brand currently finds important

• Posts where other users tag a brand

  • Shows what the audience wants the brand to see

• Reactions and comments on a brand’s posts

  • Shows how the audience feels and what they add to the conversation

• Facebook groups

  • Shows what people want to talk about

• Facebook marketplace

  • Shows consumers past purchases and trends

 

In order to conduct a qualitative Facebook analysis, you will need to follow these 3 steps.  

 

        1. Gather your own data    

 

Look at your own brand’s page and examine the regularity of posts. How often is the brand engaging with users? Explore what type of content is being posted and ask yourself if there are opportunities for new topics. Look at who is sharing your posts and which kinds of posts have more shares than others. Be sure to read the comments. Comments can provide insight in to how your audience is feeling about the content you’re producing. Inspect the graphic elements by seeing if all logos and brand images are up to date. When analyzing your brand’s voice, you want to ask yourself whether there is a style guide in place. Do the posts align with the brand’s mission? How would you describe the tone? Your goal is to get a sense of whether your followers are positively or negatively mentioning your brand. If it turns out they skew more negative, figure out if those are issues with your social media presence or something you can surface to other parts of your organization, like your products or services. Find the most frequently asked questions and most common conversations about your brand. This will help to figure out what is unclear and what people are interested in. Finally, figure out what your followers love about you. Leverage this information to build future campaigns or content you know will resonate. 

        2. Find your competitors & analyze