Keep An Eye On Your Competitors On Facebook With HyperAlerts

This weeks cool tool is a bit of a cheeky one.

Keeping up with your competitors on social media can be really valuable, I always find it keeps me inspired to work harder and helps me come up with more creative ideas. When I see someone in my field doing well or being clever it keeps me on my toes.

Keeping up with competitors on Facebook can be a tough job. You could create a list on Facebook and check in there every day but this won’t give you a good idea of how much and how well they are interacting with people. This weeks cool tool does just that.

HyperAlerts sends you an email report on posts and comments on any Facebook page, it doesn’t have to be your own page. What a great way to spy on your competitors.

Here’s how it works

Visit the HyperAlerts website and create an account.

You will need to add the HyperAlerts Facebook app for it to work fully.

Now you have the option of adding an alert by URL (the link to the Facebook page you want to monitor) or adding one from your own Facebook account.

To add a URL go to the page you want to monitor on Facebook (I’m using a friend’s page rather than a competitors – Write On Track).

Copy the full link from the top of the page

Click on ‘Add alert by URL’ and paste the link into the window that appears.

Click ‘Add’

Now you can choose what sort of alert you want. You can choose how often you get an email and what you want included. ‘Own content’ refers to posts by the page administrator.

If it’s someone you really want to keep an eye on you can get alerts as the comments and posts happen but I just went for the default daily email.

I called this a cheeky tool because it is a bit like spying but I believe that keeping up with your competitors success can only inspire you to be better.

However if you have a page that gets lots of comments and posts, or if you manage multiple pages this tool could also be a really handy way to keep up with what you need to see rather than having to navigate through the multiple alerts you get from the Facebook Pages Manager app.

What do you think? Cheeky, handy or both? Let me know in the comments.