How do I analyze a competitor's Facebook profile?

PostSnag analyzes a competitor's Facebook profile by capturing their public posts as you scroll, then letting you sort by engagement, filter by post type, and check Analytics and exports for the patterns behind what's actually working. The whole workflow runs inside your own logged-in Facebook session and never touches the competitor's account.

Facebook doesn't give you analytics for a profile you don't manage. Its own Page Insights only work for Pages and profiles you control, so a competitor's real numbers, what actually pulls engagement post to post, stay invisible unless you build the picture yourself. This is how, and it works the same whether the competitor runs a personal profile, a Facebook Page, or a creator account in professional mode.

Before you start

• PostSnag is installed and pinned to your toolbar. See How do I install PostSnag from the Chrome Web Store?

• You're signed into Facebook, as yourself, in the tab where you'll open the competitor's profile.

• You're signed into PostSnag, with your email and password or Continue with Google.

• You have the competitor's profile or Page open, either by searching for it or pasting its URL directly.

1. Capture the competitor's profile

1. Open the competitor's profile, Page, or creator account on Facebook.

2. Click the PostSnag toolbar icon, or the floating PostSnag button on the page, to open the panel.

3. Confirm the panel shows Scanning Profile with the competitor's correct name underneath it.

4. Scroll down through their posts at a steady pace. PostSnag captures each post as it loads onto your screen, public data only, nothing you couldn't see yourself by scrolling their profile by hand.

5. Watch the Collected count climb, and wait for the status pill to read Synced before you stop.

6. Click Export To Dashboard to send everything you just captured up to your PostSnag dashboard.

See How do I capture posts from a Facebook profile? for the full walkthrough, or How do I capture posts from a Facebook Page? if the competitor runs a formal Page instead of a personal profile.

[Screenshot: The PostSnag panel open on a competitor's profile, showing the Collected count and the Export To Dashboard button]

2. Sort by Most reactions to find what's actually working

Open the competitor's profile in your dashboard. Above the post grid, set Sort to Most reactions. The default is Facebook order: pinned posts first, then newest to oldest. Switching to Most reactions floats their best-performing posts straight to the top, ahead of whatever they happened to post most recently, so you skip past average content and land on what earned real engagement. Sort by Most comments as a second pass. A heavily-commented post tends to track audience trust more closely than a reaction does, and it can surface a different post than the reactions sort turns up.

3. Filter to narrow the picture

The type chips above the grid, All, Video, Photo, Album, Link, Text, let you isolate one format at a time, useful once you've noticed video or photo posts dominating the sorted list and want to see only that type on its own. The Date dropdown, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, All time, narrows to a specific stretch, handy if you only care about how a competitor has been posting recently rather than across their whole history. Both filters update the header stats above the grid too, so Posts, Total likes, Total comments, Total shares, and Avg / post always reflect exactly what's currently in view.

4. Read the opening lines of the top posts

Once the grid is sorted, scan the captions on the top handful of posts, especially the first line, the part that made someone stop scrolling before they ever saw the reaction count. A pattern usually shows up fast across a competitor's best posts: a question, a specific number, a bold claim, a before-and-after. That first line is typically doing more work than anything else in the post.

5. Check Analytics for post types and posting rhythm

Open Analytics in the left navigation right after capturing this competitor. Analytics rolls up everything in your whole account rather than isolating one profile, so the read is cleanest before you move on to capturing the next one. Three sections matter most here:

• Post types: a donut chart showing the mix of Video, Photo, Album, Reel, Link, and Text this competitor posts, with counts and percentages.

• Engagement composition: a tabbed chart, one tab per post type, showing how likes, comments, and shares split within that type. This is where you find out whether the format they post most is actually the format that performs, or whether something else, video pulling more shares than their photos, for instance, is quietly carrying their account.

• Posts by day: a Monday-through-Sunday bar chart of when their posts were originally published, with the busiest day highlighted, based on each post's real publish date, not the day you happened to capture it.

See How do I read a profile's performance in Analytics? for the full breakdown of every section on that page.

6. Export for a deeper pass

Once you've got a feel for what's working by eye, open the competitor's profile page and click Export, then choose Markdown or CSV. Both formats cover whatever posts are currently filtered and visible on the page. Paste or upload the file into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and ask it to find the pattern across every post you captured, not just the ones you happened to notice while scrolling: what hook structures repeat, which post type actually drives the most engagement, whether there's a day-of-week trend in the data. See How do I analyze Facebook posts with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini? for prompt examples built for exactly this.

Analyzing more than one competitor

Capture works one profile at a time, so repeat the flow above for each competitor you want in the picture. Once you've captured a few, Analytics' Top profiles table, columns #, Profile, Posts, Followers, Reactions, Comments, Shares, Avg / post, ranks your top 5 captured profiles side by side. It's the closest thing PostSnag has to a built-in comparison view. There's no dedicated side-by-side screen beyond that table; for anything deeper, export each competitor separately and compare the files, or hand several exports to an AI tool at once and ask it to compare them directly.

Common questions

Will the competitor know I looked at their profile?
No. Capture is read-only and runs in your own logged-in Facebook session. PostSnag never likes, comments, follows, or interacts with anyone on your behalf, so a captured profile looks exactly like a normal visit. See Can someone tell if I captured or analyzed their profile?

Can I compare two competitors side by side?
There's no dedicated side-by-side view. Use the Top profiles table in Analytics for a ranked comparison across your top 5 captured profiles, or export each one and compare the files directly.

How many posts should I capture before I trust the pattern?
More than a handful. A few dozen posts gives Analytics and an AI tool enough to work with; 5 or 6 posts isn't much of a sample to draw conclusions from.

Does this work on a competitor's Facebook Page, not just a personal profile?
Yes. Pages, personal profiles, and creator accounts in professional mode all use the same scroll-to-capture flow and the same Analytics and export tools once captured.

What if the competitor is only active inside a Facebook Group, not on their own profile?
Capture their posts from inside the group instead: open their profile from a group post or the Members list, then scroll and export the same way. See How do I turn a Facebook Group into content ideas?