As someone who manages and participates on a number of Facebook Pages, I have always wondered why Facebook does not give us the means to monitor user activity on pages such as posts and comments. Until recently I used a Google Reader entry that uses Feed My Inbox to deliver this content from other pages, but I’ve been stuck with manual visits for user comments and posts. Earlier this week I saw a wall post from my Friend Shonali that pointed to the Facebook Page Alert App SmackDown. The authors statement really sums up which app was worth even trying:
All I’ll say about Hyper Alerts is this: it is THE BEST THING EVER. It’s free and sends you real-time updates when people post AND comment on your posts. I’ve been managing Facebook Pages for two and a half years and I’m telling you right now, the past week since I’ve started using Hyper Alerts, have been a freakin’ cake walk. – Maggie at Mizzinformation.com
That was the kind of reference that I can appreciate, so I tried the app out. Since using it I have been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to share how much butt it kicks to anyone who does not want to constantly “spot check” pages for updated content, comments and posts. You all know who you are, you are the ones who are getting excited right now.
How to use Hyperalerts
Using Hyperalerts is extremely simple, you navigate to their site and setup an account. Once your account is created you are able to add alerts. I started by adding what was the most critical page for me to monitor, my businesses Facebook page. While creating the alert you are able to choose how frequently you will receive alerts and what type of content you will receive alerts about. The user interface is very simple, but I will of course be happy to provide a video tutorial for anyone who’d like a little extra help. For demonstration purposes I setup a second alert for my Rotary Club’s Facebook page, because unless I am posting something there I don’t want to visit it unless I know there is something to comment on (or delete if someone has spammed the wall, though this is becoming less common). My alerts are now setup, this is what the page looks like where I can edit them or add more:
Now that the alerts are in place I receive notices when the criteria I have setup are met. This saves me from those periodic “spot checks” that I was doing previously. Now that it is setup there is nothing else required. Here is an example of an alert:
Fresh from the idea farm
Since this program uses Email and you can monitor essentially any Facebook page, it could easily be used in to achieve some heavy lifting. In conjunction with an Email list you could distribute content notices to a number of users. For example, with a club you might be a part of you could with a little tinkering allow the entire club to receive notices when a particular page had been updated. Or you could even have alerts from your businesses (or a customers, competitors?) page go to a team of people who are at the ready to respond. You could also feed the notices into a system that creates tickets for a team to assign and respond. These are little hacks that might make this already powerful and useful application even more so. Do you have any other suggestions?
Update: 2/5/2011 – Hyper Alerts just got easier!
I was pleased when I logged in to Hyper Alerts today to notice a new button “Add alert from your Facebook user” this makes adding alerts so much easier. Nice to see great changes so soon!
Update: 2/11/2012 – Facebook Pages now do alerts but they stink
Facebook included an alerting function with their big changes to Pages but it is not very user friendly. I still strongly recommend Hyper Alerts.
Thank you, Joe Hackman! Awesome information and very timely for me…as I manage multiple FB biz pages and do just like you said: spot check them throughout the day. Not an efficient use of time by any means! Now, I can’t wait to get started and ‘kick some proverbial’ butt! Happy Friday!
@EricaAllison You’re welcome Erica, glad you are one of those people who can use it. I started to think about it after the post that Facebook is letting others find hooks into their “closed” system by not doing some of these obvious things themselves. Reminds me of the early days of operating systems when you needed a third party defrag and similar programs that weren’t included. Not sure if it is intentional, seeing as they probably do want us visiting the pages on our own driving more traffic to the site. Definitely kicking some butt with this one though, can’t imagine how much time it is going to save and how much better the quality and response time to interaction will be!
Thanks for your comment and have a great weekend 🙂
Joe
Hey Joe, something told me to stop by your place and see what’s new. Hyperalerts are awesome. I plan to launch my page soon, but in the meantime I can monitor some other fan pages that I’m active on. Thanks Joe. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
@Ileane Glad you dropped in Ileane! Thanks for reading it, good to know that you will be finding a use for this app. I am sure you will thoroughly take advantage of it, it is along the lines with the stuff you cover on your blog 🙂
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Joe
Hey Joe! I’m new to your blog & certainly appreciate all of the useful informatino you’re sharing – I’m probably the newest Hyperalert user & thrilled about it 🙂 Thank you… Now, I am running into an issue with a couple relatively new Facebook business pages – I’m the admin for both, each page was set up using a gmail account. At first, I was recieveing the weekly Facebook page updates, but when I changed the e-mails to some work accounts I was no longer getting them. I’ve since changed the setting back to the gmail accounts and am still not getting the weekly FB page updates – any thoughts on why this is happening & what I may do to rectify the issue? Many thanks for your help!
@Arlynn I’ve noticed that these seem to be coming in sporadically perhaps more on a monthly basis. Funny how Facebook is doing the opposite of what page managers really need, more information and alerts! Thanks for reading, I will let you know if I learn more about the slow (non-existent?) admin page update messages.
I am so glad I came across this article, I have been looking for a way to get email alerts from Facebook fanpages for weeks. I just setup my HyperAlerts for my fan pages, thank you.
@JustinGermino very cool, glad you came across it. It will be interesting to see how Hyperalerts evolves. Thanks for your comment.
Thanks for all the enthusiasm to offer such helpful information here.
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My daughter has just been on the Short Stack fan page on face book. The content and comments are shocking and inappropriate. Is there anything that can be done to monitor the negative comments? I’m sure a lot of young fans are taking the disgusting comments far too seriously. Also there was a photo posted that has been removed. These things are being sent by ‘haters’ not the band members please help.
@Sorcha1 the internet is a bit of a wild west type place isn’t it Sorcha? I am not sure that there is a way to protect your kids from this other than instilling them with the best possible values and setting guidelines for internet use. I’m sorry to say that’s really the best advice I can give you. You can certainly look at software like net-nanny and the like as a possible way to limit some of the “bad” content.
Am not getting satisfied with facebook insight, i didn’t get perfect report. if i posted with some title to mine wall i want to know how many peoples are views my post? how many of them liked? how many of them commented? how many peoples from each country? how many from each state? i need a like like this report? where to i get like this tool? please suggest to me..
@habeebmohamed Under the manage ads section you can get details on your promoted wall post and it breaks down the CTR, Cost and even the Likes, Shares…etc. You can choose date range, so in essence if you choose 1 day at a time you can see how many you get each day, but if you do a full range like 28 days you only see total for entire date range.
@Dragon Blogger: am really happy with your reply. but am not getting clear my requirement.  I need to track every post. for example, If i have posted one video on my, as a admin i can view how many peoples seen my post. but i need how many of them seen from country, state. like a details reports. then only i  can able to analyze perfectly. please help me. i hope you understand my question..
@habeebmohamed  Okay, that you can not get from Facebook Ads as far as I can tell, maybe someone can correct me. if you are trying to get that kind of analytics for a wall post it just isn’t there. Typically you are promoting a link in your wall post, and you would use something like Google Analytics on the blog or website running that link.  It obviously won’t capture the Facebook actions on the wall post, only what arrived on the target link shared in that wall post.
@Dragon Blogger: Very thanks for your such kind of nice reply. Am really appreciate your reply. Thanks again.
@Dragon Blogger: Thanks a lots for your reply. so its not possible from facebook. Do you refer any tools to  me? based on my requirement..
@habeebmohamed I don’t know of any tools that will monitor that activity on a promoted wall post.  I only use tools that monitor that level of analytics for my actual page and pretty much rely on Google Analytics or Bit.ly stats tracking for links.
Thank you for the post. Great info. I do have a question for you about a service that can send an alert notification based on keywords that the system allows you to setup. For example, I can identify a list of keywords such as “questions,” “customer support,” “delivery,” etc. in the system, and the system sends out an email notifying me about a post that contains one or more of these trigger keywords. I know that Google’s Wildfire offers this feature as part of their social media marketing suite. But I don’t need the suite, I’m just looking for that one feature. Any information would be greatly appreciate it.
Hi Maria, I am not aware of an alternative to Google Wildfire for this function. Perhaps someone else will be able to weigh in with a suggestion.