Refresh this spreadsheet as often as you like, daily, weekly, or monthly and track how a competitors or organization “of-interest” popularity is trending.

Get it here.

Each time it runs, it adds a new data column to a data worksheet which can be used as a dashboard.  It also creates a file on your computer which can be used in a dashboard or uploaded to a data server.

SETUP

Because Facebook allows anyone to create a page with a keyword, the only reliable way to know which page you are getting is by using the PageID, after you’ve inspected the page. Getting the pageID isn’t always easy, but here’s a handy four step process.

Paste the following into a worksheet

Prompt,add,[FB],Disney

GetDataFromFacebook,FacebookData1.csv,”https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?format=xml&query=SELECT fan_count, name,page_id, website,pic,type,founded,company_overview  from page where name = ‘[FB]‘”,,DaysAgo2

ImportDataFiles,FacebookData1.csv,,0,1,utf-8,,yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm,en-US,,”"

SaveInWorksheet,Current,result, noverwrite

Rename the sheet to “my_actions”

Edit the first line and change the word Disney to what you’re looknig for.

[HOW-TO-]

Press the Refresh button and

see a list of pages associated with Disney.

[RESULT]

Copy/paste the PageID into a green box of the Competitive Tracker sheet.

[WHERE TO PASTE]

Repeat as required; you can copy/insert additional rows if you need them.

Now you’re ready for the next and final step. It’s your choice how frequently to refresh this data.  Each time you refresh, a new data column is added to a data worksheet. You’ll want a column header that indicates when the refresh occurs.  You enter the name of the new data column in cell D24.  Here are some suggestions that you can paste into that cell:

=TEXT(TODAY(),”yyyy-mm-dd”)  produces “2011-06-28″

=TEXT(TODAY(),”mmm dd”)  produces “Jun 28″

=TEXT(TODAY(),”mmmm dd, yyyy”)  produces “June 28, 2011″

When I press the Refresh button, I get the following view:

[FACEBOOK-COMPETITIVE-TRACKER-SAMPLE]

Each time I run this, a new column is added to that list. For some pages, such as Disney, you can run this every minute and see the numbers change ! You can use this worksheet in a dashboard that you author. It also creates a data file named myFB-fancount.csv. You can import this file into a database for reporting purpose. This file can be located in your documents\nextanalytics\data subdirectory.