From the time we wake up in the morning until we go to sleep, brands play a big part in our lives. The brands such as those that produce toothbrushes, coffee, cars, and clothing, among others, are all vital for our day to day living. There is one brand that is not in the same bracket, but is equally important, Google. Our lives are incomplete without searching on Google. We search for all kinds of information on Google regarding our day to day necessities. While such information adds to our knowledge, conversely, it also means that Google also gets to know a lot about us. However, it could be interesting to know a bit about Google. According to Interbrand, a brand consultancy company, Google is among the world's top brands along with Apple, Facebook, and Coca-Cola. In this chapter, we will explore how to use social media analytics to learn about brands. Facebook is a leading platform that the world's foremost brands use to communicate with their consumers. From new products, services, company news, and so on, a lot of information is shared by brands to keep their fans and consumers informed. However, in this flow of messages in the formats of text, image, and videos, we lose the gist of all that is being spoken about. The goal of this chapter is to put in a nutshell all that a brand communicates to its audience, the reaction and emotions of the audience, and the measure of popularity of the brand. At the end of this chapter, we will be able to apply the same to any brand of our choice. Having learned about the basics of social data processing and an overview of different APIs we will dig deep into the Facebook API from a brand perspective. We will understand the functionalities and utilities of connecting, extracting, and analyzing the data from the Facebook fan page API.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Facebook API and fan pages
• Time series analysis of content
• Emotion analysis using the Alchemy API