A Guide to Social Media Competitor Analysis
When you compare yourself to others on social media, you may be robbing yourself of the true essence of it— which is to build your brand by creating a community while connecting with your audience authentically. However, you need to keep an eye on your competitors to really understand how your channels are doing and see if you are really standing out.
Competitive analysis is more than just comparing yourself to others; it's also about learning what the competition is doing and how you can improve your own strategy. By analyzing social media activity of your competitors, you can gain valuable insights that will help you improve your business as a whole.
To start your analysis, you can follow these five simple steps:
1. Find your social media competitors
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To be successful, you need to first understand who your competition is. Knowing who your competition is can help you to better target your content, as well as to take advantage of their followers. This can help you to grow your audience more quickly, which can in turn help you to reach your marketing goals.
Two factors that you need to consider when determining your competitors for your business? Their strengths and their weaknesses.
There are also direct and indirect competitors to think about. Your direct competitors are brands that are similar to yours, while indirect competitors may not be similar to yours but can reach the same audience.
A quick and alternative way to identify your competitors is to think like a consumer and just Google it. Look for websites that are relevant to your industry then explore how they present themselves in every social channel.
2. Collect platform-specific data
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Social media intelligence can track how your competitors are performing on different social media platforms. If you work in a highly competitive industry, this process can take a long time. However, the more thorough you are, the better the results will be. This is when a social media analytics tool and your spreadsheet skills come in handy.
An example of this is by creating a visual analysis of your competitor’s Instagram account and asking yourself the following questions:
How often do they post?
What kind of content do they post?
What makes their bio stand out from the rest?
Do they have a link in bio tool? How do they utilize it?
Do they have a specific hashtag?
Are their visuals and branding consistent?
After you've gathered all of the data from your research, make sure to enter it onto your spreadsheet. Repeat the process for all your competitors’ social media channels, and don’t forget to add your brand’s data as well.
3. Your research and study skills are your best allies
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Quantitative data is important for understanding your competitors’ social media platforms, but it's not enough— you need to collect the actual to truly understand how your competitors are using these platforms.
Start asking yourself these guide questions:
What are the main goals of their social media campaigns?
·What is their brand’s persona?
·What are their main tactics?
Knowing your competition's social media marketing strategy is important if you want to be successful. By understanding their goals, strategies, and tactics, you can develop a plan that will help you compete.
4. Strengthen your social media competitive analysis by listening
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If you want to go beyond simply monitoring your company's own social media posts, you can use social listening to get a broader perspective on conversations about your industry and competitors.
Social listening gives you a different perspective about your industry, competitors and even your own brand. One of the most basic human skills can definitely have a huge impact in any industry.
5. Use all the information you’ve gathered to your advantage!
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To use all information to your advantage, you can compare your brand's social media profiles to the competition. After analyzing everything, you'll need to present it in a way that others can understand by transforming raw data and insights into plausible and meaningful conclusions.
To make it a bit exciting and a sight for sore eyes, here are some tips:
Use data visualizations like charts and graphs.
Find the most interesting points in your analysis.
Identify the challenges and answers ahead of time
Define your “what now?” by providing the next steps to improve your content
Keep in mind that a social media competitive analysis does not mean imitating what everyone else is doing, but using it as a guide for you to improve your brand.
It's all about comparing your brand's metrics and data, and most importantly gaining advantage over your competitors.
If you want to learn more about social media strategy, be sure to check out Studio Sixteen for more helpful tips!