Are you planning a social media strategy without a competitors analysis? How to do social media competitors analysis?
Let’s understand the easiest way to do competitors analysis for the success of a social media strategy.
You may have seen several brands earning grand success on a diverse social media platform. Have you ever thought about what makes their social media strategy set apart from other? The answer is, you need to stack up against similar brand by benchmarking your position. You need to do an extensive competitors analysis.
Steps to Social Media Competitors Analysis
1. Identify your competitors on social media
To begin with, start with finding your competitors and the several platforms used by them. You may have an idea of your major competitors while that’s not enough. You have to follow your competitors on every major platform. Learn how they are growing their business.
How to find your brand competition? Google search engine will help you to find competition. Go example, if your company sells digital marketing training, then you have to search ‘best digital marketing institute’. Search for websites that are in your industry and region specific.
As you finish up with making a list explore each website. Measure their activeness on the social media platform. You can find their social media links locate either at the header or footer of the site.
Archive and store at least 5 competitors in a spreadsheet. Alternatively, you can use social media management tools for segmentation on the basis of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Some of the popular social media management tools are:
- HootSuite
- Hubspot
- TweetDeck
- MeetEdgar
- Buffer
- IFTTT
- Google analytics
- Sprout Social
- Raven
- A content calendar
You can select any platform for your analysis. However, some of your competitors might be promoting themselves on more than four platforms. If you’re in a highly competitive business, this procedure can consume a long time. But, as you dig deeper, you’ll find better results.
This procedure may consume a long time if you’re in a highly competitive industry. But, as much you go deep, the better results will better.
2. Archive your searched data
Since you’ve successfully located your competitors, the next step is to store data.
Now, data collection will depend on the platform you’re working. Here is an example of competitors analysis:
Start with a manual review of the profile page. Learn the number of followers and likes on the page. Take a note if they’ve any special instruction, information, or section on the page. In addition to, trending sections in your industry. For example, you can check the shop section on Facebook for current trending items.
Remember, the follower’s count is not a single attribute for complete analysis. You need to analyze other activities trending on the page. Check with the most popular post with maximum views, likes, comments, and shares.
Study the uniqueness of each post volume of post, the content of the post, images, videos, etc. Furthermore, all these information in your spreadsheet, along with additional metrics that are essential for your brand.
3. Analyze competitors activity
In conclusion to gathering data, it’s time to intend the way these platforms are used by the competitors. So, how will your examine this data?
No worries, we’ll help you!
How to study the social media competitors data?
Examine the following questions to determine the competitor’s social activeness:
- What was the time of the last post? Activeness can be measured if they post at a gap of a few days. There can be few competitive industries those are posting more than two posts on social media with thousands of followers. Therefore, the number of the post directly related to your business niche.
- Is there any unique format or design of the post? Every renowned brand follows a unique pattern to distinguish its offerings from others. Make a note of their uniqueness which can be in a form of a post design, content, of logo placement.
- When do people respond in comments? The content places an important role to attract the audience. The success of a brand is defined by its creative content.
- Is there any paid campaign? Go through the last 4 weeks post of your competitor to know how many of them are scheduled for a promotional campaign. The promotional post can be categorized as sale, content, or products including links.
4. Analyze website content
As you click on the post link, you’ll be redirected on the landing page. This is the last step of social media analysis. As you know the content marketing and social media is integral for branding. Therefore, many companies use a blog section to attract the audience. These blog sections are promoted on the social media to gain traffic.
As you reach the website, analyze the content, you come to know which content idea is currently trending.
For more advanced results, you can use Buzzsumo or Ninjaoutreach to plugin into each site. However, this will give you an insight into each post has how many views, comments, likes, and shares.
5. Adding your data to use
Now, as you are collected all the data thus you need to use it relevantly. The social media analytics can help you compare your brand with your competitors. Eventually, understand that social media competitive analysis exercise doesn’t mean to clone the competitor’s strategy. It’s just a process to build a more competitive strategy for your brand to stand out in the market.
Conclusion
Learning about your social media competition can be quiet helpful in formulating your own strategy. Moreover, you can improve your social media marketing strategy just by looking at your competition. In additions, these 5 steps will not only let you understand your competitors by also your give your insight into audience needs. As a result, you can use them for your business branding.
