How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis in Social Media

 

 

 

The best competitive analysis tools for social media can assist you in identifying flaws in your own strategy and staying ahead of the competition. How can social media be used to your advantage and to your advantage? Begin by compiling a list of competitors on social media.

It will evaluate your performance in comparison to others in your field and alert you to new opportunities and threats. This guide will demonstrate how to conduct your own social media competitive analysis. Additionally, we’ll provide you with a free template and a list of the best competitive analysis tools for social media.

 

What is competitive analysis in social media?

Comparing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to your own is called a competitive analysis. It’s a technique for comparing your performance to that of industry leaders in order to identify areas for improvement and strategies that aren’t performing as well as they should.

A competitive analysis, in particular, of social media can benefit you in the following ways:

• Determine your competitors on social media.
• Acquaint yourself with the social media platforms they employ and the manner in which they employ them.
• Analyze their social media strategy’s effectiveness.
• Comparing your social media performance to that of your peers is an excellent way to start.
• Recognize potential social risks to your business.
• Evaluate the flaws in your own social media marketing strategy.

 

READ MORE:

A Social Media Strategy Created in Nine Simple Steps

 

Why conduct a social media competitor analysis?

Social media competitor analysis can reveal more about your competitors than you might believe. Additionally, it will provide you with information about your own business as well as your target market (which will most likely overlap with that of your competitors).

A competitive analysis of social media can produce unexpected results:

• Indicators of your business’s performance, such as average followers, engagement rates, and voice share
• It’s time to engage in social interaction: advice (since your audience is likely online at a similar time)
• A working knowledge of potential customer irritants
• For your audience, new (and improved) content ideas (or that, conversely, does NOT resonate with your audience, and which you might want to avoid)
• Having an understanding of how to communicate with your target audience across a variety of platforms (i.e., casually or formally)
• There is also a great deal more!

Finally, a competitive analysis of social media will yield only what you invest. You can either conduct a one-time social media competitor report or hire someone to monitor your competitors’ social media activity on a regular basis. Between quarterly and monthly reports, the majority of businesses publish.

Whichever level of analysis you select, the insights gained will be priceless.

 

 

A Four-Step Process for Conducting a Social Media Competitor Analysis.

We’ve broken down the process of conducting a social media competitive analysis into four straightforward steps that any brand can follow. Keep track of your social media efforts with this free social media competitive analysis template.

 

Step 1. Identify your competitor

• Discover the most popular keywords.

You are probably already familiar with several of the keywords for which your business is attempting to rank in search engines. If you work in a Manhattan hotel, for example, you’re probably interested in terms like “New York hotels” and “best places to stay in Manhattan.”

If, on the other hand, your establishment is a boutique hotel that hosts evening wine tastings and features local art, you are not necessarily in competition with the Holiday Inn. Thoroughly understanding your keyword inventory will enable you to form a clear picture of who your true online competitors are.

The Google Adwords Keyword Planner is an excellent resource for determining the most relevant keywords for your business. You can use this tool for free even if you do not use Google Adwords.

Start by analyzing your website using the tool. You’ll be provided with a list of relevant keywords, along with monthly search volume and competition estimates.

Additionally, you can enter the tool’s target keywords. Once again, you’ll be presented with a list of related keywords, as well as information about search volume and competition. Utilize these related keywords to assist you in narrowing your competitor definition, ensuring that you are analyzing businesses that are true competitors of yours.

 

• Consider who ranks highest on Google for those terms.

Enter the top five to ten most relevant keywords for your business into Google. You’ll quickly ascertain who your primary online adversaries are.

Pay close attention to companies in your industry that pay for Google advertisements to elevate their names above the organic search results, as they are putting their money where their marketing objectives are. Even if their organic search rankings aren’t stellar, it’s worth checking out their social media presence (yet).

Conduct a search for any brands that appear to be potential competitors on their websites. Most businesses incorporate social media links into their website’s header or footer. Copy and paste the links to their social media profiles into your spreadsheet for competitive analysis.

 

• Take a look at who comes up in social search results for those terms.

Brands that rank well on Google for your keywords are not always synonymous with those that rank well on social media. Due to the fact that this is a competitive social media analysis, you should also take into account who ranks first in social search results. For instance, navigate to Facebook and enter your keyword in the search bar. After that, select Pages from the top menu.

 

• Acquaint yourself with the brands that interest your target audience.

Facebook Audience Insights and Twitter Analytics can help you discover which brands your target audience follows on social media. Consider them as potential competitors if these brands are similar to yours.

To determine which brands your target audience enjoys on Facebook, perform the following steps:

• Insights for Audiences on Facebook are now available.
• In the left column, enter demographic information about your target audience, or scroll down to Pages and enter your existing
• Facebook page under People Connected to.
• Click Page Likes in the top menu.

Would you like to delve a little further? A separate post contains additional information about how to use Facebook Audience Insights for customer research.

It’s possible that none of the Pages discovered are relevant to your industry, but if they are, they should be added to your list of competitors.

Rather than scanning your entire Twitter audience, you can view the connections of your top followers.

• Consider the Twitter Analytics service.
• Scroll down to see a list of your Top Followers from the previous few months.
• Each Top Follower’s profile is accessible.
• To view their complete list of followers, visit their profile and click Following, or click Tweets & Replies to see which accounts they interact with.

 

• Choose up to five adversaries on whom to concentrate your efforts.

You’ve compiled a lengthy list of potential competitors, far more than a thorough competitive analysis could possibly include. It’s time to focus on the top three to five brands on social media. Make a list of the brands that are most closely associated with your niche.

 

 

Step 2: Collect information

Now that you’ve identified your competitors, it’s time to learn about their social media activity.

Visit the social media pages of each brand you’ve identified as a potential competitor. As mentioned previously, these links are typically located in the header or footer of the website. Keep the following information in mind when creating your social media competitive analysis template:

• Which social networking sites do they utilize?
• How large and how quickly is their fan base growing?
• Who are their most zealous defenders?
• What is their frequency of status changes?
• How committed are they?
• How much social influence do they wield?
• Which hashtags are used the most frequently?
• What is the total number of hashtags they use?

Much of this information can be gleaned by simply browsing your competitors’ social media profiles. Consider the following tools to aid in the efficient collection of data.

Bear in mind that you should monitor all of these factors for your own social media accounts. This will aid you in the analysis’s subsequent stage.

 

 

Step 3: A SWOT analysis should be conducted.

After amassing all of your data, it’s time to analyze it to determine how you stack up against the competition. You’ll look for opportunities to improve your strategy as well as potential pitfalls to avoid as part of this analysis.

A SWOT analysis is an excellent tool for analyzing all of this data objectively. A SWOT analysis examines your business and its competitors in order to ascertain the following:

• S – Strengths
• W – Weaknesses
• O – Opportunities
• T – Threats

The critical point to remember is that internal factors dictate the strengths and weaknesses of your brand. In other words, these are both strengths and weaknesses of your performance.

External factors: events occurring in your competitive environment that you should be aware of serve as the basis for opportunities and threats. For each of the four quadrants of the SWOT matrix, the following are some suggestions.

 

Strengths

Make a list of the metrics in which you perform better than your competition.

 

Weaknesses

Make a list of the areas where you fall short of your competitors. These are the areas where you should conduct research and make adjustments to your social media strategy.

Bear in mind that each social networking site has both positive and negative aspects. While you may have more Facebook fans than your competitors, yours are growing at a faster rate. Perhaps your Instagram following is lower but your engagement rate is higher. Make as many specific distinctions as possible, as they will assist you in identifying your opportunities and threats.

 

Opportunities

With a clear picture of your position in relation to the competition, you can identify potential opportunities to capitalize on. These opportunities could be areas where you believe you can outperform your competitors based on data you’ve already collected, or they could be based on upcoming or recent changes to the social media landscape.

 

Threats

As with opportunities, threats can originate from outside your organization. To get a sense of impending threats, examine growth statistics or any other indicator of change over time.

 

 

Step 4: Integrate recent data with social media monitoring.

If you want to keep your social media competitive analysis current, you must revisit it frequently. Include this in all of your reporting, whether it’s quarterly or annual. So you’ll need a constant flow of fresh information. It is possible to collect real-time data by using an effective social media monitoring strategy, such as MS Project Standard 2016. This method of analysis is a great way to look at potential opportunities and threats.

Being proactive in your digital marketing strategy requires you to monitor social media conversations about your brand, competitors, and the industry. New opportunities and threats discovered in MS Project Standard 2016 should also be reflected in your updated opportunities and threats.

 

 

Conclusion:

 

Permanency Competitor analysis in social media is critical, so be on the lookout for new players and innovative approaches to social media marketing. Keep an open mind and a hunger for knowledge at all times! Using Microsoft Project Standard 2016, you can create eye-catching reports that give a quick overview of the current state of your project’s progress. Use simple-to-use reporting tools to help your team, executives, and stakeholders gain a new perspective by analyzing your project. In addition, it will help the industry become more technologically advanced.

No matter your level of expertise, you will always be able to learn something new because technology is constantly changing and improving. To further our digital marketing and analysis effectiveness, we must learn to adapt as time goes on. Just remember what we’ve covered so far in terms of the SWOT Analysis.

For those looking for a more secure products  and straightforward way to grow their digital marketing business, Microsoft Softvire USA is the place to go.