Why Should You Analyze Your Competition?

An important part of your social media marketing is seeing what your competition is doing. Brainstorming can be made easier by looking at what other people are doing on their social media accounts. What kind of content are they using? What kind of posts are most effective in your industry? 

Let’s take a look at Facebook first. There are a few elements of a Facebook page that you should analyze. Here is the quick and dirty for you:

• what are they posting about?
• how many likes do they have?
• do they run any contests?
• how often do they post?
• are their posts mostly internal news, blog posts or mostly external news, blog posts or a mix of both?
• does their staff participate in social sharing?
• do they comment on other pages?

Twitter is another important social media account that you should look at your competition on. Some of the elements are the same as Facebook:

• how many followers do they have?
• how many accounts are they following?
• have they created lists?
• do they run any Twitter chats?
• do they use Twitter cards for lead generation?

Do your competition have a clear brand voice they follow? Do their posts/tweets follow the brand’s style and colour scheme?

Have they created brand hashtags that are used by communities online?

How often are they using videos? Do they make their own or share external videos or a mix of both?

There are so many things you should keep an eye out for. A lot of your research should be based around the thought process, “Oh, I like that.” In most cases if you are engaged by their content, so is their audience. You can guarantee that if you do something similar, you will see the same engagement.

If you are looking for more structure Social Media Examiner has created a Google Doc template for competitive analysis that is a good tool.