The Top Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools and How to Use Them

Social media is a fantastic tool to find competitors, analyze competitors, compare competitors and find out what they are doing, what’s working for them and what’s not so you can just model success instead of going through the slow process of trial and error.

The other reason why it’s important to find competitors and analyze competitors is to make sure you are providing more or at least the same amount of value to your audience than they are.

 

 

The first step when performing competitor research is to identify your 5 top competitors and look them up on the main social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.

After your find competitors, collect the following information about them for each social network:

• Their audience size
• Their engagement rate
• Their engagement method (such as live videos, humanizing the brand, contests, discount coupons, etc…)
• Their posting frequency
• Their advantages (for example, they could have a big and engaged audience or they’re very funny or use user generated content very effectively or have partnered with a big social media influencer, etc…)
• Their disadvantages (for example, it could be that they’re only using 1 social network and you have a large audience on 3 social networks, or it could be that they publish posts inconsistently, etc…)

Once you’ve performed your competitor research and have collected enough information to compare competitors, you will have a clearer picture about how to improve your social media communication strategy.

Then, to monitor your progress against your competitor’s progress and make sure you remain ahead, use social media competitor analysis tools depending on which platform you’re using.

If you’d like to take your social media marketing to the next level, and dramatically increase the results you’re getting from your current social media marketing efforts, click here to download The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Guide for free. Simply enter your name and email and we’ll instantly send you the report.

For example, should you have a Facebook page for your business and so do your competitors, we recommend using the built-in Facebook competitor analysis tool called “pages to watch”. To access this feature, simply click on “insights” at the top of your page, then scroll down.

 

 

This feature allows you to add any page you’d like to monitor against yours and easily compare competitors against you. This will give you an overview of your strengths and weaknesses against other pages in terms of audience growth, engagement rate and post frequency.

For example, you can see how engaged your audience was compared to how engaged their audience was within the past 7 days. If you notice that their engagement has skyrocketed, then you might want to check their page and see what triggered so much engagement and give you ideas to do something similar and improve your social media communication strategy.

To add specific pages you’d like to monitor, simply click on “add pages” then type in the name of your competitors in the search bar and once you’ve found them, click on “watch page”.

The great thing about this competitor research tool is that your competitors won’t be notified that you’re monitoring them. Plus, this competitor research tool also suggests similar pages to watch.

Another social network analysis tool that is useful to analyze competitors is Twitter lists. Twitter lists are the equivalent of folders to categorize and manage Twitter accounts. Users can either create their own lists and make the lists “private” or “public’. Should you be using Twitter lists to monitor your competitors, make sure it is private so only you have the ability to view the list.

 

 

To create a list, simply click on your profile picture on the top right hand side of the Twitter home page dashboard. When you do, a drop down menu will appear. Simply click on “lists” and then “create list” and name your list “competitors”. This will allow you to check the activity of your competitors all in one place, see what they’re up to, what they’ve been tweeting, etc… and as a result improve your own social media communication strategy.

If you’d like to take your social media marketing to the next level, and dramatically increase the results you’re getting from your current social media marketing efforts, click here to download The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Guide for free. Simply enter your name and email and we’ll instantly send you the report.

When it comes to monitoring your competitors on Instagram, we recommend the social network analysis tool Talkwalker. After you’ve created an account with Talkwalker, click on “analytics” and then “channels” and then “Instagram”.

When you do, you’ll be able to see things such as which hashtags they use, their most engaging posts and the topics they cover in their posts. Talkwalker also allows you to compare your Instagram efforts with your competitors’ efforts on Instagram and see how many times they published posts compared to you, how much engagement they received, how much reach their posts had and even who their top influencers are.

Talkwalker lets you also go into more detail about your competitors results on Instagram, such as the countries where their posts perform the best. Talkwalker is not a free tool, but you can request a free demo first.

Once you’ve collected all the information necessary that you need in order to have a clearer picture of where you stand compared to your competitors, don’t let that information go to waste. Instead, fine tune your campaigns accordingly. So you can remain one step ahead.

 

 

For example, if you’ve noticed that your competitors have a much larger audience than you, take the necessary steps to build your audience further. If you’ve noticed that your competitors have much higher engagement rates, look at their posts and see what they’re doing that triggers more engagement.

You might want to tweak your posts so they’re more engaging or simply promote your posts so more people see them and therefore more people engage with them.

The key when monitoring your competition and using social network analysis tools is not collecting too much information or else it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Always improve your social media marketing efforts one step at a time.

If you’d like to take your social media marketing to the next level, and dramatically increase the results you’re getting from your current social media marketing efforts, click here to download The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Guide for free. Simply enter your name and email and we’ll instantly send you the report.

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