Social Media Strategy: Use SM to Keep an Eye on Competitors

Social Media can be a useful tool for keeping tabs on your competitors.

Keeping tabs on your competition can also help you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t work – you can reverse engineer to help write and build your own social media strategy.

Doing some competitor analysis also allows you to benchmark your metrics against others to see how you are performing comparatively.

Identify your Competitors

Identify your competitors. This should be both your IRL competitors and your competitors on Social Media. Not all your IRL competition will have active social media accounts and they may not be active on the same platforms as you. If you are stuck the easiest way to find your competition is Google. Search for the keywords customers would use to find your business (and variations of those keywords).

Aim to have a max of 5 competitors under your watchful eye.

Gather and Review Information and Analyse their Social Media Activity

Start by gathering the stats –  the numbers.

However, you also need to look at how your competitors use each platform.

Ask yourself some questions:

• When was last time they posted?
• What type of content do they publish?
• Are there long spans of time between each post?
• Do they respond to comments?
• What % of their posts are promotional?
• What type of content gets engagement?

Review your Competitors Website

Take a look at your competition’s websites what content do they post on them. Do they have a blog? Looking through their blogs will give you ideas about the type of content that might work with your audience.

Further Reading: Tools & Resouces

• Buzzsumo
• SproutSocial
• BrandWatch
• Hubspot – Competitive Analysis ToolKit
• How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis for Your Online Business [with Templates]