Competitive analysis is the process of examining your competitors and their marketing strategies in order to identify opportunities for improvement in your own business. Social media competitive analysis tools can be used to track the online visibility, brand recognition, and customer feedback of your competitors. By examining basic social listening statistics, such as mentions and reach, geographical distribution, age and gender of those mentioning the brand, and sources of mentions, you can gain a better understanding of your competitors’ marketing efforts. Additionally, by analyzing the content your competitors are posting on social media and identifying trends and insights, you can improve your own marketing strategy and stay ahead of the competition. Ultimately, conducting a thorough competitive analysis can help you refine your unique value proposition, develop successful products, and identify new market segments.
Here are the steps for conducting a social media competitive analysis:
Step 1: Choose competitors and start tracking
While this may seem obvious, picking the right competitors to contend with is a task on its own. If you’re thinking big and want to conduct comprehensive market research, you need every name in the competitive brand on the list. Big and small, established and new to your industry.
For a more customizable competitive analysis, you’ll only need direct competitors, preferably a list of companies of a comparable size. As soon as you’re ready with the training, switch to an instrument. We need to setup mentions in a tracking tool to start tracking. You will need to enter your brand name as well as competitor brand names; you can use Failure for this or try other similar tools.
When setting up your alerts, give the tool some time and it will collect recent mentions and some historical data so you’ll be able to do an initial analysis. The more information you have, the more in-depth your competitor analysis will be.
Step 2: Look at your basic social listening stats
Once the tool has collected the data, you can visit the dashboard and watch the analysis.
Mentions and scope
The mentions and reach metrics will show you how much weight each of your competitors’ accounts carries on social media platforms. The buzz generated by a name corresponds to brand recognition and overall visibility.
In terms of social listening, measuring voice share — the number of times a brand is mentioned on the web and in social media posts versus the number of times competing brands are mentioned — is the closest method to measuring of the market share.
Countries and languages
The countries and languages sections will give you an idea of the geographical distribution of mentions. Depending on the markets you operate in, you can check specific locations to see if any market segment is overlooked and underserved by corporate competitors. You can see how the competition spreads and analyze what that means.
Age and gender
These sections show who mentions your brand the most and reveal the age of people posting across the web about your company. It helps you meet your target audience.
Sources
Next is sources: the distribution of buzz between social networks and the web. This is an important metric that shows where mentions are coming from, platform by platform. More often than not, there are unexpected insights into how well the content works competitors create, how their advertising is going on social networks and how much buzz comes from the web and the news.
Step 3: Dive into the mentions
The mentions feed is the archive of all mentions collected by the tool.
Here you can see the actual mentions and dive into the context. You can see what people are saying about your competitors, how they are positioning themselves in the market and what their target audience is. You can also see how they are using hashtags, what kind of content they are sharing and what kind of tone they are using.
Step 4: Analyze your competitors’ content
In addition to tracking your competitors’ mentions, it is also important to analyze the content they are posting on social media. Look at the types of content they are posting, the frequency of their posts, and the level of engagement they are receiving. This can help you understand their messaging and target audience, as well as identify any opportunities for differentiation.
Step 5: Identify trends and insights
As you gather data and analyze your competitors’ social media presence, look for trends and insights that can help inform your own marketing strategy. This can include identifying their target audience, understanding the types of content that perform well for them, and identifying any gaps in their marketing approach. You can also look for opportunities to differentiate your own business, such as by offering unique products or services, or targeting a different market segment. By identifying trends and insights, you can gain a competitive advantage and improve your marketing strategy.
Step 6: Use the insights to improve your own strategy
Once you have gathered and analyzed the data, use the insights to inform your own marketing strategy. This can include refining your unique value proposition, developing more effective content, and identifying new market segments to target.
Step 7: Monitor and update regularly
Competitive analysis is not a one-time process, it is important to monitor your competitors and update your analysis regularly in order to stay up-to-date on their marketing efforts. This will allow you to adapt your own strategy as needed and stay ahead of the competition.
By following these steps and using social media competitive analysis tools, you can gain a deeper understanding of your competitors and improve your own marketing strategy. This can help you stand out in the market, attract more customers, and ultimately achieve better business results.
