How to Conduct Competitor Research for Social Media Platforms

Social media has become an essential part of modern marketing strategies. However, with so many businesses vying for attention on social media, it is important to conduct competitor research to gain insights into what your competitors are doing and how you can stand out from the crowd.

As a marketing agency that regularly helps clients perform competitor analysis, we are helping you explore the importance of competitor research for social media platforms and provide practical tips on how to conduct effective research to gain a competitive advantage. Whether you are new to social media marketing or looking to refine your current strategy, this post will provide valuable insights to help you stay ahead of the competition.

Why do you need to conduct competitor research?

Firstly, it helps businesses understand the competitive landscape of their industry, including the strategies and tactics that their competitors are using to attract and engage their target audience. By analyzing their social media profiles, content, and advertising strategies, businesses can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t work in their industry.

Secondly, competitor research can help you identify gaps and opportunities in your own social media marketing efforts. You can benchmark your performance against your competitors and try to identify areas where you are falling behind and need to improve. You can also identify areas where you are excelling and leverage those strengths to differentiate your brand from your competitors.

Competitor research can help businesses identify potential partnerships and collaborations. By analyzing your competitors’ influencer marketing and content partnerships, you can identify potential collaborators and influencers who can help you reach your target audience and build brand awareness.

It can also help you improve your customer service efforts. You can monitor your competitors’ social media profiles and identify gaps in your own customer service strategy as well as learn from your competitors’ best practices.

And finally, competitor research can help you stay ahead of the curve and adapt to changes in your industry. It allows you to stay up-to-date with your competitors’ social media strategies and tactics and get familiar with new trends and emerging technologies so that you can adapt your strategies accordingly.

So, now that we have covered the importance of competitor research, here are some tips on how to conduct competitor research for social media platforms:

Identify your competitors

You don’t know what you don’t know. So, the first step in conducting competitor research is to identify your competitors. Start by making a list of businesses that offer similar products or services to yours.

If you don’t have direct competitors, look at the indirect competition whose products or services may be overlapping with yours. When it comes to business, there is always competition.

Analyze their social media profiles

Once you have identified your competitors’ social media profiles, it is time to look at their content, frequency of posts, engagement, and followers.

Here are some basic but very important questions to ask:

  • What type of content are they posting?
  • How often are they posting?
  • Which posts are getting the most engagement?
  • Who is their target audience?
  • How are they engaging with their followers?
  • Are they using paid advertising?

Take note of what you like and dislike about their social media profiles and think about how you can use this information to improve your own social media presence.

Use social media listening tools

Social media listening tools can help you gather valuable insights about your competitors. These tools allow you to track your competitors’ social media mentions, hashtags, and keywords, and monitor what people are saying about them (and you).

Some popular social media listening tools you can use are Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Mention. They are easy to set up and you can start conducting your research in no time.

Analyze their advertising strategy

Social media advertising is an effective way to reach your target audience and drive sales. By analyzing your competitors’ advertising strategy, including:

  • What type of ads are they running?
  • What is their ad messaging?
  • Who is their target audience?
  • How are they measuring the success of their ads?
  • Are they using any special promotions or discounts?

you can help you identify opportunities and gaps in your own advertising efforts. You can analyze Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads and Google Search Ads for conducting this part of your research. 

Look at their influencer marketing strategy

Influencer marketing has become a popular way for businesses to reach their target audience and build brand awareness. As mentioned before, analyzing your competitors’ influencer marketing strategy can help you get familiar with potential influencers and partnerships for your own brand.

When conducting influencer research, ask the following questions:

  • Who are the influencers they are working with?
  • What type of content are they creating?
  • How often are they posting?
  • What is the engagement on their posts?
  • How much are they spending working with these influencers?

You can use tools like Buzzsumo or HypeAuditor to identify influencers in your industry and create your own influencer marketing strategy based on your findings.

Monitor their customer service

Social media has become a popular platform for customers to voice their complaints or issues with a brand. Being well-versed with your competitors’ customer service efforts can help you understand the health of your own customer service strategy.

Some things you should look for are:

  • How quickly are they responding to customer complaints or issues?
  • How are they handling customer complaints or issues?
  • How many ways have they set up for their customers to contact them?
  • Are they using any special customer service approaches, such as chatbots or personalized responses?

Benchmark your performance

Finally, it is important to benchmark your social media performance against your competitors. This will help you identify areas where you are falling behind as well as excelling. Follower growth rate, engagement rate, the share of voice, click-through rate, and conversion rate are some of the metrics that you must track.

You can use tools like Sprout Social or Emplifi to compare your social media performance against your competitors and tighten up your own strategy.

With millions of active users on various social media platforms, businesses are leveraging social media platforms to engage with their customers, build brand awareness, and drive sales. Standing out from the crowd requires an active effort to build your knowledge base and competitor research is a huge part of updating your industry know-how. 

Similar Posts