Stephanie Donelson

With social media marketing it’s important to track and analyze your brand’s efforts so you can know if your brand is growing or improving in terms of followers, engagement rate, and having a positive impact on your branding and other marketing efforts.

Most social media marketers track their performance and compare month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, and year-over-year. But comparing your current performance against past performance doesn’t tell you how you’re doing in the competitive landscape. So, how do you find out how you stack up?

By running a social media analysis of the competition, that’s how! 

What is a competitive analysis on social media? A competitive analysis is an evaluation or review of your competition’s social media presence and marketing efforts and identify what works, where you rank, what benchmarks for success already exist, and what you can do better

The social media analysis can help you:

• See what your competition is doing on social media
• See what networks they’re using
• See who they’re following
• See who’s following them
• See what content works well and doesn’t work well for them
• See what your social media strategy is missing
• See how their strategy has evolved and what they’ve tried in the past

11 steps to running a competitive analysis on social media

1. Visit your competition’s websites & profiles

You can find what social networks they’re using by searching for them, but you should also look at their website to see what channels they’re proud of and actively promoting people to follow. You may find an outdated Twitter account that they’re no longer managing or sending people to.

Also look at how they link to their social media accounts. Do they import feeds or bury their links in their footer? Is there an industry standard that everyone seems to be following? Can you adopt widgets or tools to better promote your social media channels?

While on their website look at their content, their CTAs, and how they position themselves in the industry. Your competition’s websites can help you generate ideas of new content you can create and share on social media. 

2. Run an organic search

You will also want to do an organic search for them to identify what keywords their brand is going after (check the meta description) to make sure you’re not missing any keyword opportunities, topics to talk about on social media, and even future hashtags to add to your posts. 

3. Track what social networks they’re on

Make a spreadsheet that lists what networks they’re on, a quick summary of the type of content they share, their brand voice, how active they are, the mix of regular and promotional posts, number of followers, and their levels of engagement

Run a channel-by-channel analysis as strategies and content can vary across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. You’ll want an apples to apples comparison instead of lumping all their social networks into one report. 

4. Following 

Go all Inception and go a level deeper by checking out who your competition is following. This can identify new competition to track or help you find industry influencers you may not be following. 

By following who they follow, you can stay informed of all the latest trends in your industry and now you have another source of educational content you can curate for your own channels.

5. Followers

How do you measure up with the number of followers they have? Are your competitors growing their audience quicker than you? 

Check in once a quarter to see if they’ve grown their following and how they did it. Are they sharing the most amazing content ever or are they running ads or hosting contests to gain new followers? Can you emulate those same tactics?

Also look at how their followers engage with the brand, how they review them, and what questions they’re asking.

It’s important to keep in mind their social media profile’s age when assessing followers and follower growth. If they’ve been active for ten years and you’re only two years in, chances are good they’ll have a higher following. 

6. Content they post

Now that you know what channels your competitors are on, it’s time to analyze what they’re sharing. 

Are they following the 80/20 rule? 80% of their content should be educational, inspirational, or fun, and the other 20% can be promotional. It can help to also break this percentage down further by categorizing the content into original, educational, curated, and promotional content. 

• Original: Think inspirational quotes, blogs, graphics, videos, webinars, etc. Anything that was created by the brand. 
• Educational: Think blogs, webinars, videos, how-tos, informational content. Anything that was created to educate their customers, could be brand owned or made by a third party or influencer.
• Curated: Think memes, news stories, videos, photos, other brands’ blogs. Anything that was created by a third party and shared by the brand. 
• Promotional: Think salesy content, discounts, special offers, newsletter sign ups, or case studies. Anything created to promote the brand and drive a conversion or sale.

On the content train, you’ll also want to look at the types of content they’re sharing, like:

• Webinar invites
• Email newsletter subscriptions
• Landing pages
• Blogs
• Guides or ebooks
• Industry reports
• Infographics
• Industry news or influencer articles
• Photos
• Videos
• Podcasts
• GIFs and memes

Are they always sending their followers back to their own website or do they share links and content from a variety of sources? Content marketing isn’t always about your brand, it’s how your brand can be a part of your follower’s life. If your competition only talks about themselves or only links back to their own website, it’s an opportunity for you to position yourself as a team player in the social media space and support influencers and their websites. 

7. Language and hashtags

Next, look at how they talk to and engage with their following by the words and hashtags they use. Are there hashtags you’re not optimizing social media posts for? Does the phrase “like” or “double tap” earn more engagement from your competition?

For hashtags, your posts should have a healthy mix of topical tags and branded tags. Obviously you won’t be stealing your competition’s branded tags, but you might identify hashtags relevant to your industry that you need to add to your mix. 

Also take a closer look at the brand’s voice and tone. 

Voice = identity and personality and the feeling you want to convey

Tone = the way your content will sound (serious, joking, stern, playful)

Brand voice: The feeling you want your content to convey

• Conversational
• Accessible
• Humanistic
• Educational
• Authoritative
• Professional

Brand voice tone: The way your content will sound

• Friendly
• Humorous
• Direct
• Honest
• Formal
• Scientific

Is their voice and tone appropriate for the industry? Do they have a distinct personality? How can you emulate their language without losing your own brand’s voice and tone?

8. Posting frequency

How often are they posting to their accounts? Once an hour? Once every other day? You have to find the right balance of sharing enough so your followers can see your posts in their feed but also not overwhelming them with too many posts in a row. Review the cadence and frequency of your competition to see if you’re hitting that sweet spot in the frequency of your posts. 

My former clients always wanted to know when the best time of the week and time of day to post to social media. Well, it depends on who your audience is! You’re already analyzing your own analytics to see when your followers are active online, but look at the timestamps on your competition’s posts and engagement rates to see if they know something about your industry’s audience that you don’t. 

9. Engagement

This can be a little tricky as you can only see public-facing metrics such as likes, shares, and video watches. But it’s still important to track your competition’s engagement as much as possible and see what an average post engagement looks like. 

10. Their re-engagement – liking, conversing

Scroll through and see if the brand is interacting with their followers by liking their comments or even replying to them. Do they interact with everyone or just a select few? Also look and see if there are customer complaints and how long it takes your competition to respond to them. 

If the brand is pretty one-sided, that gives you an opportunity to shine by focusing on better re-engagement with your followers. Acknowledge and respond to every comment.

I think Betabrand does an amazing job at re-engagement as they join the conversation and have a ton of fun with it by posting GIF reactions. Even if the same question has been asked by six different people, Betabrand responds to each of them and provides great answers.

11. Do a SWOT analysis

Lastly, after tracking and analyzing all that data, plot it out in a SWOT chart. SWOT = Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Your SWOT social media analysis could be something like:

Competition’s strengths:

• Timely and relevant content
• Engaging video content
• Use of humor 

Weaknesses

• Inconsistent posting
• Ignoring customer complaints or deleting “negative” posts
• Overpromotional and only share their own content

Opportunities (for your brand to win)

• More quick, video content like behind the scenes or interviews with influencers
• Responding to all customer complaints with a satisfactory resolution
• Adopt a more friendly, humorous brand voice

Threats

• Video budget and resources
• Small marketing team
• New social networks emerging

Your SWOT analysis paints a clear picture of areas you can improve your social media marketing as well as some opportunities to steal the spotlight from your competition.

This doesn’t mean you have to start copying all their blogs or videos, but is meant to give you insight into what your followers wants and engage with. You don’t have to change your branding to match theirs, still keep your own content in your own voice, but look for ways you can improve and become an industry expert yourself.