Social Media Competitor Analysis: The Complete Guide

85% of businesses rely on social data as their primary source of business insights, according to a survey by Sprout Social. They are also a vital component of your growth strategy because there are almost 4.6 million users on social media networks.

There is no longer any news about the fierce brand competition across all industries. How can you then outperform your brand competitors and grow your business on social media? By conducting a competitor analysis on social media.

By examining the strategies of your competitors, you can bolster your brand’s advantages, address your weaknesses, and take advantage of opportunities. The definition of social media competitor analysis, its advantages, the procedures to follow when conducting this analysis, and a list of the tools you need are covered below. 

What is a competitor analysis on social media?

The process of assessing your competitors on social media to identify opportunities and develop strategies for brand expansion is known as social media competitor analysis. By conducting this analysis, you can discover the advantages and disadvantages of your rivals and create a successful social marketing plan. Additionally, it reveals pertinent details about your target market, why they are drawn to rival brands, and how these companies excel at social media marketing. To learn more about competitor analysis you can approach a professional  Digital Marketing Agency.

Why is it important to analyse competitors on social media?

Beyond the method you use to look at your SEO competitors, social media competitive analysis has its benefits. You can:

1. Improved comprehension of your ideal clients

You can learn more about your ideal clients by conducting a social media competitive analysis. Understanding your customer personas gives you the power to increase your marketing results because you can know:

• Which of your ideal clients use social media channels?
• How they take in information
• What kind of information are they seeking? 
• What issues do they need to be resolved?
• What time of day do they log on to social media?

2. Develop a more robust social strategy

You can develop a successful social media strategy, or tweak an existing one, if you already have one, by understanding how and why your competitors outperform your brand.

An analysis of your competitors’ strategies and performance in social media puts you under pressure to perform at your highest level. Additionally, you can spot opportunities for brand expansion and dangers that require attention.

3. Produce pertinent content

It makes sense that the brands whose values and content your ideal customers agree with will win them over. Competitor analysis on social media will help you stand out to your ideal clients.

This is because you’ll figure out what kinds and formats of content they prefer. Additionally, you can use the content gaps you find as an opportunity to produce new, beneficial content for your audience.

4. More effective positioning and marketing

You can use your social platforms for more successful marketing by performing a social media competitive analysis. You’ll begin utilising pertinent, underutilised social media features and strategies once you learn what’s working for your rivals.

More importantly, it allows you to develop a positioning strategy that will set your brand apart from the competition and help you establish authority in your field.

Six social media tools for competitor analysis

It would help if you had specific social media tools in addition to your traditional analytics tools, which we’ll cover later, to effectively carry out competitor analysis on these platforms. Below are six tools that are widely used:

1. SocialMention

A search engine called Social Mention by BrandMentions compiles user-generated content from social media, blogs, news, and videos.

When you enter a competitor’s brand, Social Mention keeps track of all the conversations and displays them to you, including who is talking about it, what they are saying, and which platforms. 

2. Sociality.io

A comprehensive tool for social listening, planning, and competitor analysis is called Sociality.

You can learn more about your competitors’ paid ad campaigns, social media performance metrics, content strategy, and past content by using this social media competitor analysis tool.

3. Sprout Social

 A collection of social media management tools for more effective brand marketing, Sprout Social. It has scheduling, analytics, and rival analysis tools for all business sizes and types.

You can track your competitors’ audience growth and publishing schedules using Sprout Social’s competitor analysis feature.

4. Socialbakers

A social media management tool called Socialbakers makes it simple to keep an eye on all your social media accounts from one location. For agencies, it functions best.

With the help of this tool, you can evaluate and compare the effectiveness of your content to expand your brand. You can also analyse up to five competitor profiles using Socialbakers’ free competitor analysis tools for Facebook and Instagram.

5. BigSpy 

BigSpy is a free tool for examining the social media advertisements of your rivals. A database of advertisements from various social networks is kept in this ad library. BigSpy assists both small and large businesses in identifying rival company campaign ideas to improve marketing campaigns and social media strategies.

6. Beyond Analytics

Not Just Analytics, formerly known as Ninjalistics, offers Instagram and TikTok analytics. Using this social media competitive software, you can track the development of competitor profiles, the hashtags they employ, and their engagement rates. Only the profiles of your competitors’ competitors need to be entered and examined in Not Just Analytics.

How to analyse competitors on social media

Competitor analysis on social media doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are five steps to using competitor analysis, regardless of whether you use Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, or YouTube.

1. Determine your brand’s objectives and metrics.

Prior to analysing and comparing competitors’ performances, decide what you want. Always begin with the end in mind, which should be your brand’s objective.

Find out the responses to questions like:

• What are your social media marketing goals?
• What role do these play in your overall brand objectives?
• How will you gauge success using key performance indicators (KPIs)?
• Who are the perfect customers you want to attract?

2. List the rival brands for your own.

If you don’t know who your competitors are or which social media platforms they utilise, it’s impossible to analyse them on social media.

Keep an eye out for your direct and indirect competitors and companies that provide comparable goods or services or address the same issue as you. Next, list your top five rivals.

3. Compile and evaluate data

The majority of this process is made up of data collection and analysis. To make it simpler, pick a practical analysis tool from the ones listed above to research, examine, and contrast the performance of your rivals.

Although you may already have brand KPIs, here are some crucial social media metrics to monitor for competitive analysis:

• Reach/impressions on accounts
• Count of supporters
• Participation rates
• Social media advertising trends
• Ratio of voices
• estimated organic page visitors
• The number of keywords the competitor is using

4. Develop a social media plan.

Data analysis is crucial when assessing your social media rivals, but data interpretation is more essential. If you don’t know how to use the data gathered for business intelligence, everything in your spreadsheet is just lines, figures, and charts.

To develop a more effective social media strategy, it is critical to comprehend what your competitors are doing well when they have impressive metrics. Additionally, their shortcomings—those things they don’t do well—can present opportunities for the expansion of your brand. Create a data-driven strategy that enables you to assess what is and is not working and how you can use these insights to achieve your business objectives. Make a four-part SWOT analysis table for your strategy using the information from the spreadsheet. SWOT analysis gives you a thoughtful overview of your brand’s opportunities, threats, strengths, and weaknesses to aid in business decision-making. You can speak with a Social media marketing agency  for a relevant social media plan. 

5. Track the development of the account

There’s more to do after conducting your social media competitive analysis. You must monitor your profile as well as the competition, of course. This enables you to:- 

• Observe brand development
• Observe new competition promptly
• Determine the efficacy of your social media strategy.
• Find fresh growth prospects
• Update your marketing strategy.
• Keeping up with the industry and social media trends is essential.

Whether monthly, quarterly, mid-yearly or annually, stick to a schedule for regularly analysing your social media rivals. Additionally, update your competitor research spreadsheet to reflect fresh opportunities or dangers.

To conclude,

Building a stable social presence, client trust, and brand credibility is possible with the help of social media competitive analysis, which is essential to the growth of your brand.

Once you have mastered the steps, you can perform this analysis for any of your social media profiles. To enhance your social media strategy, identify your brand objectives and transform analysed, organised metrics into context-rich insights.