Completing Social Media Competitive Analysis To Rise Above the Competition
Social Media
Oct 27 2022
Finding your footing among competitors (and making sure your company has the edge when building a strategy for growth) is possible with social media competitive analysis.
With an appropriate analysis of the competition, you will determine the weaknesses in their marketing and be able to create a targeted social marketing strategy with the appropriate audience.
Key Reasons To Perform a Social Media Competitive Analysis
Social media competitive analysis is one way to gain an advantage over competitors. With better insight, you can reach your audience and make sure they keep coming back for more.
The benefits of social media competitive analysis include the following.
Knowing your audience better
Knowing your audience better helps you understand not only how to reach them, but also how to convert them into buyers or advocates of your brand. When you know your audience, you improve your brand’s reach.
Building a better social strategy
There are over 3 billion social media users worldwide. Statistics show that 21% of consumers who can find businesses on social media are more likely to buy from those brands. By building a strategy that helps you reach more of those users, you’ll be in a better position to connect and make sales.
Positioning your business better and leveraging social media correctly
Social media competitive analysis helps you build a strong social media strategy that works for your target audience. For example, in the second quarter of 2022, it was determined that median Facebook post interactions dropped 15% year over year, but Instagram post interactions stayed stable. A competitive analysis could help reveal if the same is true for your competitors and if you would benefit from shifting to a different social media platform.
Knowing what kind of content to create
Analyzing what your competitors are doing also helps you decide on the kinds of content to create. 74% of consumers report that they share video content from brands on their own social media, for example.
What Do You Have To Do for a Social Media Competitive Analysis?
Completing a social media competitive analysis can be broken down into four parts. Each of these steps helps you gather more insights and information to help you plan your best marketing strategy yet.
1. Checking Google Rankings to Find Your Competition
The first step is to check your Google rankings against your competitors. Who is outranking whom?
There are a few ways to check your rankings, but the easiest way is by taking your main keywords and typing them into the search engine. For example, if you hope to rank for “hotels in Cincinnati,” and you find that your competition takes up the entire first page, you will need to adjust your marketing strategy to address the difference in rankings.
Pay close attention to those paying for a higher position in Google search results or ads. Anyone can pay to be listed in an ad, but the party with the greatest Google Ad ranking will be shown first.
You also need to look at organic rankings to see where you fall. These rankings are unpaid and a result of your SEO efforts.
2. Getting to Know Keywords to Outrank Other Brands
Next, identify the keywords that will make you competitive with the other companies you’re contending with. For example, if you’re running a music business, you might input “music business in (location).” However, depending on your business, the keywords might need to be different to reflect your specific business’s offerings. Invest some time in the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to find keywords that may be suitable for your brand.
3. Scouring Social Media For Better Brand Awareness
On a social media platform of your choice, you can take the next step. Type in a competitor’s name into the social media platform’s search engine. Do they come up? Are they listed under hashtags? How are they known on social media?
You will want to identify who comes up in social search results. For example, like above, type in “music store Cleveland.” You’ll see all the music stores currently ranking in Cleveland, which may help you identify what does or does not work when trying to get seen.
By searching for brands, you’ll also see what’s not working for them. Go to a competitor’s pages and take a look at the reviews. Is their site hard to use? Is customer service non-responsive? Are customers leaving the page due to slow loading times? Knowing these little differences could help you improve your own digital presence and capture some of the customers your competitors have lost.
4. Learning More About Your Audience Through Insights
Finally, remember that you need to know your audience. If you share an audience with a competitor, it’s good to know which one and how your brands overlap. Why? You’ll know what you’re competing against and can even follow along with their marketing strategies.
On social media, you can look for insights. For instance, on Facebook, you can look at an individual’s page to see what they’re interested in and which friends share those interests. Businesses have that opportunity as well through Facebook Audience Insights.
By taking these steps, you’ll be closer to understanding the competition in your market and be able to begin taking advantage of your data to improve your marketing strategy.
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