A social media competitive analysis is a study of how your competitors are using different social media platforms. Essentially, it is a review of what they are doing and how effective their efforts are for them.
If they succeed in using a platform for marketing, you can also consider using the same platform in your strategy, avoiding methods that don’t work.
Why should I do an analysis?
Social media has become an important marketing tool for every business. So, it is very important to have a clear idea of other companies’ strategies on social media platforms.
When you are considering social media channels to incorporate into your marketing strategy, it can be helpful to review your competitors’ strategies on all major platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Step 1: Identify your main competitors
You’ll need to identify your key social media competitors before you can start benchmarking them and their social media strategies, so it’s a good idea to start with a list of these competitors. This way you can create a detailed benchmarking report and identify commonalities between their most successful strategies.
The analysis will give you a more accurate, overall view of how well your direct competitors are using different platforms and the results they are getting from them.
Step 2: Create a timeline and gather information
You will need to create a comprehensive timeline of your competitors’ social media efforts and identify their most successful posts, campaigns, and strategies. This will be an important component in your analysis, as you want to get a complete understanding of what’s working for them and why they’re getting the results they want.
You’ll also want to create a data list for your competitors to gauge their social media performance, for example:
- Follower growth rate;
- Their engagement rate;
- Comments on the post;
- Types of content used;
- Types of content they post (text, images, videos);
- Their tone of voice;
- Hashtag usage.
Step 3: Compare your competitors’ strategies
Next, you’ll want to create a chart that shows how your competitors are using each social media platform and the results they’re getting from it. This will help you get a general idea of what’s working and what’s not so you can create a comprehensive social media strategy.
Step 4: Create a detailed report on your results
Once you have the findings from the previous steps, it’s time to detail them. This last step will give you a comprehensive overview of all the platforms your competitors are using and the results they are getting from them.
This competitive analysis report will help you create a social media strategy so that you too can get the most out of each platform.