How to Analyse Competitors’ Social Media Performance

Team Locowise posted on 23 May 2024

Navigating the competitive world of social media needs more than just creativity and consistency; it demands a strategic understanding of your competitors’ moves. As platforms diversify and it seems like there are more metrics than ever to keep track of, competitor benchmarking and tracking ensures your rivals aren’t inching ahead unnoticed.

From dissecting engagement metrics to predicting content trends, social media marketers and agencies today need to leverage competitor insights to refine strategies and enhance social media presences. Get ready to transform data into actionable strategies that propel your brand to new heights.

What is a social media competitor analysis?

A social media competitor analysis is basically a deep dive into what your competition is up to on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Why do this? It’s all about figuring out where you stand in the big picture. By looking at what your competitors are posting, how they interact with their followers, and how quickly they’re gaining new fans, you can spot what they’re doing right.

But it’s not just about what’s working. This analysis also shines a light on areas where your competitors might not be doing so well—maybe their engagement is slipping, or they’re missing the mark on customer service. These insights can help you avoid similar pitfalls and position your brand to excel where others lag behind.

Moreover, consistently tracking how you stack up against your competitors helps you set realistic goals and adapt to changes in social media trends more swiftly. Whether it’s adjusting your hashtag game, changing up your video content, or doubling down on an emerging social platform, staying informed through competitor analysis ensures you’re not just keeping up but potentially leading the pack.

So, whether it’s seeing which hashtags are bringing in the likes or noticing a successful video format, competitor analysis is a handy tool to ensure you’re not just keeping up but getting ahead.

Prepping to Analyse Your Social Media Competitors: The Research Stage

Before diving into the nitty-gritty of a competitor analysis, it’s crucial to establish who your competitors actually are. This research stage sets the foundation for all the insights and strategic adjustments to follow. Here’s how to effectively identify your social media competitors:

Step 1: List Your Known Competitors

Start with the basics—list out the brands you already know are your direct competitors. These are businesses offering similar products or services within the same geographic area or target market. They’re the ones you regularly come across in industry discussions, customer comparisons, or market reports.

Step 2: Conduct Market Research

To broaden your competitor list, engage in some market research:

Social Listening: Use tools like BuzzSumo or Hootsuite to track what brands are mentioned alongside your brand in social conversations.
Keyword Searches: Perform searches on social media platforms using keywords that relate to your business. See which companies pop up most frequently in search results, hashtags, and conversations.
Industry Forums and Groups: Participate in or monitor discussions in industry-specific online forums and social media groups. Note which companies are frequently mentioned or are active in these communities.

Step 3: Analyse Social Media Presence

Once you have a preliminary list, it’s time to analyse their social media presence to confirm if they are indeed relevant competitors:

Follower Count and Growth: Look at the number of followers they have and their growth over time. A rapidly growing follower count could indicate a rising competitor.
Engagement Rate: Check how engaged their audience is. A high engagement rate often signals strong customer relationships and content resonance.
Content Strategy: Review the types of content they post, the frequency of their posts, and the response they receive. This will help you understand their social media strategy’s strengths and weaknesses.

Step 4: Refine Your List

Based on your findings, refine your list to focus on the competitors who are most aligned with your market and have a significant social media presence. These are the competitors from whom you can learn the most and against whom you’ll benchmark your social media performance.

This systematic approach not only helps you identify your real competitors but also provides a clear direction for the detailed analysis to come. It ensures that your efforts are concentrated on the competitors that matter most to your business, making your analysis both efficient and impactful.

How to Conduct a Social Media Competitor Analysis

Conducting a comprehensive social media competitor analysis involves several steps, from collecting data to interpreting the findings to refine your strategy. Here, we’ll use Locowise’s competitor benchmarking features to guide you through a detailed, step-by-step process:

Step 1: Set Your Objectives

Begin by defining what you want to achieve with this analysis. Are you looking to improve engagement, increase followers, or enhance content strategy? Setting clear goals will help you focus on relevant metrics and competitors.

Step 2: Gather Your Competitors’ Data

Gather and analyse data from your competitors’ social media profiles to benchmark your existing performance against theirs.

Conducting a thorough social media competitor analysis allows you to understand your position within your industry and refine your strategy to better meet the needs of your audience. Here’s a detailed step-by-step guide to effectively perform this analysis:

Step 3: Compare Key Performance Metrics

Audience Growth: Monitor and compare the rate at which your competitors are gaining new followers. This gives you an insight into their market reach and how effectively they are attracting new audiences.
Engagement: Analyse how engaged their audience is with their content. Look at likes, comments, shares, and other interactive metrics.
Best Content: Identify which types of content perform best for your competitors. This could include video, images, or specific topics that generate the most engagement.

Step 4: Analyse Share of Voice

Assess your brand’s visibility and prominence compared to your competitors. Use tools to track mentions, hashtags, or keywords associated with your brand and your competitors across different platforms.
Sentiment Analysis: Conduct sentiment analysis at the brand, page, and post levels to understand public perception and emotional reactions towards your competitors’ content.

Step 5: Posting Strategies

Frequency and Schedule: Determine how often your competitors post and the specific times when they do so. This helps you understand their content strategy and identify optimal times for posting.
Paid vs. Organic Posts: Estimate how much of their content is promoted through paid advertising. This insight can guide your budget allocation for paid social media campaigns.

Step 6: Predict Future Trends

Try to predict their audience growth trajectory based on current trends. This can help you anticipate market shifts and prepare accordingly.

Analyse their impressions and reach to gauge the effectiveness of their content on both the page and post levels.

Step 7: Platform-Specific Analysis

Tailor your analysis based on the specific platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) where your competitors are active. Each platform has unique metrics and features that can provide deeper insights.

Step 8: Decide What’s Important

Not all data will be relevant to your goals. Decide which metrics are most important for your specific objectives, whether it’s increasing engagement, boosting followers, or improving content quality.

Step 9: Regular Updates and Adjustments

Social media trends can change rapidly. Regularly update your analysis to stay current with the latest trends and adjust your strategy as needed to maintain a competitive edge.

This detailed approach ensures that your social media competitor analysis is not just a one-time exercise but a dynamic part of your ongoing strategy. Using tools like Locowise’s competitor benchmarking can dramatically increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your efforts, providing you with a robust framework to guide your social media planning and execution.

What should you do with your social media competitor data?

Once you have completed your initial social media competitor analysis, the next steps are critical to making this information actionable and effective for your strategy. Here’s how to set benchmarks and decide what to track on an ongoing basis:

Set Benchmarks Based on Findings

Establish Industry Benchmarks: Use the data collected to set benchmarks based on industry standards. This includes metrics like engagement rates, follower growth, and post frequency that align with top performers in your industry.
Identify Competitor Benchmarks: Specific competitor benchmarks should also be established. These are personalised to the performance of key competitors and may involve more nuanced metrics such as response times to comments or the average number of shares per post.

Integrate Insights into Your Strategy

Adjust Content Strategy: If your competitors’ content types (e.g., videos, user-generated content, infographics) are performing well, consider integrating similar content into your strategy.
Optimise Posting Schedule: Align your posting schedule with the most active times for your audience, as indicated by competitor activity and engagement levels.
Refine Targeting Approaches: If competitor data shows strong engagement from specific demographics, reassess your own audience targeting strategies to better align with these findings.

Decide What Metrics to Track Continuously

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Decide which KPIs are most important for your goals. Common KPIs include engagement rate, reach, impressions, and follower growth.
Sentiment Metrics: Continuously track sentiment and tone in social interactions to gauge brand perception.
Campaign Effectiveness: Regularly measure the performance of specific marketing campaigns and promotions against those of your competitors.

Implement Ongoing Monitoring

Use Automated Tools: Utilise tools that provide ongoing tracking and alerts for competitor activities. This ensures you are always informed about new posts, campaigns, or shifts in strategy.
Regular Reports: Schedule regular reporting intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly) to review the metrics you’ve set. This helps to track progress over time and adjust tactics as needed.

Adapt and Innovate

Learn from Competitor Successes and Failures: Apply lessons learned from competitor analysis to avoid their mistakes and replicate their successes where appropriate.
Stay Flexible: Be prepared to pivot your strategy based on new data and evolving market conditions. Social media trends can change rapidly, and flexibility is key to maintaining relevance.

Communicate Findings with Your Team

Regularly share the insights gained from competitor analysis with your marketing team and other relevant departments. This helps align strategies across your organisation and ensures everyone is informed about the competitive landscape.

By setting benchmarks and tracking key metrics on an ongoing basis, you can ensure that your social media strategy is dynamic and responsive to both your audience’s preferences and competitive pressures. This proactive approach not only keeps you competitive but also positions you as a market leader who adeptly navigates and capitalises on social media trends.

Best Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools to Try

When it comes to keeping an eye on the competition, the right tools can make all the difference. Here are some of the best tools for social media competitor analysis, with an emphasis on what sets each apart and where they might fall short.

1. Locowise

If you felt overwhelmed by some of the data wrangling needed in the steps above, fear not. Locowise’s competitor analysis and benchmarking feature automates all of it for you! Locowise offers detailed analytics that help you measure and understand the performance of your social media against that of your competitors.

Features:

Detailed competitor benchmarking and comparisons
Audience growth, engagement and content benchmarking
Voice share and sentiment analysis
Predictive competitor analytics (posting schedules, frequency, etc.)
Automated audience growth trajectories for competitors
Reporting tools that deliver actionable insights

And it’s all ready for you to explore right now with a no-strings-attached free trial.

2. Sprout Social

A popular choice among businesses for its robust functionality and user-friendly interface.

Features:

Detailed reporting on engagement, reach, and growth
Ability to track competitors’ campaign performance
Social listening tools to gauge industry trends

What’s Missing: It can be pricey for smaller businesses, and some users find the mobile app less intuitive than the desktop version.

3. BuzzSumo

good for content analysis and seeing what content performs best in your industry, including what your competitors are doing.

Features:

Alerts for brand mentions and competitor mentions
Influencer identification and tracking

What’s Missing: Lacks some of the deeper engagement analytics that other platforms offer, focusing more on content performance.

4. Hootsuite

Well-known for its comprehensive dashboard that allows you to manage your social media content in one place and track competitors.

Features:

Streamlined competitor comparison
Social media monitoring and scheduling
Customisable reports and real-time data

What’s Missing: It can get expensive as you add more team members or require more advanced features, and some users report that the metrics are too high level.

5. SEMrush

While primarily an SEO tool, SEMrush offers powerful social media insights that are useful for competitor analysis.

Features:

Competitor social media strategy analysis
Cross-platform comparison for performance benchmarking
Social media tracker and poster

What’s Missing: Not as focused on social media as other tools; the social aspects are part of a larger suite focused on SEO.

Each of these tools offers unique strengths that can be leveraged depending on your specific needs and budget. By using these tools to monitor and analyse competitors, you can stay one step ahead in the dynamic world of social media marketing.

FAQs About Social Media Competitor Benchmarking

How effective is it to analyse competitors’ social media followers?

Analysing your competitors’ social media followers can be highly effective for understanding market trends, audience preferences, and potential areas for growth in your own strategy. By examining the demographics, interests, and engagement patterns of your competitors’ followers, you can identify what attracts and retains these individuals. This information can guide your content creation, advertising targeting, and overall marketing strategies, making it easier to tailor your efforts to meet the needs of your target audience more effectively.

How can you analyse a competitor’s social media strategy?

To analyse a competitor’s social media strategy effectively, consider these steps:

Content Analysis: Examine the types of content they post, including frequency, themes, and engagement levels. Tools like BuzzSumo can help you see which posts are most popular.
Engagement Metrics: Look at likes, shares, comments, and other forms of engagement to understand how interactive their audience is.
Performance Trends: Use tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to track how their social media performance changes over time, such as increases in followers or spikes in engagement.
Campaign Analysis: Identify and study specific campaigns they run, noting the content, timing, and promotional strategies used.

How can you check competitors’ social media growth rates?

To check your competitors’ social media growth rates, you can:

Use Analytical Tools: Platforms like Locowise provide insights into follower growth, engagement rates, and more. These tools often offer historical data that can show growth trends over time.
Manual Tracking: If you prefer not to use tools, you can manually record follower counts over a set period to observe growth.
Industry Reports: Look for industry reports that might include growth data for major players in your market.

Should you follow your competitors on social media?

Yes, following your competitors on social media is generally a good practice. It allows you to:

Stay Updated: Keep tabs on their latest posts, promotions, and announcements.
Gather Insights: Learn from their successes and mistakes.
Spot Trends: Quickly notice shifts in content strategy or new products that could affect your market positioning.
Network: Engaging subtly with competitors can also be a way to build professional relationships and keep a friendly rapport.

Each of these activities is part of maintaining a competitive edge and can inform your strategic decisions in dynamic and evolving markets.

Get In-Depth and Predictive Social Media Competitor Analysis With Locowise

Dive into a detailed analysis of your social media performance against your rivals with state-of-the-art tools that highlight not just who’s ahead, but why.

Assess everything from audience growth and engagement to the quality of content that resonates most. Unpack your brand’s presence with a share of voice analysis and use sentiment analysis to decode reactions at every level—from overall brand perception down to specific posts. Keep your strategy agile by forecasting competitors’ posting schedules and their reliance on paid promotions.

Finally, gauge upcoming trends by predicting audience growth trajectories and understanding the reach and impressions of your competitors’ campaigns. These insights are not just data points, but roadmaps to refine your social media strategy and outshine your competitors.

See it in action for yourself – Start a free trial of Locowise today.