Event Marketing Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide for Event Success
Social media has become an essential tool for businesses to reach their target audience and establish a solid online presence. However, to stay ahead of the competition, it's crucial to know what your competitors do to perform well on social media.
Conducting a competitor analysis can give you valuable insights into your competition's strengths and weaknesses, helping you develop a more effective social media strategy.
In this blog post, we'll explore the steps involved in conducting a comprehensive social media competitor analysis, from identifying your competitors to analyzing their social media activity.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to revamp your existing social media plan, this guide will provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to stay ahead of the competition.
A social media competitor analysis is a process that helps you understand your competitors’ strategies, strengths and weaknesses. It can be used as a starting point to develop your own social media strategy or as an ongoing practice to keep up with the changes in the industry.
Simply put, it’s a way to stay ahead of your competitors on social media and avoid falling behind. A social media competitor analysis may include the following:
Social media competitor analysis is an important tool for any business that wants to succeed in this highly competitive landscape. There are several reasons why you should conduct regular social media competitor analysis:
1. Understanding the market landscape: By conducting a social media competitor analysis, you can better understand your competitors' market landscape and social media presence. This helps you identify gaps in the market and opportunities for your business to grow.
2. Stay ahead of the competition: By analyzing your competitors' social media presence, you can identify what works for them and what doesn't. This information can help you to develop a strategy that is unique to your business and that sets you apart from your competitors.
3. Improve your social media strategy: A social media competitor analysis can help you refine your social media strategy and focus on the most critical areas of your target audience. By knowing what your competitors are doing, you can make informed decisions about the type of content you should be creating and the channels you should be using.
4. Benchmarking your performance: By analyzing your competitors' social media performance, you can benchmark your performance and determine what you need to do to improve. This can help you identify areas for improvement and make changes that will positively impact your social media presence.
5. Increase brand awareness: By conducting a social media competitor analysis, you can better understand how your competitors build their brands and what they do to increase brand awareness. This information can help you develop a more effective branding strategy to help you stand out in a crowded market.
Now it's time to get to work! Though there's no universal formula for conducting a social media competitor analysis, here are some tips to get you started:
The first step in conducting a social media competitor analysis is identifying your top competitors. You can do this by researching your industry, looking at local business directories, and using tools like Google Trends and SimilarWeb. You can also ask your customers and employees for recommendations.
Once you have a list of your top competitors, you can start researching their social media activity. Though there's no limitation on how many competitors you choose to analyze, it's best to start here with just one or two direct competitors.
This will help you get started and build momentum so that you can keep analyzing more competitors in the future!
Once you have identified your competitors, it’s time to gather information about them. Look at their website, social media profiles and publicly available information. Pay attention to the following:
These questions will help provide insight into their brand and how they interact with their audience. At the end of this process, you should have a good idea of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses.
You can conduct a SWOT analysis to identify your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Use Visme’s SWOT analysis generator and free templates to perform this analysis more effectively.
Here is a worksheet template that you can use.
Once you have gathered information about your competitors, it’s time to dive deeper into their social media metrics. You can use various tools, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Social Blade, to gather data on your competitors’ social media performance. Pay attention to the following metrics:
Here is an infographic showing 15 social media KPIs you should track. Of course, you can track these metrics for your competitors as well.
Based on your competitor's analysis, identify opportunities for improvement in your own social media strategy.
Consider the following:
Look for gaps in their strategy and where you can add value to their audience. For example, if your competitor is not posting often enough, try increasing your frequency for a month or two and see its effect on engagement. Also, consider adding more photos and videos to your posts if they're not using visuals.
Streamline your content and keep things organized using Visme’s online content calendar and social media scheduler. Watch the video below to see how the tool works.
To stay ahead of the competition, you must ensure that you use better tools than your competitors. This section will introduce you to five of the best social media competitive analysis tools in the market today.
You've probably heard of Google Analytics due to its web analytics features. But do you know it can be used for social media competitor analysis?
One of the most popular features of Google Analytics is its ability to track your competitors' websites. You can use this feature to see how many visitors their site gets daily from social media. And the best part is, it's free to use.
Who Is It Best For?
Anyone can use Google Analytics to track their competitors' social media. It's a simple and easy-to-use tool that anyone can learn how to use in an hour or two.
Integrations: You can integrate Google Analytics with CRMs, Facebook, WordPress, Hootsuite, Shopify, Zendesk and many others.
Hootsuite is one of the most popular tools for competitive analysis. It allows you to track and compare your competitors’ social media performance over time, including their content and engagement levels. The best thing about this tool is it automatically pulls data from every social networking site in one place and creates comprehensive reports for you.
Who Is It Best For?
Hootsuite is best for businesses and individuals looking for a comprehensive social media management tool with robust reporting and analytics capabilities.
Integrations: Hootsuite integrates with a wide range of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, among others. It also integrates with Google Analytics to allow users to track and analyze website traffic coming from social media.
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management and analytics tool that allows users to schedule posts, track conversations, collaborate with teams and more.
Sprout Social’s unique feature is its ability to monitor competitors’ social media performance to gain insight into what’s working for them and how you can improve your efforts.
Who Is It Best For?
Sprout Social is best for businesses of all sizes, particularly those looking for a comprehensive and user-friendly platform for managing and analyzing their social media presence.
Integrations: Sprout Social integrates with popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+. It also integrates with several customer relationship management (CRM) systems, including Salesforce and Zendesk, making it an excellent choice for businesses looking to streamline their social media and customer engagement processes.
Keyhole is a social media analytics platform that allows you to track and analyze your brand’s performance across multiple channels and networks. It offers insights into trends, demographics, influencers, and more.
It tracks social media metrics and mentions in real-time for you and your competitors, including hashtags, keywords and influencer campaigns. Keyhole offers a unique visualization of the data, such as a hashtag map, which helps you understand the conversation surrounding a specific topic or event.
Who Is It Best For?
Keyhole is best for businesses and marketers looking for a comprehensive social media tracking and analysis tool with reports and dashboards for all platforms.
Integrations: Keyhole integrates with multiple social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It also integrates with Google Analytics and provides detailed data on audience demographics and engagement metrics.
Social Blade is a social media analytics tool that provides data on the performance of your content across multiple platforms. It lets you track and compare your videos’ view counts, subscribers, and revenue over time. The tool also offers insights into audience demographics and engagement metrics like comments, likes, shares, and more.
Who Is It Best For?
Social Blade is best for businesses, influencers, and content creators looking to monitor their social media performance and track the growth of their audience.
Integrations: Social Blade integrates with several popular social media platforms, including YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter.
All these tools come with their own unique features. So you can choose the one that best fits your needs and budget.
Hopefully, this article has taught you how to conduct a detailed competitor analysis for your business. The process is time-consuming but pays off in the long run. You now have a better idea of what your competitors are doing and how you can use those strategies to build a stronger social media presence for your brand.
If you are looking for a tool to create, schedule and publish your social media content, Visme is your best bet. It allows you to create stunning infographics, presentations and social media posts to help you stand out.
You can track your content performance and measure the effectiveness of each piece of content you publish. Then use the findings of your analysis to create social media reports, presentations, charts & graphs and more to present your data beautifully.
Additionally, you can integrate favorite analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Salesforce and many others with Visme to get streamlined control over your social media.
Sign up for Visme's marketing manager templates and level up your social media game from a single place.
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