How to Observe Your Competitors’ Social Media Strategies to Improve Your Own

30 Mar How to Observe Your Competitors’ Social Media Strategies to Improve Your Own

Observing your competitors’ social media strategies can give you some insight on how to keep your own strategy fresh, avoid  methods that don’t work, or inspire new ideas. Lets review a few of things to look for when you observe your competitors’ social channels and strategies.

Content

Take a look at your competitors’ social media content. This includes what kind of content types are they using, how often they post and how each of these perform on your competitor’s social media channels. Although you won’t be able to see metrics like reach – you will be able to look at how many likes, retweets and comments posts get. Perhaps they’re using post types you haven’t tried like Live Video or Stories. Here is your chance to gather ideas and think about how you can use new post types for your brand. You may also notice that you may be the one using innovative content within your industry!

Topics the brand shares

Maybe a certain topic category really gets your industry talking, and you’ve been missing out! Taking a look at what topics resonate on your competitors’ social media channels may help you create your own content that taps into the buzz. Another way looking at the topics your competitors create or share content about is finding your own brand related content that can add value to your followers.

Messaging

Images and videos get your followers to stop, but your captions and messaging is what will keep them on your page and entice them to engage. Take a note of your competitors’ calls to action, or what kind of questions they ask their audience. Maybe your “voice” is off, and checking out the competition and how they interact with their audience can give you some direction while you’re crafting your captions.

Hashtags

Going on from messaging – hashtags are another great thing to look at when observing your competitors’ social media channels. Are they using any you aren’t?

Influencers

Another thing to look for when peeking at your competitors’ strategy is to look at what influencers they work with (if any at all). Who’s information or content is your competitor sharing? Are you following these accounts also? How are they using influencers within their marketing? Asking yourself these questions can help you set up a successful influencer campaign for your own brand. If you have no idea how to get going with influencer marketing, take a look at this post where I review how you can get started on growing your brand with influencers: How to Win With Influencer Marketing.

Promotions

I love seeing what kind of prizes can be associated with promotions that really get people engaged. Beyond the prizes, there are so many different ways to run promotions on social media. Find some competitors in your industry who are using promotions on their social channels and take a look at how they are asking followers to enter. Then go check network guidelines before you decide to go ahead with your own. Hey, just because someone else is doing it, doesn’t mean it’s right.

Profile Setup

This might not seem like a biggie – but take a look at how your competitor has set up their profile. Are they using their header image in an innovative way? Pay attention to their biographies and descriptions as well – do they have links? Where are these links pointing to?

Set time aside to look around at what strategies other (big players) in your industry are implementing. Take a step further and checkout what top players in other industries are doing to get results, here is where you may find innovative ideas that haven’t been tested in your field yet.

One competitive analysis tool is built right into Facebook Insights’  Pages to Watch. Plug in a few competitors and track their engagement, follower growth, and number of posts for the week. If you are having trouble with engaging your audience, or are looking to adjust the number of times you post a week, take a look at how often your competitors are posting and try it. This information also helps you benchmark your growth and set goals based on how others in your industry are pacing.

It’s easy to get caught in your strategy and tracking analytics and adjusting strategy but remember to take a step back and look around the competitive landscape. Not observing your surroundings can get you left behind, and you may be surprised to discover that you’re doing better than you thought (and who doesn’t love that feeling?)

<3 DhariLo