I am a big believer in checking out your competition.
It’s a smart and free way of empowering your knowledge of the industry, analyzing activities and help you identify the gaps in the market, so that you can find opportunities.
Competitive research can help your organization get an accurate idea of the trends happening in the marketplace that you may have otherwise missed.
The odds are that your social media audience overlaps with that of your competitors. So it’s worth checking out what they’re doing. Are they doing things you hadn’t thought to consider? How are they positioning themselves? What are they doing that you can do better?
This is free competitive intelligence!
I follow the social media accounts and also regularly check out the web sites of my clients’ competitors so that I know what they’re writing about and so that we can do what they are doing better.
To understand your competition, it is most important to begin by examining the marketplace.
First, take a hard look at the things your competitor does.
Second, look to see what your competitor doesn’t do, and then try to fill in that part of the market.
These are the steps involved in a comprehensive competitive analysis:
- Know who your competitors are
- Find out the products and services they offer and know if you are in direct competition with them
- Analyze their sales and marketing strategy
- Find out if they are achieving great results with their current strategies
- Evaluate their content strategy
- Discover the level of engagement they are able to achieve with their content management
- Find out how they are promoting their marketing content
- Have a closer look at their social media strategy and the platforms they are using to market their content
When it comes to monitoring their social media presence, make sure to review their:
- Overall social media presence
- The social media channels on which they have a presence
- Their interaction with their followers
- The frequency with which they post content on these channels
- The kind of content they are posting
- The areas of their business they are highlighting
Then compile your findings into a concise report with visuals to bring it to life.
Stay tuned for more on this topic!