Social Media Competitor Analysis

What is a social media competitor analysis and why is it important for your business?

It’s important to know what other companies in your sector are doing, and the aim of a social media competitor analysis is to learn from your competitors and identify any strategic opportunities.

Is a social media competitor analysis essential?

It should be a vital part of your company’s marketing plan. By undertaking a competitor analysis, you can benchmark your business, learn from your competitors’ strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses, establish the level of service that your target audience expects, what they engage with the most and determine a niche to set your company apart.

Investors and key stakeholders will be particularly interested in a competitor analysis; they want to know that you are both realistic about your positioning in the market and thinking strategically about what direction you need to be heading in to future proof your business.  Here is a useful article from Entrepreneur which also gives you an overview and contact us for details of how we can help.

How do you do it?

Firstly, you need to know who your competitors are; a minimum of three competitors should be identified at local level and at least one at national level.

You should then determine where each holds an online presence across the various social media platforms. On each platform, you should note:

• Are there core channels that each competitor is active on?
• How are your competitors using these core channels to meet their goals of sales, brand engagement and customer service?
• What is the frequency of updates? Are they taking a consistent approach, or is it an ad-hoc?
• What content is being used and how?  Do they use a mix of media content?
• What people/companies respond to the most/best?
• Are they creating tailored content for each channel?

Summary

Once you gather this information for each competitor you will be able to identify who are the leaders in each area, what they are doing best, what your target audience responds to the most, what everyone does well and what nobody does well.  Once you have this information, it will allow you to benchmark your social media marketing plan, by creating an easy to understand competitor matrix, rating each area on the above set of criteria. 

To compete in the world of business you must know your competitors!  For more information on the services BizWizUK offers please click here, call us on 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.

By Ann Davies, Director