Christa Tuttle December 4, 2021 
Social media has established itself as a crucial component in B2B marketing strategies. As more platforms are created and more individuals and businesses create profiles, the amount of noise increases substantially. What matters is focusing on your team’s social media strategy, narrowing in on what works best for your organization. But, understanding how your competitors are navigating social media also plays a factor. Conducting a social media analysis can be a useful task to get a grasp on how competitors are operating on social media and what results they are seeing whether it be from an engagement or conversion standpoint.
While there are several ways you can go about a competitor social media analysis, it is instrumental to have insight, and answers, to a few questions. Here are six key questions to ask, and answer, when evaluating your competitors on social media.
1. What Social Media Platforms Do My Competitors Utilize?
Understanding where your competitors are spending their time in the social media sphere is important. This can give you clues as to which platforms they find most important for their marketing activities. When looking at their social media profiles on each platform, take into consideration how well branded and composed their pages are. One with a more sophisticated presence indicates a competitor that is taking social media seriously versus one who might just be occasionally active on a platform and hasn’t thought their strategy through.
2. How Big Is My Competitor’s Following?
This information is easy to find on a company’s page and can be useful for setting benchmarks for your B2B social media strategy. Looking at the number of followers, or depending on the platform, likes, can give you a sense of how many people are looking towards your competitors for information, news and more. The more followers they have, the increased reach their social media content has.
Make it a point to check back now and then to see if their audience is continuing to grow. If it is, you can be sure they are actively investing in building brand evangelists. If it’s not, perhaps they have limited their efforts on that social media channel, which in itself can be a clue as to its effectiveness.
3. At What Frequency Do My Competitors Post?
Hand in hand with the size of a competitor’s target audience is the frequency of their posting. You don’t need to catalog every post a competitor has made since they joined Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, but try to get a general idea of their schedule. Do they post three times a day? Once a week? Have they not posted at all in the last three months?
A competitor that is posting sporadically or not at all is a giveaway that they’re not as actively involved. For the ones that are posting regularly and with interesting content that’s getting shared, liked or shared, this indicates they are focused on keeping up a consistent posting cadence on social media.
4. What Content Is My Competitor Posting?
When going through a competitor social media analysis, it is critical to note what content your competitors are posting. Are they using photos or video? Do they use content from other sources or are they developing original content? Is it all industry-related or are they including other topics? What’s the tone of the content they’re posting – humorous, informative, corporate or a blend?
If your competitors are posting a mix of content types and topics as well as utilizing language that is a blend of informative yet relaxed, this can show they are well-focused on a strong social media strategy.
5. How Much Engagement Do My Competitors Get?
While it is easy to see what engagement your organization is getting on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, knowing the engagement of competitors is a bit trickier. This process is manual as you will have to go to each profile and do some scrolling through their posts. You can use these tips to help in your competitor social media engagement analysis:
- Look at different posts types (words only, image added, video, etc.) to see how engagement differs.
- Read through posts to see if they utilize hashtags. Using hashtags effectively can increase reach and engagement.
- Estimate their average number of likes, shares and comments. This can give insight as to how people are engaging on average.
6. Which Types of My Competitors Social Media Posts Are Generating the Most Engagement?
Are their pictures getting the most engagement? What about the videos they post? The information you gather here can generate ideas for your own social media strategy. While audience preferences may differ, this can help serve as inspiration for a brainstorming session on new content ideas.
Level Up Your Social Media Strategy with a Competitor Social Media Analysis
It is a good idea to check in on your competitors regularly. This way, you can see how their performance is trending and make changes to your strategy to remain competitive. As an additional note, while a competitive analysis can give you good ideas for your own social media strategy, it’s a good idea to understand what goes with your strategy. In an age of media overload, originality and authenticity is key to being heard.
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