Competitor social media audits (and why they’re important)

Competitor social media audits (and why they’re important)

Social media platforms afford brands many opportunities to further their business goals, often with an emphasis on strengthening the consumer relationship; however, social media is also a great tool to easily monitor your competitors.

Getting the edge over your competitors on social media is super important if you want your business to succeed, but that’s easier said than done – just knowing who they are and what they sell isn’t enough to beat them. If you want to get out ahead and stay there, you need to undertake social media competitive analysis, regularly.

Competitor social media audits – 4 reasons why you should be conducting them regularly

But first. Before you dive into a competitor social media audit, there are a few things you need to do to prepare. First, identify your top competitors and take a look at how active they are on social media. The companies you consider to be your top competitors in the offline space may not be your main competition in the social media space. Knowing this now will save you from extra work later.

If all of your competitors are active on social media, you’re ready to start your audit. If you notice that a good number of your competitors aren’t active on social media, now is the time to identify additional companies to include in your audit. Again, you’ll want to ensure these additional competitors are active on social media before diving into your audit. There’s no right or wrong number for how many companies you should include in a competitive social media audit, but keep the amount manageable. We’ve gleaned a lot of insights from landscapes consisting of four or five competitors.

See how you measure up against your competitors

Social media platforms are a place to connect with your current and potential consumers and to exemplify your brand’s voice and thought leadership. It’s important to monitor how you’re doing compared to your competitors and what it means for your brand.

Using any number of subscription based tools available like Hootsuite or SproutSocial (for example), will help you quickly gather information so you can compare different metrics like followership, platform use, and post frequency among competitors, the overall competitive landscape average, and of course your results. Knowing how you stack up against your competitors can provide insights into how each brand is perceived and who has the highest reach and share of voice on social media.

Identify what content performs best in your competitive landscape

Another reason to conduct a competitive social media audit is to understand what content performs best in your competitive landscape. To be impactful, you need individuals to see and engage with your content. In a cyclical fashion, the more people who engage with your content increases the number of people who see it and so on. Facebook’s in-platform competitor analysis tool (for example) allows us to identify things like which platforms are used most, what hashtags garner the most participation, post types that are most engaging, if and how influencers are used, and any new formats or platform capabilities that competitors are using.

Understanding what performs the best will allow your team to make strategic recommendations on new ways to engage with your audiences, whether that’s through exploring the use of new platforms, tapping into new hashtags, investigating the use of an influencer, or testing different post types.

Competitor social media audits let you see how audiences engage with your competitors

Compelling content generates engagement, and from this, you can learn a lot about a group of people. A competitive landscape social media audit is beneficial in understanding how users engage with your brand. It’s likely your company’s target audience overlaps with your competitors’ audiences, so we encourage taking every opportunity to get to know and understand them better.

Through user engagements, you can learn how active or passive your audience is. If they’re commenting on content, you can learn what they’re thinking and feeling, what’s impacting their decision making, how brand loyal they are, and more. Tools like Brandwatch make it very easy to monitor conversations taking place on social media relating to a particular brand, product, or industry as a whole. Understanding exactly how your audience and your competitors’ audiences engage on social media can help you create better, more compelling content (both on and off social media) that resonates with users as they make their way through the decision-making process.

Understanding how your competitors engage with their audiences can help shed light on the expectations of your audience

The expectations for how brands communicate and engage with their followers on social media have changed drastically in recent years. Users expect quick responses, often in way less than an hour. Understanding how your competitors engage with their audiences can help shed light on the expectations of your audience because it’s likely if they aren’t happy, they’ll make it known.

When looking at how a competitor engages with their followers, note what kind of content they’re engaging with (positive, neutral, and/or negative), how they’re engaging (likes, comments, recommendations, or answers with external links), and who is responding (company, employee of company, or brand ambassador). Taking a look at how your competitors do it may give you an idea on how to further develop and improve your response plan (or demonstrate how you are currently leading the pack). It may also offer insight into how to or how not to respond. For example, if your competitors take days to reply to comments, you can work at increasing the efficiency in your response plan so you stand out as more responsive on social media.

And finally

It’s important to keep in mind your social media strategy plan and social media audit efforts are not a one-and-done task. Want to stand out in the social media space? Keep an eye on your competitors and plan on conducting in-depth audits at least twice a year (with an interim review every quarter). Of course, you may choose to conduct mini audits even more frequently depending on your industry, your competitive landscape and the social media channels.

As you build up your research, you’ll be able to compare how you’ve advanced compared to your competitors. These audits will help guide you strategically as you continue to look for ways to stand out in the social media space, especially as your competitors, the landscape, and the platforms evolve.

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