As a social media marketer did you ever ask yourself, “I wonder what my competitors are doing on social media, and whether their strategy works better than ours?” Well, maybe not those exact words, but surely you notice if your Google rankings take a header, or your competitor suddenly starts raking in the dough.
Here at Search Engine Pros, it is crucial for us to keep up-to-date on what our competitors are doing in the social media space. We also keep tabs on what the competitors for our clients are doing so we can provide spot-on recommendations and implement effective counter-punch online marketing strategies.
That’s why we use Socialinsider, a social media analytics tool which serves up a full view of any competitor’s digital strategy for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Why Do You Need a Competitive Awareness Strategy?
There are lots of reasons to find out what your competitors are doing. Here are just a few:
- Find out how you rank: If you’re not at the top of search results, you’re losing out. In the fast-moving online world, you need to know exactly what content your competitors are using that works, when they post, their engagement metrics, audience growth, and their overall digital strategy so you can take appropriate counter measures.
- See if you should boost any content: Sometimes a competitor will get a bump in results because they spent money to boost a blog post or video. You need to know when this happens so you can determine whether to boost any posts of your own.
- Track, analyze, and tweak: Some online marketing tactics work better than others, but you need to keep track of everything from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so you can compare your results against those of your competition and make necessary changes.
- Get new ideas: When you know what your competitors are doing, you can either offer a different take or show why you can do it better.
How Does Socialinsider Give You the Competitive Edge?
At Search Engine Pros, we love the way Socialinsider gives us and our clients the competitive edge:
- Facebook Analytics and Reports: Not only do you get insights for your own Facebook pages’ performance, you can also sneak a look at the boosted content strategy of your competitors’ Facebook pages. Get key insights on historical post data and page evolution, as well as audience growth, engagement performance and content performance. It also allows users to perform a multi-page performance comparison and analyze comment activity.
- Instagram Analytics and Reports: Find out how a competitor’s Instagram profile has grown over time, so you can promote your own brand more aggressively. You can review historical posts data to see what campaigns they roll out and when, so you can time yours to run concurrently. You can also get engagement reports and compare profiles to gain insights about content strategy.
- Twitter Analytics and Reports: Keep an eye on how your competitors use Twitter to engage with their target audience. See what content they publish on Twitter, when they post and what engages the most on their profiles. You can review engagement reports now, and will soon be able to compare Twitter profiles as well.
We love it, but you don’t have to take our word for it. Socialinsider is trusted by such big-names as HubSpot, BlitzMetrics, Geometry Global and Georgia Tech. And their pricing is pretty cost-effective for all the insights you get – $59 per month for the Social Media Manager plan, $99 for Small Agency, and $199 for Agency, with a two month discount for yearly plans. Best of all, you can get started with a seven day free trial. Now you can act like the pros and get the competitive social media marketing information you need with Socialinsider.
About Search Engine Pros: Search Engine Pros is a full service web marketing agency located in Santa Barbara, CA. The company provides web marketing services, including social media consulting, web programming, and marketing SEO. Visit the website at https://TheSearchEnginePros.com for a complimentary Google rank analysis. “Like” the Facebook page for regular insights on WordPress SEO. Call 800-605-4988 to learn more about online marketing.
Boy, I can tell you right now I almost wouldn’t even have to look to tell you that my competitors are doing a better job than I am. I’m still not ranking very high on Google searches. It looks like this will give me a chance to see what others are doing and maybe I can even mimic some of those things to improve my business stance on the internet. There’s so many platforms to keep track of. Almost going to need an assistant with all these things you guys offer to keep track of! Love what your company does for people. Keep up the great work.
I am in a very competitive niche, and we constantly need to keep tabs on our competitors. It might sound crazy to some people, and I’ve even been told I’m not honest or even trustworthy if I need to use other people’s success to gain my own. But I can assure you that those insights are invaluable when it comes to beating your competition.
Just to be clear, we never steal anybody else’s ideas, but we do review the strategy used and create something better that can work for us. All those hours studying reports have proved to be valid. I’m going to look into Socialinsider and maybe sign up for the free trial to see how it works. Thanks for giving me more smart ideas!
From a consumer stand point, this was really interesting to read. For anyone who’s a little wearying these practices. Competition breeds ingenuity. It shouldn’t been seen as cheating if you’re trying to get on top of what the competitors are doing. Of course stealing ideas will always been wrong, but there’s nothing wrong with a little competitive inspiration. Understanding what other people are doing and what works is important to developing your one strategy. As consumers, even when it comes to marketing, we want the best of the best. Methods like this will help us obtain see the best results in marketing strategy.
I am always spying on my competition. I try to use their ideas to my advantage but it never works. Your ideas are better and insightful.
I’ve never viewed running a business as so competitive, but I think how competitive one has to be depends on what business/industry one is in. For example, a restaurant with others that are similar nearby may need to be very competitive with prices etc. However, micro businesses and ones that are very unique and specialized I think don’t require as much competitiveness. I do agree that watching the competition closely leads to inspiration and that is because to me, a lot of marketing is copying. Not plagiarizing, but trends happen because people have similar reactions to similar things. I think it makes sense to focus on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter because they seem to be the current biggest three platforms for businesses. Each requires different tactics but the strongest business sees value in all three and utilizes all the platforms possible to reach a bigger audience.
I know for a fact that my business is not in the top searches when comparing myself to the other bigger competitors. I struggled a lot with trying to find ways to stay competitive and it became tiring trying to snoop and pry on their strategies without a team doing it for me. I appreciate your advice and suggestion on programs to run analytics. I also need to work on creating a competitive awareness strategy so that I know which content needs to be boosted! It’s time that I invest more time and effort into staying competitive!
Taylor,
Social Insider seems like a great tool to keep brands ahead of the game. The standout feature for me is that the tool is able to analyze how your account is doing and your competitors. This will help you see how your brand is doing, what you could do differently, and different things that your competitors do. This is truly a depth analysis and any brand could use this, thank you for shedding light on this.
As always, I appreciate the information! I tried the Social Insider tool on my major competitor. From this, I learned the account posts every single day at 8am. This is good to know! I also learned they use Twitter at least one a week. This tells me I need to spend time scheduling Twitter posts in the mornings in order to compete with them. I will continue to utilize this tool to research more competitors. It is very important to keep an eye on the competition.
Today, there are many marketing blogs out online, and it can be difficult to figure out which strategies are worthwhile to follow. This is a new strategy that I just discovered, and I will definitely look into this further. Spy mode on!
I think sometimes doing what your competitor is doing and is good at actually works out for a company. Whatever they are doing, they might have the tools that told them to do such a thing, and it doesnt hurt to take advice from someone more experienced in the advertising game then us. Love this website for all the informative links it provides.
Glad you like this app too! We have been using them as well for about a year, and one that I appreciated was the customer service. If you are confused about something, particularly pertaining to first-time setup, they will really walk you through it.
There was a little bit of a learning curve when when I first got started with it (but maybe that’s just me). But now that we are up and rolling with it, it has saved our team a lot of time and effort with our social media campaigns.