How to Conduct a Social Media Competitor Analysis: 5 Quick Steps

Picture this: You’re in your weekly marketing meeting, the discussion about what to do for the next social media campaign crops up, then your boss asks the question “Well, what’s [insert key competitor here] up to at the moment?”.

And guess what? You know all the details. Data and all.

Oh yes, because you have clued yourself up with some thorough competitor analysis – namely, social media competitor analysis.

This doesn’t have to be a figment of your imagination either. With this post, you’ll find out everything you need to know about performing a competitive analysis for social media management or your next winning campaign.

Let’s roll on with the basics so future-you can start thanking today-you for the intel.

What is social media competitor analysis?

A social media competitor analysis is where you look into your competitors’ social media accounts – including individual campaigns and strategies as a whole – to assess their strengths and weaknesses, and compare them to your own.

For social media competitor analysis, this can include:

• Social listening
• Competitive benchmarking 
• Performance and engagement insights

Why is social competitor analysis important?

Any form of competitor analysis can (and should) be used to optimize your own marketing strategies and ultimately, outperform the competitors you analyzed.

A social media competitor analysis can help you understand your competitive landscape and what your competitors are up to on social… and what kind of thing you should be up to too.

After all, you can’t be competitive without competitive insights.

With thorough social media competitive analysis, you can:

• Track your competitors’ content, PR and social media strategies
• Understand your competitors’ brand reputation
• Know how customers and audiences engage with their content
• Follow partnerships or sponsorships from your competitors
• See how they use influencer marketing to boost engagement

… and ultimately, boost your brand’s digital presence via social media so you can reap the benefits of increased brand awareness, including more engagement, more traffic, and more conversions.

How to perform a social media competitive analysis

1) Identify your social media competitors

As a brand – big or small – you will already have some competitors on your radar. Whether they’re direct competitors with the same solution or they’re more indirect competitors, you have at least a vague idea of what you’re up against.

But who is your competitor on social media in particular? This will factor in not only brands with competing products and services that have social media accounts, but more specifically, the brands your target audience also follow and engage with. You know, the engagement you don’t want to share with your competition and want all for yourselves.

So, who else is your target audience following? Instead of partaking in some incredibly manual social media stalking of some of your current clients, you can look into who else your target audience is following using tools like:

• Facebook Insights Analytics
• Twitter Insights Analytics

With these tools, identify top pages and profiles that are relevant to your industry for your target audience and add them to your competitors list.

With Simliarweb Audience insights, you can see other industries, topics and even domains that users of particular websites are interested in – here, we use the example of lululemon.com.

Consider creating surveys, which you can configure around basic demographic and audience behavioral data, to gain even more personalized insights into your audience.

Now, how about uncovering these competitors’ social media strategies then?

2) Find the social media platforms they use

By taking the top 5 brands in your competitor list and seeing which of their social media platforms are the most active, you’ll get a good idea of where your target audience ‘hang out’.

This should refine – or at least focus – both your competitor analysis and your social media strategy on the platforms that matter most to your users and prospects.

Different industries will be more prominent on different social media platforms. You’ll see tech brands more often on X and LinkedIn, whereas ecommerce brands tend to ride the waves of Instagram and TikTok.

But hey, just because your competitors aren’t on a platform doesn’t mean you should rule it out completely – less competitors in your field, more visibility. You’ve just got to be creative with how you’ll reach the right people for your business; that might be partnerships, hashtags, video optimization, and content distribution.

3) Understand which platforms bring the most traffic

While your competitors might be active on different platforms, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re performing well on them.

Engagement on social media is all well and good, but ideally, you want that social media engagement to convert into website visits and loyal customers.

Using tools like Similarweb Social Overview, you can see how effective social media is as a marketing channel for your competitors, and how much traffic they gain from each platform.

You can even compare multiple brands social media performance at the same time:

As tech publishing brands, you can see that the social media platforms they get the most website traffic from are Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn. 

4) Monitor the content and how often they post

You know what social media platforms your competitors use: ✅

You know how effective these social media platforms are for their business: ✅

And now, you want to know more about the type of content: ✅

By monitoring the content your competitors put out, as well as how often they put content out, you can benchmark your own social media activity.

What’s the ratio between videos, reels, photos, shared links or text in content shared? Are they sharing once a day or three times weekly?

This is where social media analytic tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite swoop in to lend you a helping hand.

Keeping an eye on competitors’ content and the engagement for these social media posts will not only give you insight into the social media strategy they’ve got going on, but also make sure you’re on top of any campaigns and influencer partnerships they’re working on.

5) Track audience engagement and interactions

Here’s something to remember: Just because they’re posting a lot, does not mean they are posting relevant content or hitting the right peoples’ newsfeeds.

And what happens when you aren’t posting relevant content to your followers? Low engagement.

You want to make sure that you’re working with social media in the most effective and efficient way, and getting the most engagement you can.

Here are some fun facts on social media engagement for businesses like yours:

• Users spend an average of 2+ hours on social media, every day
• About a quarter of those people use social media for shopping
• In fact, 70% of UK millennials and 78% of Gen Zers buy directly from social

Seeing the benefits of these statistics comes down to the content you publish, and ensuring it’s being seen by the right people.

With social media competitor analysis, you can understand what’s working for your competitors and what’s not.

What kind of content is getting the most likes? What kind of content is getting the most shares? And… what kind of content converts best into website traffic and conversions?

Enter: Similarweb.

Let’s say a competitor of yours is using a social media campaign to promote a specific product or landing page. Track how effective this was using the Campaign filter in Popular Pages to give you insight into current campaign pushes for any company.

Here, we take stanley1913.com as an example because we all know someone who’s got a huge Stanley tumbler (it actually made a big appearance in top trending search terms recently):

Dive even deeper into the data with Segment Analysis. See where traffic saw an uptick (or a downturn) and whether this coincides with when the social media campaign started to judge how successful it was – and why it was so successful.

Take the strengths you find, avoid the weaknesses you find, and apply these learnings to optimize your own social media strategy. Easy.

Post-analyzing, get strategizing

Now you know how to do competitor analysis for social media, it’s time to start optimizing (or completely revamping) your social media strategy so you can steal your competitors’ followers and outperform them entirely.

Not only will you be getting more likes, but you’ll be watching your website metrics soar too.

Don’t go thinking it’s a one-time thing. Your competitive landscape is always changing and you want to make sure you’re always up to date by performing competitor analysis (of all types) on a regular basis.

If you’re keen to skip the manual processes – as well as the social media stalking – and like the sound of an all-in-one marketing platform to provide you with all the competitive data you need, Similarweb is calling out your name.

And fun fact: You can try the platform for free today.

FAQs

What is competitor analysis for social media, and why is it important?

Competitor analysis for social media involves examining the social media strategies and performance of your competitors to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for your own brand. It’s crucial for understanding the landscape, discovering trends, and refining your own social media marketing efforts for better results.

How does Similarweb help with competitor analysis for social media?

Similarweb provides comprehensive data on your competitors’ top performing marketing channels, top performing social media platforms, and insights into the effectiveness of social media campaigns based on conversions into website traffic to key pages. It allows you to benchmark your performance against competitors and gain valuable insights to improve your social media strategy.

What social media metrics should I analyze when conducting competitor analysis?

When analyzing competitors’ social media performance, focus on metrics such as follower growth rate, engagement rate (likes, comments, shares), post frequency, content types, demographics of the audience, and referral traffic to their website from social media platforms.

How do I identify my main competitors for social media analysis?

Identify competitors by researching brands in your industry or niche that have a similar target audience and are active on social media platforms. Look for brands with a strong social media presence and high engagement levels to gain meaningful insights for your analysis.

How often should I conduct competitor analysis for social media?

It’s recommended to conduct competitor analysis on a regular basis, such as quarterly or biannually, to stay updated on evolving trends, strategies, and competitor actions in the dynamic landscape of social media marketing.