There are a lot of things going around in every corner of social media – each platform different from one another. For the common user, this might not be something to be mindful of. However, for entrepreneurs, social media marketers, and businesses, knowing one particular corner can greatly improve their performance. And that very corner is your competitor’s performance, which is one of the most important keys to progress. Here’s what you need to know and how to work from there.

Why Knowing Your Competitor’s Performance on Social Media Allows You to Progress

That’s simple. It is because you are able to better assess your performance by knowing theirs. Without something to compare with, you can never say how good or how bad your performance is on social media. You may have a couple of thousand likes and followers, and most of your post will have an average of 30 reactions, but without anything to compare with, you can’t know for sure if it’s good enough – you can’t tell what’s the optimal performance.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@1alexkhan”]Why knowing your competitors is a must to create a sound strategy that will bring you closer to success.[/tweetthis]

If you can see a competitor that’s having twice than what you have, you can assess for sure that you can really do more and push it further. You can see how they do things (strategy, tactics, promos, ads, etc.) and how much they’re getting out of it. This gives you the opportunity to either copy or improvise, or even compete against it. This is why as soon as you’ve launched your brand presence on social media, find your competitors right away.

How to Find Your Competitors on Most Platforms

The term competitor is very broad. Generally, there are two types of competitors, those who are competing directly against you and those who are partly competing against you.

Those who compete against you are those who provide the exact same products and services as you. This is particularly easy to identify if you have a very specific niche market. Take classical shoes for example (leather), any other business selling the same thing only is a direct competitor. And those who are partly competing against you are the ones in the fashion niche. That’s because there is a possibility that they will sell shoes that are identical to yours.

So, if you want to find your direct competitors in social media, you should first know the best keyword that describes or defines your business. And, to further narrow it down, you should also add the location in which your business is operating – or concentration of audience.

Of course, on Facebook, searching for pages using the keyword “classical shoes” or “leather shoes” is a good start. This applies to every other platform that has a search engine.

Key Points to Observe

There are several aspects you should observe from your competitor that can provide you new insights. These can be used to improve your strategy and means on how you deal with your audience on social media. However, I only think that three of these should be your priority. If you can check them out, at least, once or twice a week, your business will improve.

Take note: you should prioritize observing from a competitor who has more followers and engagement than yourself. There is little to know from someone who is performing less that yourself – and, where’s the challenge in that?

• The Content – the first thing that should capture your attention is the type of content they’re posting. Click it, see it, and learn from it. Then, you should improvise. Of course, if their post is getting more likes, comments, and, most of all, shares, then you should try to copy that – but never in carbon copy. You want to preserve your originality. Somewhat, just be inspired from that and create your own (probably better).
• The Time – the second thing that you should really watch out for is the time they post (their schedule). This is more relevant if you have the same audience’s location. If your posts are not performing as well as theirs, even though you have quite the same content, the time you post might be the main problem. There are two probabilities. It’s either you are posting at the exact time (which people will typically choose the one with more engagement, thus the platform will feature that more). Or, you are posting at a very bad time (probably, times when people are busy doing their day jobs or sleeping).
• The Call-to-Action – last but not least is the caption of the post, especially when it’s a link. Observe how your competitor throws wordy lines to convert. Learn from this and you’re sure to be all good.