Competition Analysis is an essential part of a marketing strategy. Social Media Competition Analysis and strategic management is an assessment of the weaknesses and strengths of existing and potential competitors. Competition Analysis provides both a defensive and an offensive strategic context to identify opportunities and threats. In order to spy on your competitors, you first need to identify who your competitors are. You may have some in mind but there may be some more which you don’t even know. The easiest method of identifying competitors is to use the internet to find out more about the market and industry you operate in.

For example, Sharp Instincts is a platform for Digital Marketing services in Melbourne.  People who are looking for Digital Marketing services would search for “Digital marketing services in Melbourne”, “Best Digital marketing services” or “Digital Marketing company near me”. By conducting these searches or similar searches it is very easy to identify who is operating a similar business and who might be direct competitors of Sharp Instincts.  Also, it can help in understanding the location of competitors. It is very easy to do a quick scan of their webpage. A business can make an excel spreadsheet to maintain a record of competitors.

Once this list is prepared, you can then proceed with the next step. The next step is to try the competitor’s paid services, register for membership or apply for demo subscription or plans. By receiving their services, you can make a not of differences and things you can do to change or improve your services. 10-15 comparisons is ideal so that you understand what other offerings are being made available in the market. This will help you to monitor your competition and stay active in business.

Spy on their social profiles

Next step is to spy on their social media profiles and understand what kind of content they are using in order to promote their services and products. This method can help you stay one step ahead of your competitors. Analyse their social medial advertisements and keep a track on every promotional landing page.

Pro Tip: When you are analysing social media content, write down all the URL’s in the content. Every landing page is different and if the competitors are using various URLs, they are trying to boost specific content. It will be easier for you to create a counter strategy for your social media campaigns. Continue this competition analysis for a minimum of 30 days so that you can understand their strategy better. You can either advertise on that area and develop a counter marketing strategy for your brand, service or products.

Spy on Twitter

Twitter is a very useful and powerful digital platform to drive greater engagement for your products or services. You can also use it as one of your contact points as part of customer service and communications. Also, twitter is the most powerful tool for managing ORM (Online Reputation Management) for your brand.

In order to spy on your competitors through Twitter, you can simply use the feature “Lists” and get information about your competitors. Lists are basically folders which you can create on twitter to keep information according to your needs. You can have multiple lists which you can categorise for ease of use. You can follow the instructions below to create a list.

• Go to Twitter
• Click on lists from left hand side menu
• Click on Create new list
• Name your list
• Add a description
• Check Make Private option so that only you could see it and your competitors would not be notified about your list
• Add your direct/indirect competitors in the list

Pro tip: Conduct a monthly analysis on your list to see what your competitors are doing and what offers they are putting on social media. You can easily understand the strategy and stay one step ahead of them.

Spy on Linkedin

For B2B business category, LinkedIn is one of the finest platforms for marketers. It is a business-oriented platform where you can obtain genuine leads for your business. The best part about this platform is that you can spy on your competitor company along with profiles related to your business. You can spy on Managing Directors, Trainers, Marketing consultants and every possible individual who is or might be your competitor or working for a competitor company.

However, the challenge is that you have to do this discreetly so that they will not get any notification of your activities. This is required because LinkedIn is a platform where people get notified when someone views their profile. This is a risky move because your competitors will know that you are spying on them. Let’s follow the simple steps below to conduct a competition analysis on Linkedin without notifying your competitors.

• Login to Lilnkedin
• Go to profiles
• Click on Settings and Privacy
• Choose the option who can see your connections
• Choose “Only Me”
• Now scroll down and look for “Profile Viewing Options”
• Select the option Private Mode

By following this process, you can stalk LinkedIn profiles with the individual knowing. The person who you are stalking will get a notification of an anonymous profile instead of your real profile. These settings can be easily changed back when you are finished conducting competition analysis on LinkedIn.

Our LinkedIn Ads Management service will help you get the most out of your LinkedIn Ads campaigns. With our expertise and insight, we’ll work with you to create targeted campaigns that reach the right people, grow your brand, and increase leads.

Spy on Facebook

Facebook is another platform to use for spying on competitors. In order to spy on Facebook, first you need to understand the purpose of a Facebook page. Not every company creates a Facebook page for advertisement purposes. Some businesses use it for improving ORM (Online Reputation Management) or sharing information related to the business instead of promoting individual products or services.

Whatever the purpose is, you can follow these simple steps to spy on competitors using Facebook.

• Go to the Facebook Page of a competitor
• Find out the option “Page Transparency”
• Click on See more
• Scroll down and click on “Ad library” at the bottom right hand side.
• If your competitors are running any ad, you will be able to see the ad copy.
• You can filter out the ads. The best thing is, you could filter between the countries if your competitor is running ads in multiple countries.
• Collect the data which you require and start a campaign to target your competitor.

Pro Tip: You can also use an alternative method that is quick and easy! Visit Facebook Ad Library and look for your competitor or advertiser name. You will get all the active campaigns.

Spy on Instagram

Instagram is another popular platform to drive sales as well as engagement. A lot of quality influencers have made Instagram very useful for their business. If you are looking to see the advertisements placed by your competitors and do not have a strategy to beat them, you can follow a few basic steps to spy on their Instagram ads.

In order to spy on a competitor’s Instagram ads, you can follow these simple steps.

• Go to the competitors Instagram Profile.
• Tap on three dots at top right section of profile
• It will give you a small menu which contains Block, Report, about this Account, Copy profile URL, Share this profile and send message.
• Now you need to click on “About this Account”.
• After this click on Active Ads
• You could now have the access of all the Instagram ads of your competitor.
• The best thing about this option is, you can filter the ads according to feed ads and story ads.
• Collect the useful data and plan a better Instagram marketing strategy for your brand.

We hope these useful tips will help you to spy better on your competitors’ social media platforms in 2022. Keep exploring our Knowledge Graph for more Digital Marketing insights.