The document provides a guide to conducting competitive analysis on social media. It discusses identifying relevant competitors based on share of conversation, audience, and engagement. Metrics to measure include engagement levels, follower growth, posting frequency, and content type. The guide recommends establishing benchmarks and averages to track performance over time. It suggests using insights from the analysis to inform strategic planning through a SWOT analysis.

1. The Complete Guide to
on Social Media
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

2. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Identify Your Competition 2
Share of Conversation 3
Share of Audience 4
Share of Engagement 5
Conduct a Competitive Analysis 6
Metrics to Measure 7
Establish Benchmarks and Brand Averages 10
Put Insights to Use 11
Conclusion 12

3. 1
This guide will walk you through best practices for learning
what your competitors are doing on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter, how well they’re doing it, and, ultimately, what
your brand could be doing better to win.
Introduction
You conduct regular analysis of your own Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter accounts, but how often do you look at what your
competitors are doing?
Before you set your social strategy, it’s essential to have a solid
understanding of your brand’s particular competitive landscape,
both online and off. Competitive analysis helps you identify
important trends, impactful tactics, and new competition as you
plan your social marketing efforts.
In addition to keeping you updated on your competitors’
activities, a solid competitive analysis empowers you with:
Market Context: Study the norms for your market, especially
on social where longstanding benchmarks don’t exist.
Opportunities for Growth and Expansion: Inform your
roadmap for the next week, quarter, and year.
Content Insight: Learn which content increases engagement
and social audience size among your competitors.
Fresh Thoughts: Spark new ideas for staying competitive.

4. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 2
Identify Your Competition
The first step to competitive analysis is identifying the brands
you consider competitors.
There are two types of competitive lists you’ll want to create:
• Industry Competitors: Companies competing for the same
market share, customers, and dollars that you are.
• Aspirational Social Competitors: Brands from your space
(or related spaces) that are operating in a way you’d like to
emulate on various channels.
Identifying industry competition will take into consideration
location, sales and revenue data, intuition, and other offline
factors.
Identifying aspirational competitors on social media can
sometimes be even more valuable to marketers because tactics
can align more directly than they might with direct industry
competitors. Aspirational competitive analysis on social should
be focused on the brands you consider threats to your brand
perception, or brands that have seen the type of social media
success you’d like to achieve:
One way to identify potential competitors for your list is to
look at the three following factors.
1. Share of Conversation
Are there brands being discussed organically in conversations
that you’d like your brand to dominate?
2. Share of Audience
How many people follow the brand on different networks?
Do these people align with your target audience and ideal
customer?
3. Share of Engagement
Is one brand excelling on a specific network?
By focusing on these three factors, you’ll compile lists of
competitors that you can analyze and learn from.

5. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 3
In the above example, an analysis of the term “widgets” can
highlight the brands being mentioned in conversations about
the widget industry.
1. Share of Conversation
By analyzing conversations around specific topics or
industries relevant to your brand on social media, you can
identify the companies that your target audience is aware
of, and are potentially active and successful on social media.
Choose keywords to analyze like you would choose search
terms for your product or industry. What are consumers
talking about?
In addition to looking at your industry keywords, also
analyze other important terms to your business and how
each of your competitors play into that conversation. Which
features are important to your customers? Which products?
Which locations?

6. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 4
2. Share of Audience
By compiling a list based on audience size of brands in your
space that have found success, you can pinpoint companies
to analyze further for best practices and tactical direction.
In the above example, Brand B may have the largest audience,
but Brands C and D are seeing the largest growth rate per day.

7. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 5
3. Share of Engagement
By aggregating brands with high engagement, you can develop
a list based on successful social media tactics, rather than offline
recognition that translates into digital success. This is important
for developing a strategy based on best practices and proven
tactics for social media, specifically.
In the above example, Brand D has seen the largest volume of
engagement on both Facebook and Twitter. This is grounds for
inclusion in your aspirational competitors list.
By combining share of conversation, audience, and
engagement as qualifiers for your list, you’ll have a more
complete picture of your competitive space on social media.
These lists of competitors can be as long or as short as you
need them to be. Brands may differ, based on your type of
business but it’s important to have a holistic view of your
marketplace, both online and off.
Real World Facebook Instagram Twitter
Brand A Brand A Brand A Brand A
Brand B Brand B Brand B Brand B
Brand C Brand C Brand C Brand C
Brand D Brand D Brand D Brand D
Brand E Brand E Brand E Brand E
To start off your social media competitive analysis, collect the names
of all your brand’s competitors, both online and offline.
Now that your lists are compiled, you’re ready to begin
analyzing your competitive set.

8. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 6
Conduct a Competitive Analysis
Once your competitive lists are set, you have a couple
of options for conducting a competitive analysis.
Manually
You can aggregate each of the metrics from each of the
channels manually, by scraping pages on a regular basis and
compiling various metrics into a spreadsheet. This can be tricky
and time consuming, but a good option with limited budget.
Using Analytics Software
Social analytics software will collect, aggregate, and bucket
your competitive data for you. While it comes with a price,
there is a significant time savings and additional insight and
data you won’t find through manual scraping. Be sure to
identify a software solution that works with all of your relevant
networks, and collects all relevant data.
With either option, you’ll need to focus on the metrics that
will give you directional insight and help identify key tactics.

9. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 7
Engagement Levels
How often do people comment, Like, and share your
competitors’ content on social and tag or mention them?
These engagement stats can be a signal that their content
and tactics are resonating (or not) with people on a specific
network. Benchmarking engagement levels and noticing
changes over a period of time will allow you to zero in on
brand content that resonates with your target audience.
This chart from the Simply Measured Facebook Competitive Analysis
shows how much engagement six cereal brands received during a
month-long period.
Metrics to Measure
Follower Growth
How many followers are your competitors gaining on a weekly
or monthly basis? Jot down their baselines now and then check
in regularly.
It’s also important to watch for outliers and spikes in follower
growth. Where are your competitors finding success? Which
campaigns are working especially well? This will help you look
for the key factors that led to success.
This chart from the Simply Measured Instagram Competitive Analysis
shows how five luxury brands experienced follower change over a six-
month period.

10. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 8
Posting Frequency
How often do your competitors post new content?
Should you be posting more frequently? Less?
By paying attention to the relationship between your
competitors’ engagement levels and posting frequencies,
you’re one step closer to discovering the best ratio between
these two metrics for your own brand.
This chart from the Simply Measured Facebook Competitive
Analysis shows how frequently six cereal brands posted during
a month-long period.
Content Type
Are your competitors posting mostly photos, videos, or
an equal mix? Are they generating original content on
each network, posting cross-channel content, or sharing
user-generated content? Which content types are your
competitors’ followers responding to best?
Track this information over a set period of time to gain real
insights about which content works with the audience you
market to every day.
This chart from the Simply Measured Facebook Competitive Analysis
shows how content type related to engagement levels for six cereal
brands over a month-long period.

11. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 9
Search Results. Find out what your competitors’ CMOs,
social media managers, and community managers are
saying about their social marketing efforts. Look for industry
articles and other write-ups.
Supplement the data you’ve digested in your analyses with
strategic insights straight from the mouths and blogs of your
competitors themselves.
Create four different competitive groups to keep track of on a regular basis: one that
holds brands with impressive follower counts, one that holds brands with staggering
engagement levels, one that holds brands with high posting frequencies, and one that
holds brands with low posting frequencies.
Watching how these competitive groups evolve will give you a good idea of your
industry’s social trends.PRO TIP

12. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 10
Establish Benchmarks and Brand Averages
In order to keep your analysis manageable and effective, you
need to create a reliable, data-based benchmarking process.
That means it’s time to calculate averages, which represent
certain minimum standards over a period of time in relationship
to your competitors’ performance. These averages can help you
plan your tactics and activities for the coming quarters.
You can do this by taking averages from the members of your
competitive lists and benchmarking period-over-period for
Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We recommend monthly
reviews or, at a minimum, quarterly.
Benchmarks vary from industry to industry, depending on your
priorities and goals. You also may have to update the metrics
you’re focusing on as the year unfolds, depending on what your
monthly competitive analyses show you.
Metric List Average - Period 1 List Average - Period 2
Number of Brand Posts
Total Engagement
Photos Posted
Videos Posted
Engagement as % of Fans
Audience Size
Audience Growth
A table like the one above can be used as a place to collect
channel-specific competitive benchmarks.

13. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 11
Put Insights to Use
In the final step of your competitive analysis process, use
the SWOT analysis to determine your brand’s Strengths,
Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats at the current time.
SWOT analysis is a common marketing practice, and a valuable
tool for building a social media strategy. This final phase is
where the full competitive map you’ve drawn for yourself will
help you understand where your brand stands.
By asking certain questions, you can bring the insight
you’ve gained into your planning process to contribute
to your overall social strategy.
Strengths
Characteristics of your social presence that give you an
advantage over competitors. Where are you exceptional?
Where are you being proactive, not reactive?
Weaknesses
Characteristics of your social presence that put you at a
disadvantage in comparison to competitors. What are you
not doing that you need to be doing? Which minimum industry
standards are you failing to achieve?
Opportunities
Holes in your competitors’ social strategies that you can
fill. What are some successful competitive strategies you’ve
learned that you can mimic or improve upon? Which social
network capabilities are you not taking advantage of fully?
Threats
Possible competitive impediments or encroachments to
the quality, reputation, singularity, and overall value of your
cross-network social presence. Where is your brand at risk on
social? Where do you need to devote resources immediately?

14. The Complete Guide to Competitive Analysis on Social 12
Conclusion
Performing regular and thorough competitive analyses
is central to your success as a social media marketer.
Audiences and trends move at a fast pace, so paying
attention to what your competitors are doing is a good
way to measure your own progress and effectively plan
your next move.
Though you may not always be able to act on the information
you uncover, the insight it provides will help you in making
decisions about your own content and figuring out how to
reach your audience best.
Lucy Hitz is a Social Media
Content Writer at Simply
Measured, where she works
on longform content and writes
for the award-winning social
analytics blog. Her favorite
musical artist is Taylor Swift,
and you can find her on
Twitter at @LLHitz.

15. Social Analytics Framework
How Competitive Analysis Fits In
Our social analytics framework below highlights the essential components of a social analytics process that enables marketers
to plan and measure their social marketing programs. Competitive analysis fits into the planning process, allowing marketers
to understand their opportunities, challenges, and differentiators as they set their social strategy.

16. About Simply Measured
Simply Measured is a fast-growing team of data geeks dedicated
to making the world of analytics and reporting a better, more
beautiful place. Find out more at simplymeasured.com
Our goal is to put the tools to understand business data in the
hands of business users. We think reporting should be simple,
attractive, and accessible for everyone – not just data scientists.
Our software streamlines the process from data to deliverables
and eliminates the countless hours spent on everyday reporting
tasks. We do this by putting cloud data sources at your
fingertips, providing a marketplace of best practice reports,
and allowing you to generate beautiful solutions on the web,
in Excel, and in PowerPoint with a couple of clicks.
Want to try Simply Measured?
Request a Free Trial Today
Copyright © 2010–2015 Simply Measured, Inc. All Rights Reserved.