Every click and every follower counts! For any marketer, one of the worst nightmares is investing heavily in social media only to see little return. Posting random festive posts and reels won’t cut it—people get bored quickly and constantly crave fresh content! To stay relevant, brands need a seamless flow of social media content that keeps up with trends and key dates. So, how does Gr8 Brews, as a social media marketing agency in Kolkata, achieve this for diverse brands?

This blog will walk you through our approach to crafting impactful social media strategies using competitive analysis.

What Is Social Media Competitor Analysis?

Social media competitor analysis is a strategic evaluation of competitors’ online presence. It reveals the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and pinpoints what works best for engaging audiences. By examining tactics, engagement rates, and audience interaction, we can develop strategies that help you lead rather than just compete.

Why as a Social Media Marketing Agency, Gr8 Brews Believes in Competitor Analysis?

Social media posting for brands goes far beyond a few attractive images or a catchy line. Take Zomato, for example: it has a powerful social media presence, using a lighthearted, in-depth approach to engage its audience. But would this style work for a healthcare brand like HealthifyMe? Likely not! Every brand is unique, requiring a carefully crafted strategy to build its identity and popularity on social media. That’s why we see competitor analysis as essential to developing a strategy that truly fits each brand:

• Spot Market Gaps: Analysing competitors reveals untapped opportunities that your brand can leverage. By identifying these market gaps, we position your brand to meet unaddressed needs and capture more attention.
• Learn from Others: We don’t reinvent the wheel—we refine it. Instead of starting from scratch, we take effective strategies from your industry and adapt them to fit your brand. With 88% of social media marketers agreeing that competitive analysis is essential for understanding trends and audience preferences, we ensure that your content resonates in real-time.
• Boost Engagement and Reach: Brands that conduct consistent competitive analysis experience up to 20% higher engagement rates, as they align content with what audiences are already responding to. Our approach helps you adapt winning tactics, driving better engagement and reach.
• Stay Ahead of Trends: With social media landscapes evolving quickly, 58% of brands perform quarterly competitive analyses to keep up with shifting tactics. We monitor these changes, keeping your brand agile and up-to-date with the latest trends that resonate with your audience.
• Enhance Your Positioning: By leveraging insights from competitor analysis, we strategically position your brand as an industry leader, setting you apart in a crowded market and making a lasting impression on your audience.

5 Key Steps we take for Social Media Competitive Analysis for a brand

At Gr8 Brews, we don’t believe in shortcuts because short-term strategies are no longer effective in today’s fast-evolving social media landscape. Instead, we prioritise building an up-to-date strategy before diving into creative execution. Our process begins with in-depth research and concludes with creative execution paired with metrics to measure success. This approach not only drives results but also guides our planning for the next set of social media posts and campaigns. Here are the five steps we follow:

1. Identify Relevant Competitors

The first step is to identify the brands competing directly and indirectly for your audience’s attention. At Gr8 Brews, we:

• List Direct and Indirect Competitors: Direct competitors offer similar products or services, while indirect ones cater to the same audience but with a different focus. This allows us to understand the broader landscape of your market.
• Use Social Listening Tools: Tools like Ubersuggest, Facebook Audience Insights, and AnswerThePublic reveal which brands your audience follows and interacts with the most, helping us determine who our primary and secondary competitors are.
• Analyse Competitor Keywords: By examining competitors’ high-ranking keywords, we uncover commonalities and gaps, allowing us to target underutilised keywords or platforms they may be neglecting.

Our goal is to narrow down to around 5-8 key competitors to make the analysis manageable and focused.

2. Analyse Competitors’ Social Media Presence

Once we know who your competitors are, we dive deep into their social media strategies to gain insights into their activities. Key areas we analyse include:

• Platform Usage: We identify the social media platforms they prioritise and assess the different approaches they take on each platform. This reveals where your audience is most active and what content resonates across channels.
• Follower Metrics and Growth: Tracking follower count and growth rates allows us to gauge the effectiveness of a competitor’s strategy. A high growth rate often indicates successful tactics, while plateaued growth can signal stagnation.
• Content and Engagement Strategy: We closely analyse the type of content—posts, videos, stories, or user-generated content—that drives the highest engagement. By examining likes, shares, and comments, we uncover trends that captivate audiences.
• Hashtag Performance and Reach: Hashtags serve as entry points for audience discovery. We analyse which hashtags competitors use most and their engagement levels to discover trending keywords and create a similar or superior hashtag strategy.

Using social media analytics tools like BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and Instagram Insights, we streamline the data gathering, helping us get a comprehensive view of where your brand stands in relation to competitors.

3. Conduct a SWOT Analysis

With data in hand, we then perform a SWOT analysis to evaluate your brand’s social media positioning and potential improvements. Here’s how we break it down:

• Strengths: We pinpoint areas where your brand excels, like engagement rates, creative visuals, or unique storytelling, and explore ways to enhance these further.
• Weaknesses: We identify gaps or underperforming areas, such as lower engagement or limited platform presence, so we know where to focus our improvement efforts.
• Opportunities: We highlight where your competitors are falling short, like not addressing specific audience needs or missing out on newer platforms like TikTok. These gaps become opportunities for your brand to explore and capitalize on.
• Threats: We keep an eye on emerging threats, such as competitors adopting new technologies or aggressive growth tactics on specific platforms. Staying alert to these threats helps us pivot or adopt similar tactics to maintain your brand’s edge.

Conducting a SWOT analysis ensures we have a clear understanding of where you stand in the competitive landscape and helps in setting realistic, data-backed goals.

4. Compare Strategies and Develop Actionable Insights

The next step is to benchmark competitors’ tactics against your own to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for differentiation. Here’s how we do it:

• Benchmark Performance Metrics: By comparing key performance metrics like engagement rates, content reach, and follower growth, we establish realistic benchmarks and milestones for your brand.
• Identify Content Gaps: We look for content topics or formats that competitors are not covering adequately. Whether it’s educational posts, customer stories, or interactive content, we find opportunities where your brand can fill the gap and connect more deeply with your audience.
• Spot Opportunities for Differentiation: We analyze competitors’ branding, tone, and content style. By identifying a unique voice, content format, or messaging approach that your competitors aren’t using, we position your brand uniquely in the social space.

5. Leverage Powerful Tools for Streamlined Analysis

Gr8 Brews uses advanced tools to ensure a streamlined and precise analysis process:

• BuzzSumo: Tracks trending content across social media, helping us understand what’s popular within your industry.
• SEMrush Social Media Tracker: Monitors competitor engagement, activity, and follower growth, giving us data to benchmark against.
• Facebook Insights and X (formerly Twitter) Analytics: Offers data on post-performance and audience demographics, helping us tailor content that resonates with your audience.
• AnswerThePublic: Shows what your audience is searching for, providing valuable content ideas and competitive positioning strategies.

Benefits of Competitive Analysis in Social Media Strategy

Analysis and research is there to establish a strong base for creating some Gr8 content, here are few ways in which the research helps in content planning for your digital assets:

• Trend Riding: We detect emerging trends to keep your brand relevant and engaging.
• Refined Content Strategy: We learn what content styles and formats perform best within your industry and we apply them.
• Performance Benchmarks: We set realistic goals based on competitor data, making it easy to track growth.
• Set the Right Tonality: Every brand needs to have its own unique voice, and we help to establish a well-crafted content plan to set that tone.
• A Forward-Thinking Strategy: Our solid content plan not only outlines the present but also identifies future opportunities, such as potential collaborations and ways to integrate SEO strategies with upcoming content.

All these benefits can be brewed fresh for your brand too. Simply reach out, and we’ll handle everything from strategy to managing your digital assets and social media marketing. Trust us—connect with Gr8 Brews today, one of the leading social media marketing agencies in Kolkata!