How quiet do you know your competitors? Is there something new they are working on? How well established are they in the industry? What is the current strategy they are using?

If you know all these, then you are on the right path. But if not, then maybe you should. Tracking competitors and their strategies are crucial for having an edge in the market. When it comes to tracking competitors, being proactive is vital to your business’s success. 

Social media platforms have become the center of business marketing. It is easily accessible and cost-efficient. It is the main reason why competition is so fierce here. If you want to win this game, you need to know about your competitors.

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There are tons of benefits of monitoring your competitors. In this article, we will discuss why you need to track competitors? And How to track them easily? So let’s get started!

Why Do You Need To Track Competitors On Social Media?

There is high competition among brands on social media. Competition of various brands is the same on social media as well as offline markets. In traditional markets, your competition is the brands with similar products. But on the social media platforms, you not only compete with similar products but also with their social media strategies.

Since social media is easily accessible and cost-efficient, no doubt there is so much competition on the platform. And getting ahead of your competitors is laborious. But at the same time, social media platforms allow you to learn more about your competitors.

• If you want to boost your social media performance, it is important to track competitors regularly.
• With the help of social media analytics tools, you can measure your engagement rates and audience response. 
• With these insights on your social media performance, you can build a strategy. 
• It is crucial to know how your target audience is reacting to your content. 
• It is essential to set performance benchmarks against your competitors. 
• You should know where you stand against your competitors before thinking about a plan of action.

For a fail-safe social media strategy, you should perform a social media competitor analysis. Here are the benefits that it helps you with:

Keeping Up With Your Industry:

For the success of your business, keeping up with the industry trends and competitors is crucial. Tracking your social media competitors will help identify top trends and updates you need to watch out for. You can gain a competitive advantage by keeping up with the latest updates in the industry. 

• You need to create compelling content that seizes the attention of your audience.
• For this, you must keep up with all the new updates and trends in the industry. 
• Mixing out content that aligns with new trends shows your expertise in a given niche.
• Look out for what is working and what is not in your niche market.

So, to put it simply, you should track competitors to keep up with trends and events in the industry. 

Understanding The Strategy Of Your Competitors:

The main reason to track competitors is to know about their social media strategies. If you want to get ahead of the competition, you need to understand their game. And when you track competitors online, you get many useful insights about their strengths, weaknesses, loopholes, what is working, what is not working, and more. Also, when you track competitors progress through their PPC ads, you get to improve your strategies similarly. You can learn from the mistakes and build an invincible strategy.

• You will need to keep a watch on every activity of your competitors. What are they sharing? Frequency of posting? Which time are they posting?
• What are the engagement rates? Conversion rates? Tracking all these metrics is essential.
• Make sure to monitor how their audience is responding to their content. 
• It will facilitate you build your own social media strategy.

It is crucial to find out the answers to those questions. You can implement it into your content creation strategy.

Finding Out The Gaps:

Tracking your competitors helps you to identify the gaps. You can know what your competitors are lacking. It will help you to come up with a strategy to surpass the competition.

• Tracking your competitors will be an advantage to your social media strategy. You will get a heads-up by knowing their weaknesses and learning from their mistakes.
• Which kind of content is getting the most attention, and which sort of content has put you behind others? 
• Is there anything that the others are doing but you are not? 
• You might fall behind your competitors and not even know unless you consistently track your social media competitors.

Tracking your social media competitors also will facilitate your exposure to the gaps in your competitors’ strategies for relevant ad targeting. All that you simply are providing, but your competitors don’t seem to be, is a plus that you must leverage.

How To Track Competitors Online: The Simplest Guide

For tracking your competitors online, you need to perform a competitive analysis. A competitive analysis is a practice to find out about your competition’s weaknesses, strengths and compare them to your own.

It is a process for creating a benchmark of your own results against the heavy-hitters in your industry, so you can find opportunities for growth and strategies to get on the top.

Determine Who Your Competitors Are:

Unlike offline business competition, the deciding factors as to who your competition is on social media are different. On social media, you have to go beyond brands specializing in your area of expertise. 

• Distinguish your relevant competitive keywords in your niche.
• Look which business is ranking for those keywords in Google Analytics.
• Choose 5-10 relevant keywords, and search them on Google. You can see your top online competitions.
• Check who appears in social searches for those keywords.
• Find out what similar brands your audience follows.
• Choose up to 5 competitors you want to target.

Gather Intel On Your Competitors:

Not that you have found out your top competitors, but you need to intel about their activities on social media. Check all the social media handles of the competitors that you have picked. You can find their social media handles on their websites. Here are a few things you need to look about:

• What social media platforms are they on?
• How many followers do they have, and how fast is it growing?
• Who are the top followers?
• How frequently do they post?
• What are the engagement rates??
• What are the most used hashtags?
• How many hashtags do they use?

You can find out all this info easily by scrolling through their feeds. 

Perform A SWOT Analysis:

Now that you have collected the intel, it is time to analyze it and measure your place compared to the competition. You also have to look for potential ways to improve your strategy and potential threats along the way.

A SWOT analysis is a great way to analyze this crucial data. In a SWOT analysis, you take a close look at your business and the competition to compare:

• S – Strengths
• W – Weaknesses
• O – Opportunities
• T – Threats

These are the most vital factors when it comes to long-term success.

Analyze Their Website And Blog:

The website is an essential part of your social media strategy. You can find crucial information through competitive website spying. Their blogs will provide insight into their content, style, tone, etc.

Utilizing Ad Spy Tools:

Advertisements and ad campaigns are vital parts of any social media marketing strategy. You have to get the best ads to beat your competitors. You can utilize tools such as PowerAdSpy to find the best and trendy ads working in your industry. PowerAdSpy is the most powerful social media ads analytics tool, which will enhance the performance of social media ad campaigns.

• PowerAdSpy gets you the best ads working in your niche for higher conversions.
• You can find the best image and video ads to use in your ad campaigns.
• You can save the best ad concepts in a personalized ads inventory and use them in future ad campaigns.

These were just a few of what PowerAdSpy offers. Many amazing features are waiting to be explored. So what are you waiting for? Get your free trial now!

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Wrapping Words:

It is particularly valuable to track competitors for marketing and promotional strategies. Find where your competition is lacking and develop your marketing in those areas. It will give you a competitive advantage against the top competitors. You can start your competitive analysis by monitoring the social media handles of the top competitors. 

Get all the crucial data and plan the best-ever strategy for your marketing campaigns. Social media platforms are ever-changing and your strategies need to change with them too. It might be overwhelming, but with PowerAdSpy, you will get the best ads and get your campaigns to the next level. I hope it was helpful. Drop your thoughts in the comments below!