The activity of your competitors affects their success and by extension, yours. We have already talked about how you can investigate if your competitors are advertising on social networks, now it’s time to get into competitor analysis tools that allow us to analyze our competitors in social media and benchmark their activities and results.
In general, what we want to achieve with this type of analysis is:
- Identify among our competitors which are stand out contenders in the social sphere
- Be clear on where they concentrate their activity: on what channels, how often do they publish, etc.)
- Evaluate how competitors are using these channels and if their efforts are paying off (if they have engagement among users, when do they publish, what type of content do they publish, etc.)
- Compare our results in social media with the competition
- Establish if there are concrete threats or gaps in our social strategy
Here we detail a few of our favourite tools to perform this type of social media analysis and competitor benchmarking on social networks:
Agorapulse: One of the more robust social media analysis tools (publishing, reporting, monitoring and team collaboration), this one is a favourite. It has a reasonable pricing model and covers all the basic networks: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube. You can test their conversation and competitor monitoring tool for social media at no cost. Without a doubt, Agorapulse is a great option to follow the conversation in social media and gather a lot of useful insights.
SproutSocial: This is another tool that we have used a great deal when following weekly activity of client competitors. It’s easy to use and has a number of useful graphic help you analyze your competition. If you are going to want to follow many competitors, it will cost you a little more, since the basic plans cover between 5-10 profiles. SproutSocial covers Pinterest and gives us data on story viewing, which we do not see on all platforms. Keywords and hashtags can also be tracked which is helpful.
Sociality.io: This tool offers you data such as followers and growth, number and type of posts, interactions and engagement, details about when publish, and performance metrics. Like almost all the tools on the list, it allows you to publish as well. It has a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out and see if Sociality fits your needs. It includes channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter, nothing unusual there.
Spriklr: With Spriklr you will have to ask for a demo to test run this platform that focuses on benchmarking. Like most tools, it doesn’t currently offer Tik Tok analytics, but it does offer metrics on Quora, VK, and Sina Weibo.
Socialbakers: this tool is one of the classics and has been in the field of benchmarking competitors in the context of followers and engagement for a very long time. Socialbakers has a powerful database of business social profiles and is a good tool if you need a quick overview of a certain industry or competitors in social media. It’s great for a bird’s eye view of your competition, or if you need to compare yourself monthly to your competitors—that is especially useful for big brands. It has a couple of tools that are to explore, but if you want to try it out more, you’ll have to do a trial. Careful: some of the payment plans have a limited look-back window, so you won’t get data beyond a couple of months in the past without paying more.
Hootsuite: Generally, when we think of Hootsuite, we think social media content publishing and following our own brand’s mentions. It should be noted that Hootsuite not only offers the tracking for our own brand, but it also allows us to follow keywords or hashtag that are relevant. With Hootsuite, we can follow the conversation in real-time, and for this reason most brands find it more useful for Twitter than for other social media platforms. We are a little surprised that Hootsuite does not update its interface. The layout has an older look to it and is not the most user-friendly.
Brandwatch: A classic of competitor benchmarks, social listening, and brand mention tracking, Brandwatch is little pricier than some tools, but it is worth it for the depth of analysis and insights on offer. Brandwatch places a lot of emphasis on real-time conversations, trend and crisis detection, but it also serves for competitor analysis in the context of conversations. If you want to try it, you will have to ask for a demo.
Phlanx: Although not a traditional competitor analysis tool for social, Phlanx is interesting. Mainly, it’s for analysing influencers, but we included it because it has an engagement tracker for Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Tik Tok, and Twitch. Finally, we see a couple of new channels! If you want to explore Phlanx, you can sign up with a 30-day free trial period.
RivalIQ: This tool focuses exclusively on competitor analysis in social media, and it is very easy to use. It is perfect for getting an idea of what is going on in your sector or with your direct competitors in social. They also offer many benchmarks by sector that are insightful. The style of screens and reports is somewhat bland, but this tool is a very solid option. It’s not cheap, but you can enjoy a trial period and see if RivalIQ meets your needs without breaking the bank (you’ll be able to extract loads of data). Another option is to subscribe for one month only if you intend to carry out a social media audit or a competitor benchmark. In general, an intense exploration of your competitors does not need to be performed every month. And yes, RivalIQ covers Tik Tok!
These are just a few of the tools on offer if you need to analyze your competition in social media. If you need help tracking your competitors’ social activity, contact All Around.
More posts about: Increase brand awareness
Client Success Manager
Alexis is our Client Success Manager at All Around. She is a Digital Marketing Specialist and Manager with 15+ years of experience in international markets. She is a dedicated client partner, ready to take businesses to the next level, with vast expertise in digital strategy, operations, project management, reporting, budgeting and negotiation.
