Competitive Strategies Social Media Analytics How to perform a social media competitive analysis (+ free template)

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To thrive in a fast-paced digital world means keeping a close eye on the strategies that work for others in your industry. This competitive analysis is essential to understand the ever-evolving landscape of social media so you can build a robust marketing strategy.

Social media competitive analysis demands a proactive approach because social media strategies don't work in a vacuum. That's why you need to regularly analyze the tactics, successes and failures of your competitors. This will help surface the gaps in your strategies‌ and uncover opportunities to differentiate yourself from the competition.

These insights will help you better target your audience, optimize content and improve your overall online presence and share of voice. Ultimately, giving you that critical edge necessary for long-lasting success.

Continue reading to learn more about the advantages of social media competitive analysis, and how to perform it.

What is social media competitive analysis?

Social media competitive analysis is the process of evaluating your competitors' social media strategies, content and performance to gain insights into what works well in your industry.

This involves tracking several measures, such as follower growth, engagement rates, content types, posting frequency and customer sentiment.

What are the benefits of social media competitor analysis?

Competitive analysis on social media provides valuable insights to help you understand where your brand stands compared to your competitors, and how you can win against them.

Here's a deep-dive into some of the important benefits of social media competitor analysis.

Identify gaps and opportunities

Social media competitive analysis helps you spot differentiating factors that can give your brand a boost. For example, when analyzing your competitors' social media efforts, you may notice areas they're underperforming in or neglecting. For instance, a competitor might be active on Instagram but have little presence on platforms like TikTok or LinkedIn, leaving an untapped audience segment. By identifying these gaps, you can seize the opportunity to engage audiences on underutilized platforms or address topics your competitors aren't covering.

Plus, if a competitor lacks certain content formats, such as video tutorials or interactive polls, you can introduce those to cut through the saturation and meet audience needs they may be overlooking. This analysis also allows you to set measurable, data-driven goals based on industry benchmarks. By comparing your social media performance to your competitors, you can track your growth more realistically and find the best ways to use or improve your strategies.

Strengthen your content strategy

This content performance analysis will tell you which types of content attract your competitors' audiences. This includes video, infographics, user-generated content or blog posts. Knowing what drives interaction and conversation in your industry will help you strengthen your strategy.

For example, if your competitor's product demos or customer testimonials generate high levels of engagement, incorporate similar formats into your content strategy to capture audience attention. Similarly, analyzing how competitors structure their posts and use visuals or storytelling techniques, can guide what styles and messaging resonate best with your shared audience. You can also add special elements to make your brand stand out.

By constantly adjusting based on competitive insights, you can keep your content fresh, relevant and more likely to drive meaningful engagement.

Improve audience targeting

Closely examining how your competitors engage with their audience can give you insights into who their followers are, what content they like‌ and how they interact with it. This includes observing the types of posts that get the most engagement, the tone and style of communication and the platforms where their audience is most active.

For example, if a competitor's Instagram posts are about behind-the-scenes content and they get high engagement, you might infer that your shared target audience values authenticity and transparency. You can then adapt your content strategy to include similar elements, such as behind-the-scenes posts or more candid moments, which will better align with your audience's preferences.

Knowing what type of messaging resonates with them can also help you adjust your social media ads as well as improve engagement and conversion rates.

Improve your social customer care

Social media competitor analysis gives you a clear idea of how your competitors handle customer interactions. This can help you improve your social customer service. You can see how quickly competitors respond to customers, what and how they talk to customers, plus how they solve problems. This can help you avoid common mistakes and emulate good customer care strategies.

For example, if competitors are effectively resolving complaints publicly and turning negative situations into positive experiences, you can adopt similar tactics to improve customer satisfaction. Similarly, understanding the types of inquiries or issues customers often bring up can help you prepare responses and resources to address those needs quickly.

Similarly, if you notice your competitors are slow to respond to their audiences, ignore certain platforms or fail to provide helpful solutions, you also have an opportunity to differentiate your brand by offering ‌even more superior customer service in those areas.

Proactively engaging with your audience, fixing their problems quickly and showing that you value their feedback will significantly boost your brand's reputation. As the 2023 Sprout Social Index^TM showed, more than three-fourths (76%) of consumers prefer brands that put customer support first and respond quickly to their needs. Plus, 69% expect a response within the same day of reaching out.

Stay ahead of trends

Monitoring your competitors' social media activities helps you stay informed about emerging trends, enabling you to adapt quickly and maintain a competitive edge. Identify successful tactics and confidently integrate them into your approach by observing how your competitors experiment with new platforms, content formats or engagement strategies.

For example, if a competitor is gaining engagement and traction through interactive content like live videos or AR filters, you can adopt a similar approach to keep your audience engaged and position your brand as forward-thinking. In the same way, competitive analysis can help you spot shifts in consumer behavior, such as a growing preference for short-form videos or more personalized content. This can help you proactively adjust your strategy to meet evolving consumer expectations.

Staying up to date with trends keeps your brand relevant. It also makes you a leader in your industry, which helps your audience stay loyal and engaged.

How to perform a social media competitive analysis?

1. Identify your social media competitors
2. Gather platform-specific data
3. Analyze competitors' social media strategy
4. Step up your competitive analysis with social listening
5. Use your social media competitive analysis template and data

Before we start, download our social media competitive analysis template to maximize the use of this article and make it even easier to follow these steps. We'll be referencing this resource throughout to help you as you go.

1. Identify your social media competitors

Over half of respondents to a Gartner survey said choosing a well-known brand is less important than it was three years ago. Having a big, recognizable brand is no longer enough to stand out. But first, you need to know who you're trying to stand out from.

Look to brands in your industry who are active on social media. These are brands whom you can learn from and benchmark against.

Your direct competitors on social are brands that sell the same products as you. Let's use our fictional coffee company, Sprout Coffee, as an example: La Colombe, Peet's Coffee, Caribou and local coffee shops are all direct competitors.

But also take note of indirect competitors. These brands may not sell the same product, but fill a similar need and reach a similar audience. For Sprout Coffee, that would be grocery stores or local cafes selling food and coffee.

How to ID your social media competition

For lack of a better term: Google it! Searching for the keywords consumers would use to find your business is one of the best ways to uncover competitors. For Sprout Coffee, you might search "ground coffee" or "instant coffee."

Look for websites and brand social accounts that are in your specific industry. In our example, La Colombe and Folgers could be good options. And Peet's Coffee is a popular coffee company that's very active on social media.

To get more specific to your audience, perform some market research or competitive monitoring. With social media listening, you'll uncover conversations your audience is having about you, your industry and your competition-even when your handles aren't tagged.

2. Gather platform-specific data

This is where social media intelligence comes in. Tracking how your competitors are performing on social requires you to look at each network individually.

And this isn't a one-and-done process. To keep your finger on the pulse of your competition, and to set competitive benchmarks, refresh this data quarterly or biannually alongside your larger social media reports.

This process can take a lot of time if you're in a highly competitive industry. But the more thorough you are, the better results you'll get. This is where a social media analytics tool is basically required.

Sprout's competitive analysis tools provide you with a full, competitive picture. Combining the power of our Competitor Performance Reports and Listening tools, you'll be able to aggregate your competitors' social performance in one place for head-to-head comparisons and to help understand your share of voice.

Let's take a look at how to compare your brand to competitors' social media presence on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook-the networks Sprout's reports cover. Use these walkthroughs to guide what data you should pull for other networks too, like TikTok or LinkedIn.

Instagram competitive analysis

Start by doing a visual analysis of your competition's Instagram account. Ask yourself:

• Do they use a link in bio tool? How often are they updating it?
• How often are they active on stories? What does that content look like?
• Do they have a brand-specific hashtag?
• What do they say in their bio to set themselves apart?
• Are they using Instagram highlights?

Level up by using Sprout's Instagram Competitors Report to compare and benchmark your brand against competitors at a glance in key areas:

• Audience growth: Are your competitors growing their audience quicker than you?
• Media sent: How frequently are your competitors publishing? This can reveal whether you're posting enough to keep your audience engaged.

• Engagement: How many likes and comments does your competitor content get?
• Hashtags: What hashtags do your competitors use to gain more exposure?
• Top posts: Try to get an idea of why these posts are performing well. Are they product photos? Do they use certain colors? Find out what these posts have that your content doesn't and use the info to improve your images and videos.

Pro tip: Another tactic is to search for your competitors by hashtag on Instagram, like #Folgers, to see how many people are tagging your competitors in posts. If it's a lot, that's an indication the company is getting noticed and has an active following.

This will also give you a sense of what hashtags people use to refer to other brands and could spark ideas for hashtags to use for your brand.

Once you have all the information from your Instagram competitive analysis research, make sure you add that data to your spreadsheet, like so:

Facebook competitive analysis

Start by doing a manual review of your competitor's page, looking for the basics:

• Number of follows and page likes
• Any specific tabs or features they have. For example, some coffee roasters might have the shop section enabled. If we notice the same trend with other competitors, it's likely a good sign it's working for them.
• Look at their visuals and branding.
• Review their About section-how do they set their business and social presence apart?

A visual analysis is nice, but it only goes so deep. This is where Sprout's Facebook Competitor Report comes in to judge how well the competition's content performs over time.

Use this report to see how many messages your competitors send and receive, the types of content they post (text, images or videos), engagement and the amount of received messages. All of which answers questions about your competition's presence, and how you can stand out from it.

Include this in your spreadsheet, as well as any specific metrics that are important to your strategy.

X competitive analysis

Your X analysis will look similar to your Facebook analysis.

Here are a few areas to take note of:

• Number of followers.
• Look at the visuals and branding of their cover image and profile picture. How often do they shift these visuals?
• Review their bio-what are they highlighting? How have they set themselves apart?
• Do they adjust their X name (not their handle) for holidays like Halloween?

To see a more direct, automatic comparison between your X account and your competitors, level up with Sprout's X analytics. This compares your X profiles against each other, or a competitor. Select your X account, then enter a competitor for the other slot.

The report shows engagement, influence, followers gained/lost and mentions. You can change the time period, but it's best to stick to the last 30 days to keep the data relevant.

Once you've looked over all the competitive social media analysis from the X report, be sure to enter the data into your spreadsheet. Tracking this information can be extremely valuable down the line.

Level up your data

Our spreadsheet and Sprout's reports include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

But we recommend conducting a manual analysis of any additional platforms, like LinkedIn and TikTok, that are relevant to your brand and audience.

Also explore Sprout's new competitor widgets available in the Professional and Advanced plans. These enable you to customize reports and include your data alongside competitor data in one, singular report.

3. Analyze competitors

Half of competitive intelligence is quantitative. But to get a true 360 view of your competitors' social channels, you'll need qualitative data on how they present themselves on each network.

Start analyzing your competitors' social strategy by focusing on these three questions:

• How active is the competition?
• What types of content do they publish?
• What's their brand's social persona?

How active is the competition?

It's fairly easy to gauge how active brands are by answering these questions:

• When was the last time they posted?
• Are there long spans of time between each post?
• Do they respond to comments?
• How in-depth are their responses to comments?

Brands should post at least once every couple of days to be considered active. But if your competitors post several times a day more than you, you risk falling behind. For example, X allows for a lot more flexibility when it comes to how often to post-are your competitors significantly outpacing your daily posts?

Looking into all of this sheds light on their content strategy and customer care strategy-and where there are gaps.

What types of content do they post?

According to a Q1 2023 Sprout pulse survey, 53% cited changing content formats as a major challenge when planning and scheduling content.

Look at each competitor's last 10 posts and calculate what percentage of them are promotional, like prompting their audience to sign up, shop, etc.

This can also apply to the content formats they post. Are they posting a lot of video content? Mainly photos? Do they lean heavily on creators and user-generated content? How often do they jump on trending sounds or social media memes?

Use this information to see what content formats they're using to pull ahead to cut the guesswork out of your strategy.

What's their brand persona?

Some marketers like to look at their competitor's brand voice when doing a social media analysis. Voice describes the tone and POV a brand uses on social media. Do they post from the brand's perspective (we) or do they let individuals post on the brand's behalf?

For example, the tone of the Field Museum's social account…

…is very different from the American Museum of Natural History's tone. They each have their own online personalities.

Level up: As you wrap up, take a look at your competitors' websites, because content marketing and social media are closely related. A lot of companies repurpose their blogs for social media content. Take a look at your competition and see how many of them are maximizing their bevy of content.

Once you've gone through each competitor, say it with me: Put the data into your social media competitive analysis template.

4. Step up your social media competitive analysis with listening

If you're new to social media competitive analysis, starting with our template will help you get familiar with your competitors' social media performance and uncover patterns for you to tune into.

But if you're ready to take your competitive analysis a step further, tap into social listening. Social listening gives you a broader perspective of conversations related to your industry and competitors that are happening across social-even when you're not tagged. Combined with Sprout's network competitor reports, social listening expands your view and brings in conversations on YouTube, Reddit and the broader web.

It's an invaluable tool to uncover gaps that you can fill, conversations to jump into and more. For example, Grammarly uses Sprout's Social Listening tools to provide cross-team insights and analyze their competitive share of voice on social. Sprout helped them identify that their brand owned 71% of their competitive share of voice.

Sprout's built-in competitive analysis tools also make it easy to measure your competitors' social presence and compare it to yours.

With this template, you can identify the top competitors you want to track and include specific profiles, keywords, phrases and hashtags that you want Sprout to listen to.

To see what Sprout's Social Listening tools can do for your brand, request a demo to try it for yourself.

5. Use your social media competitive analysis template and data

Now that you've collected all of this data, you need to put it to use. Using your brand's social media analytics, you can compare your profiles to the competition. That's why we included a line for your company's data into our template.

Your final step is to interpret the data into something others will understand by going beyond simply sharing your filled-out template. With data storytelling, turn those raw numbers and insights into digestible and actionable takeaways.

Here are a few tips:

• Use visuals. Data visualizations, like the charts and graphs Sprout Reports provide, break down data into digestible visuals.
• Identify the most interesting points and findings. Most don't need (or want) to see every detail. What are the key findings from your social media competitive analysis?
• Predict questions or challenges. Get ahead by providing solutions and answers.
• Provide next steps. Doing a competitive analysis of social media is one thing. But defining the "what now?" is the whole reason for doing so. With what you've discovered, what are your next steps to improve your content and share of voice?

It's important to keep in mind that this social media competitive analysis isn't for you to copy exactly what everyone is doing. Instead, it'll guide you toward positioning your brand's unique value.

Top 3 social media competitive analysis tools

Here are top three social media competitor analysis tools that can help you strengthen your social strategy and realize your goals more effectively.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout gives you a comprehensive social media competitive analysis across different platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or X, and hundreds of data points. Whether you're curious about your competitors' content or want to benchmark your progress against theirs, Sprout automates your efforts and removes the need for manual research and cluttered spreadsheets.

Sprout's Premium Analytics gives you in-depth insights into your social performance through customizable, interactive charts and graphs tailored to your objectives. For example, its Share of Voice Report helps you measure your brand's presence relative to competitors by analyzing mentions and sentiment. Plus, the Benchmark Report enables you to compare your social media performance against industry standards and competitors' profiles.

Plus, explore public social conversations with the Advanced Listening tool to gauge consumer sentiment around your competitors' products and services. This helps you narrow down opportunities to differentiate your brand in the marketplace.

2. ​​Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo helps you analyze your top-performing content so you get insights on relevant topics for your brand and your competitors. You can use the tool to monitor content performance on social platforms and across other online channels.

The tool also helps identify content formats and engagement metrics, helping you understand what strategies work in your industry. You can also monitor backlinks and social shares, providing insights into how your competitors' content spreads. This data helps you refine your content distribution to stay competitive.

3. Social Blade

Social Blade provides detailed social media competitive analysis insights through statistics and growth trends for various social media accounts. It tracks metrics like follower counts, engagement rates‌ and content performance across networks such as YouTube, Instagram and X. Comparing these metrics with your competitors can help you understand their social media effectiveness and identify growth patterns.

Social Blade also offers historical data and projections so you can benchmark your performance and strategize accordingly. It also simplifies tracking competitor success and adjusting your social media strategies.

Dive into the data with a social media competitive analysis

In the end, it's all about comparing your brand's metrics and data to the competition. Then make any necessary adjustments to get a leg up.

You have the template. Now, make your social media competitive analysis less daunting and more automated by adding Sprout to your toolbox. Try Sprout free for 30 days to learn how our competitive analysis reports will help you uncover deeper insights to optimize your strategy.

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Annette Chacko

Annette Chacko is a Content Strategist at Sprout where she merges her expertise in technology with social to create content that helps businesses grow. She loves history and etymology. In her free time, you'll often find her at museums and art galleries, or chilling at home watching war movies.

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