In the last two decades, social media has been seen as a medium to make friends and engage with people. Today, it serves as a 21st-century marketing avenue. Ask why? With over 4.6 billion users globally, social media provides marketers with the opportunity to widen their audience and reach potential customers without having to invest a fortune.
However, without competition analysis, you are essentially flying blind. As the adage goes, “It’s important to learn from others’ mistakes.” In the marketing world, this also means that you must take note of the failures and achievements of your competitors. That’s where keeping an eye on your competition comes in.
Knowing how your competitors perform on social media can help you improve your brand’s positioning by highlighting its advantages and minimizing its weaknesses.
Now let’s do it the smart way. Say “no” to tedious and time-consuming manual work and “yes” to intelligent tools and technologies. In this blog, we’ll take you through some of the best social media competition analysis tools that you can use in 2023.
What Are Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools?
Competitor analysis is an investigation technique that reveals your competitors’ identities as well as their online product positioning and promotion strategies. This includes evaluating your competitors’ blogs, social media, websites, and SEO strategies, comparing stats, listening to content, stacking businesses’ channels against one another, and checking updates.
For instance, let’s take a look at some of the top names in the beauty industry, such as Sephora, Mac, NYX, Urban Decay, etc. If you are in the beauty industry, then you can perform analysis to learn their number of followers, the demographics of their target market, including their location and industry, as well as several other details.
Does this sound like something only upscale and expensive businesses would do?
Fortunately, No. Not any longer.
Every successful social media profile is an outcome of careful preparation, extensive research, and excellent content. In a global survey, 90% of social media marketers who participated said they used social media to market their businesses. So, take a look beneath the surface and explore what your competitors are doing to accomplish success.
How we analyze and select these tools:
​​We have meticulously curated this list of premier social media competitor analysis tools through detailed research and hands-on testing. We considered various factors such as user satisfaction, G2 ratings and reviews, pricing structure, and scalability. We also actively analyzed the abilities of these tools in automation, developing content, visualization, analytics, and collaborative workflows. We have assembled this list to provide marketers with essential insights, enabling them to make well-informed decisions on the best tools to expand their businesses.
1. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a robust social media planning platform with great social listening and reporting features that top companies like Ogilvy, Confluent Health, and West Virginia University use. Its efficient reporting tool enables a speedy compilation of reports on what’s working and provides information on the platforms and time intervals that perform well.
When to use this tool?
Agorapulse is best used for in-depth reporting on your competitor’s social media activity. It is a solid choice for all industries, but small businesses will find it especially helpful due to its pricing structure and user-friendly layout.
Key features – Why should you consider Agorapulse?
- You can quickly build reports on what’s working thanks to Agorapulse’s reporting and listening features
- Increase engagement using Agorapulse, as it provides the best content or the most appropriate hashtags
- Agorapulse lets you alter and color-code information for easier reading
- Agorapulse’s Power Reports add-on allows the scheduling of customized reports
- With Agorapulse’s scheduling and inbox features, it is simpler to upload and handle routine messages
- Agorapulse’s monitoring tool lets you observe what consumers are saying about your brand and your competitors
Pricing: Agorapulse provides a free 30-day trial. Following that, it offers four different plans: standard ($49/month), professional ($79/month), advanced ($119/month), and custom.
Pros
- Agorapulse has a great customer service team that is always on their toes when it comes to solving customer problems
- Has one of the best scheduling platforms
- Quickly generate reports for clients
- Easy to use and navigate
- Agorapulse has an all-in-one inbox management feature that organizes your mails
Sharne M
Agorapulse’s customer service is the first thing that jumps to mind. They offer great help in a quick time. I also like the scheduling feature and stats reporting. User friendly! I love that it offers an all-in-one suction for managing multiple accounts. It is very easy to control a brand’s presence on social media.
Cons
- Minor issues and delay with reporting on the latest statistics
- API integrations aren’t perfect. For example, Pinterest and TikTok integrations are a bit challenging
Caroline H
With all the different features, it can be overwhelming when you’re just starting to use it. Our team has been using the platform for about a year, and we still don’t use all of the features to their full potential. It would also be great if they could schedule a visit to Pinterest! That’s the only platform we need to use a different scheduling platform for (Tailwind), but it’s honestly worth it.
2. Socialinsider
Socialinsider revolves around streamlining processes while saving time and impressing customers. It offers a single and intuitive dashboard for analytics and reporting. This tool is designed to be as simple as possible while still providing all the required social media metrics.
This competitor analysis tools for social media has highly intuitive dashboard that enables you to conduct a faster social media competitor analysis by classifying all of your competitor profiles into projects and providing a synopsis of side-by-side reports and statistics.
When to use this tool
Socialinsider is a straightforward tool for comparing brands’ social media performance. Solopreneurs, agencies, and major businesses can leverage this tool.
Key features – Why should you consider Socialinsider?
- Download social media competitor analysis reports in a matter of minutes
- Examine competitors’ branded hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, and draw insights from landing pages generated through dynamic QR codes to see how their target audience uses them
- Its multichannel measurement feature allows you to determine how much emphasis your competitors place on Meta or any other sponsored posts
- Know everything about your competitors’ social media campaigns with the campaign reporting tool. In addition, the auto-tagging feature enables you to add competitive context to all your social metrics.
Pricing: Socialinsider provides a 14-day free trial. The basic plans begin at US$ 83 per month per user.
Pros
- Socialinsider offers an in-depth analysis of the social media activity of competitors, including the most popular posts, engagement rates, and audience demographics
- Social Insider offers outstanding post-purchase support. Their live support chat aims to resolve each problem a customer encounters and does their best to respond to all of their questions
- Socialinsider offers the best blend of reporting, transparent dashboards, and benchmarking
- Socialinsider’s metrics collection and analysis capabilities are very strong. Additionally, its Data Studio API connectivity enables you to create client-specific reports
Adelina C
I was impressed with SocialInsider’s functionality and ease of use. The platform provided in-depth insights on my competitors’ social media activity, including their top-performing posts, engagement rates, and audience demographics.
One of the features I found particularly useful was the ability to track specific keywords and hashtags, which allowed me to stay up-to-date on industry trends and conversations. The platform’s user interface was also intuitive and user-friendly, making it easy for me to navigate and find the information I needed.
Another thing I liked about the platform was the ability to schedule reports to be delivered to my email on a regular basis. It saved me a lot of time and effort as I didn’t have to log in to the platform every time to check my competitors’ performance.
Cons
- Socialinsider is expensive
- You can’t view reports that are 6 months older
Jude Karlo G
It’s a bit pricey and takes a while to reset. I do not like that swapping profiles counts as a profile.
3. Rival IQ
Rival IQ as its name implies, enables you to develop more effective social media plans and campaigns by measuring them against those of your competitors. We’re rather certain that you won’t be able to get enough of this all-powerful tool.
When to use this tool?
Rival IQ is recommended for businesses and marketers that perform bulk social media post analysis, social reporting, and social media audits.
Key features – Why should you consider Rival IQ?
- Use its always-on benchmark function to provide a comparative context for all of your social media stats
- You can easily discover where your competitors are concentrating their efforts with the help of Rival IQ’s competitive social media analytics solution
- With its constant social post and profile monitoring, you’ll never be blindsided by a competition
- This tool uses machine learning to determine whether a competitor has promoted a Meta post so you can take swift action or imitate a winning tactic
- Use its Twitter Mentions function to access your Twitter handle mentions for deeper engagement and wiser retweets
- Utilize its popular topic tool to identify the words and subjects that encourage social engagement
Pricing: Rival IQ has three pricing levels, with monthly prices starting at $239, $329, and $519.
Pros
- A go-to tool to perform a social media audit and/or competitive audit
- Straightforward UX
- With Rival IQ’s customized landscapes and company filters, you can compare your social performance against that of the entire industry
- Easy monitoring top performing posts
Barika P
Rival IQ is my GO TO tool whenever I need to perform a social media audit and/or competitive audit. I love how easy it is to set up, how responsive their customer service team is (the chat function is simply tops), and I really value the insights the tool provides around a brands’ social performance. Additionally, Rival IQ has TikTok stats, which very few tools have at the moment, so that has really helped as more brands are on the platform and need reporting around content performance.
Cons
- TikTok analytics can be challenging
- Fewer customization options
Grace T
The aesthetic appeal and the lack of ability to customize it much makes me less excited to use the built in tables and graphs that you can just export. Even though that would be a lot more convenient, I prefer to design my own graphs so that they look as clean and beautiful as the rest of a presentation I may be giving to a client. So being able to customize those would be a great improvement.
4. Sprout Social
An all-in-one social media platform management solution Sprout Social enables you to analyze competitor social media performance from a variety of perspectives and data points. Without the time-consuming manual research and disorganized spreadsheets, you can check out what your competitors post with a click using this social media competitor analysis tool.
Competitive reports of this competitor analysis tools for social media can help you evaluate and improve your social media strategy across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
When to use this tool?
Sprout Social functions almost like a personal marketing department for you, conducting competitive research. Utilize the tool to set benchmarks, acquire competitor knowledge for brands and agencies, and gain useful insights on your social media campaigns.
Key features – Why should you consider Sprout Social?
- Using social listening, Sprou tSocial helps you identify trends
- Through its detailed and quickly generated reports, follow and examine discussions on pertinent subjects to gauge customer opinion of your competitors’ brands
- Say bye to time-consuming manual research and disorganized spreadsheets
- Up your analytics game with Sprout’s Premium Analytics function that provides deeper insights into your social platforms along with interactive charts and graphs that you can tailor to fit your objectives to identify the words and subjects that encourage social engagement
Pricing: You can use Sprout Social’s 30-day trial to learn the basics of the platform. Once it’s over, pick one of the three pricing tiers, starting at $249 per user monthly.
Pros
- The entire platform has excellent UX and has been very carefully designed
- Manage your social media material more easily using post tagging
- Post-scheduling with the content calendar is quite simple
- Reports and analytics provide a wide range of reports and great insights
- The social listening feature is just as effective as a dedicated social listening tool. This helps you save on cost
Harmony S
Honestly, the best thing about sprout is that I can easily navigate all my posts and get them approved by my client. Comparing my analytics with my competitors is the best because it allows me to adjust my strategy to help me do better than what they’re doing.
Cons
- If you have a large staff and everyone needs access to the tool, it can get quite expensive very quickly.
- Limited functionalities, such as fewer customization and integrations options
Melissa S
Sprout Social does not offer the same level of customization as other social media management tools. You may not be able to customize the look and feel of your posts or track metrics as specifically as you would like.
Hootsuite is an all-encompassing tool that enables you to monitor trending content and focus on competitors’ actions from a single social media dashboard. It’s an incredibly practical tool for monitoring what your competitors publish, produces, and promote on social media.
Best for:
Professionals, Small teams, Small-medium businesses, and Enterprises.
Key features – Why should you consider Hootsuite?
- Post Scheduling: Effortlessly plan and schedule multiple posts for publication at your chosen times with Hootsuite’s intuitive feature.
- Audience Engagement: Utilize Hootsuite’s integrated social inbox to monitor, interact, and employ AI chatbots for automated responses, enhancing customer engagement.
- Analytics:Hootsuite Analytics provides a thorough overview of all your social media activities in one location (Twitter analytics, Meta analytics, Pinterest analytics, etc.)
- Social Insights: As a social intelligence tool, it allows you to keep an eye on mentions and comments made about your business on social media to avert any potential PR-related concerns
- AI-Enhanced Content:Simplify social media caption creation and enhance content generation efficiency with Hootsuite’s AI writing tool.
Pricing:
Hootsuite offers five pricing tiers after a 30-day trial, ranging from $99/month to $249/month, catering to different social account and user needs.
Pros
- Hootsuite analytics also allows competitor analysis, which proved to be invaluable for 18.18% of users to get insights about their position in the market.
- Users highly appreciate Hootsuite’s capability to schedule a diverse range of content, encompassing images, videos, GIFs, and links.
- The content recycling feature of Hootsuite is highly liked among its users, allowing them to repurpose their successful and evergreen content. The recurring opinion was that resharing these posts gets good engagement to their pages.
- Hootsuite’s overall content management features received a thumbs up from 88.24% due to its ease of use.
- The ability to prioritize messages in Hootssuite’s inbox is appreciated by 15.15% of people as it makes it easier for them to address important interactions with ease.
Cons
- A frequently repeated complaint from users was that Hootsuite was only able to retrieve limited historical data, which restricted them from doing long-term analysis.
- 7.10% of users faced problems when they tried to plug in external data sources or integrations into Hootsuite.
- When a high volume of content is concerned, the bulk scheduling capabilities of Hootsuite have inconsistencies, which have led to a lot of hassle and failed publishings for 14.20% of users.
- The lack of content tagging and categorization leaves a major dent in the content management system of Hootsuite, which led to the majority of its users facing difficulties.
- When it came to organizing the Hootsuite inbox, many users said that managing and categorizing a high volume of messages became very difficult for them.
6. Mention
Mention is your go-to competitive analysis tool that can help you stay ahead of the competition by monitoring your competitors’ web activity closely. It lets you control social media conversations for your brand and your competitors while listening to your audience online. If you want quick access to audience, brand, competitive, and marketing analytics, try Mention.
When to use this tool?
Maintain your brand reputation and respond to crises timely with Mention’s intuitive web functionalities.
Key features – Why should you consider Mention?
- Mention enables you to quickly track discussions about your brand, your competitors, or your product across more than a billion online sources
- The in-built Mention inbox offers you access to a stream of information that is continuously updated in the feed
- With its advanced keyword search, you can combine keywords and operators without worrying about the rules
- Use monitoring filters to further focus on sources, nations, and languages
- Track your competitors and compare your performance to theirs using Mention’s analytical capabilities
- Use data visualization to obtain comprehensive dashboards and quickly evaluate trends
Pricing: Mention offers four monthly plans starting at $41 a month and a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Mention is easy to set up and offers an intuitive easy to use interface
- Mention automates the posting process, which saves time and resources
- One of the best tools for monitoring. Mention allows you to create alerts and perform searches using various filters.
Karl P
In my organization, we use Mention frequently to detect critical mentions of our brand and essential information for our marketing. Its user interface is intuitive, making it easy to use and the dashboard relatively easy to use. Thanks to this tool, we find in record time good and bad reviews from our customers in the vastness of the web and social platforms; it also has good tools that bring good points to the management of social networks.
Cons
- Not very affordable
- The search option doesn’t always show accurate results
Enric O
The search option can be modified a lot and can be made much better. It is not something that can be compared to Google but it is not that bad either. Just a little improvement will enhance its functionality manifold.
7. Keyhole
Keyhole Competitor Analysis & Benchmarking fills in the gap by providing exclusive industry-specific insights that automate the social media report creation process, thereby saving you hours of manual work. Given that this tool simplifies reporting through its beautiful and easy-to-use dashboards, it is trusted by businesses and agencies globally.
When to use this tool?
Keyhole is the go-to social media competitor analytics tool with its insights on brand, campaign, hashtag, and influencer reporting. Keyhole is a perfect fit for large as well as small organizations as it offers several features like competition benchmarking, social listening, brand and campaign monitoring, influencer analytics, as well as social posting.
Key features – Why should you consider Keyhole?
- Its live dashboard makes it simple to share the most recent reports with your team quickly
- Keyhole’s social monitoring tools let you research the campaigns, influencers, and social media tactics of your competitors
- It updates every measure by establishing a connection with social platform APIs, doing away with the obligation of manual data entry
- Monitor real-time metrics to gauge your performance
- Use social listening to compile all posts that bring up your competitors’ campaigns
Pricing: Starting at $39 per month, Keyhole provides four subscription options.
Pros
- Provides an intuitive and easy-to-use social media management dashboard
- Provides in-depth analysis of each social profile
- Helps you discover content strategies
- With Keyhole, you can easily collaborate with your team
- Allows you to schedule your social media posts
Tasmy G
I like how easy it is to generate my analytics report for my social media channels. The hashtag tracker is particularly useful and the insights have proven to be of great use for our campaign.
Cons
- Limited report customization options
- Customer support can be better
- Expensive
Luke W
Enhanced features like hashtag tracking are available in paid versions. Their sign-up feature could be better.. It is really hard to get to the pricing section.
8. Emplifi
Using Emplifi’s competitive benchmarking system, you can quickly compare your performance against competitors, inspirational brands, and industry subcategories. Emplifi offers effective experience solutions across the customer journey by spotting important gaps in how customers interact with your company on social media.
This AI-powered social media competitor analytics tool is perfect for social media performance measurements that help you better your customer experience plan because of its robust analytics and reporting capabilities.
When to use this tool?
Emplifi is the only solution you need if you want a full-featured customer experience tool that drives your social marketing, social commerce, and customer service.
Key features – Why should you consider Emplifi?
- With the help of Emplifi’s competitive benchmarking tool, you can access billions of social media posts, influencer profiles, and postings from a range of platforms.
- Use Emplifi’s AI content grades to evaluate your competitor’s influencer performance and involvement. This can help you identify possible influencers for your high-impact campaigns
- You can quickly evaluate and assess how your brand is performing in comparison to competitors using historical data and value-driven criteria.
- Its cloud-based social marketing function offers enduring interactions at scale across your social media channels. This is performed by real-time intelligence delivery, performance optimization, and trend analysis.
- Its service cloud feature was designed to help your contact center be more effective and to offer automated customer care via chatbots
Pricing: It offers a free trial and personalized pricing.
Pros
- An easy-to-use interface that is adaptable and perfect for large organizations
- Provides accurate results on the analytics front
- Get real-time reports on your campaign’s performance
Andi B
Emplifi’s interface is easily adaptable, trainable and perfect for large and remote teams. As a social media manager for over 250 social media handles and 10os of community managers, this tool allows me to see a comprehensive view of all accounts. And did I mention their analytics are beautiful. Reporting is a breeze, and the data I get from ads enables me to make strategic decisions on placement and spend.
Cons
- Customer service can be better
- The mobile interface can be improved
Alan M
Customer service usually takes a long time.
Why Is Social Media Competitor Analysis Important?
Nothing is more fulfilling than helping your clients outperform their competitors on social media. This allows you to not only measure your social media success but also refine your marketing approach.
Here are 4 reasons why social media competitor analysis should be a part of your marketing strategy.
Knowing What Your Customers Want
Through social media competitive analysis, you can gain more insight into your ideal customers. You may increase your marketing outcomes by understanding your consumer archetypes since you will learn the following:
- The kind of social media platforms are your customers using
- How do your competitors get more eyeballs to their content and expand their audience size?
- What are the shortfalls of your competitor’s social media strategy?
- What content is trending?
You can combine these insights with insights derived through your audience analysis to better understand your customers. Here, sentiment analysis tools can help you since it gives you an idea of the overall sentiment behind customer interactions.
Develop Revenue-Generating Social Media Strategy
Your ability to develop a successful social media strategy, or to enhance an existing one depends on your ability to comprehend how and why your competitors are outperforming your business.
Social media competition analysis contributes to identifying new opportunities for brand expansion as well as risks that must be managed, ultimately increasing your company’s income.
For instance, regularly conducting a competitive analysis of Meta and other networks will help you stay ahead of the competition despite the aggressive advertising and arbitrary algorithm changes.
Produce Content That Is Trending and Relevant
Let’s face it. Your ideal customers would choose companies whose values and content align with theirs.
A social media competitor analysis will ensure that your ideal customers think of you first. This is because you’ll figure out what kinds and forms of content your customers prefer. Also, you may use the content gaps you see as an opportunity to produce brand-new content that benefits your audience.
Enhanced Brand Messaging and Positioning
Using social media competitive analysis, you will start using uncommon and underutilized social media features and methods once you learn what’s working for your competitors. Further, this allows you to develop a positioning strategy that will set your brand apart from the competitors and help you establish yourself as an authority in your field.
However, this is just an initial step to get you started. Next, let’s move on to some tips and tricks for conducting social media competitor analysis.
Tips for Conducting Social Media Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis for social media is simpler than it seems. How? Here are five methods for using competition analysis, regardless of whether you use Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or YouTube.
Analyze Your Actual Competitors
If you don’t know who your competitors are or which social media platforms they utilize, it’s impossible to assess them on social media. Keep an eye out for both your direct and indirect competitors or those who provide comparable services or products, or those that address the same issue as you. Next, list your top five rivals.
You can learn who your competitors are with Google’s keyword search or free SEO competitive research tool. Once you’ve determined who your competitors are, analyze them based on product, price, location, advertising, reputation management, people, and partnerships.
Focus on Metrics First
Decide what you want before analyzing and comparing the performances of competitors. Always begin with the end in mind, which should be your brand’s objectives.
Identify the responses to questions like:
- What are your social media marketing objectives?
- How do these align with your brand’s overarching objectives?
- How will you track key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge success?
- Who are the ideal customers you hope to attract?
Perform Thorough Analysis
Data analysis is crucial when assessing your social media competitors, but data interpretation is even more essential. If you don’t know how to apply the data gathered for business analytics, everything in your spreadsheet is just lines, numbers, and graphs.
Here, a SWOT analysis is useful. SWOT analysis gives you a thoughtful review of your brand’s opportunities, threats, strengths, and weaknesses to aid in business decision-making.
You can find new opportunities or a gap you can fill to advance your company by evaluating how the findings of your competitive analysis align with your business strategy.
The Bottom Line
It’s time to refine your marketing strategy to create a strong social presence.
Competitor analysis is a crucial component of a marketing strategy. The above tools will allow you to invest more time in analyzing and will help you focus your efforts on expanding your company and gaining an edge over your competitors.
After completing your social media competition analysis, you can accelerate your social media marketing strategy with SocialPIlot’s unparallel scheduling capabilities.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are social media competitor analysis tools?
Social media competitor analysis tools study your competitors on social media to identify their advantages and disadvantages and compare them with your own.
Mention the top 9 social media competitor analysis tools?
Some of the best social media competitor analysis tools include:
- Agorapulse
- SocialInsider
- Google Analytics
- RivalIQ
- Sprout Social
- Hootsuite
- Keyhole
- Mention
- Emplifi
How do you benefit from social media competitor analysis tools?
By performing competitive analysis through social media competitor analysis tools, you can:
- Track your brand's progress
- Swiftly take note of the new competition
- Check the effectiveness of your social media campaign
- Discover different opportunities for business growth
- Keep your marketing strategy updated
What are some some quick tips to conduct competitive analysis using social media competitor analysis tools?
Here are some quick tips for you to perform competitive analysis using social media competitor analysis tools:
- Discover your competitors using keyword research, google search, etc.
- Gather relevant data
- Use the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) technique
- Include updated and recent data while monitoring your competitor’s social media channels
Are social media competitor analysis tools expensive?
Social media competitor analysis tools come in a variety of price points. Additionally, there are tools that can be used for free but have limited functionality.
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