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.
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.
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.
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?
Pricing: Agorapulse provides a free 30-day trial. Following that, it offers four different plans: standard ($49/month), professional ($79/month), advanced ($119/month), and custom.
Pros
Sharne M
Agorapulse’s customer service is the first thing that jumps to mind. They offer great help in a quick time. I also like the scheduling feature and stats reporting. User friendly! I love that it offers an all-in-one suction for managing multiple accounts. It is very easy to control a brand’s presence on social media.
Cons
Caroline H
With all the different features, it can be overwhelming when you’re just starting to use it. Our team has been using the platform for about a year, and we still don’t use all of the features to their full potential. It would also be great if they could schedule a visit to Pinterest! That’s the only platform we need to use a different scheduling platform for (Tailwind), but it’s honestly worth it.
Socialinsider revolves around streamlining processes while saving time and impressing customers. It offers a single and intuitive dashboard for analytics and reporting. This tool is designed to be as simple as possible while still providing all the required social media metrics.
This competitor analysis tools for social media has highly intuitive dashboard that enables you to conduct a faster social media competitor analysis by classifying all of your competitor profiles into projects and providing a synopsis of side-by-side reports and statistics.
Socialinsider is a straightforward tool for comparing brands’ social media performance. Solopreneurs, agencies, and major businesses can leverage this tool.
Key features – Why should you consider Socialinsider?
Pricing: Socialinsider provides a 14-day free trial. The basic plans begin at US$ 83 per month per user.
Pros
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
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.
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.
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?
Pricing: Rival IQ has three pricing levels, with monthly prices starting at $239, $329, and $519.
Pros
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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 – so be sure to explore all the features.
Hootsuite is ideal for small-to-medium-sized organizations, social media managers, and business owners that oversee their PR, marketing, and social media teams.
Key features – Why should you consider Hootsuite?
Pricing: Try Hootsuite for free for 30 days. Pricing for a single user begins at $23.14 per month.
Pros
Lauren O
Hootsuite is the home to all things social media marketing. When I go here, I can easily monitor multiple social media streams in one place, schedule posts in advance, and even view my analytics for each channel/platform based on my own set range of dates. It has made working in social media so much more coherent!
Cons
Rebecca D
Though Hootsuite is an incredible tool to use with great analytics, the pricing for teams is a bit expensive. Since Hootsuite is so easy to use, you’d ideally want to share it with your team and it is an expensive feat to do so which makes it hard for companies with different products and multiple marketing teams.
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.
Maintain your brand reputation and respond to crises timely with Mention’s intuitive web functionalities.
Key features – Why should you consider Mention?
Pricing: Mention offers four monthly plans starting at $41 a month and a 14-day free trial.
Pros
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
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.
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.
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?
Pricing: Starting at $39 per month, Keyhole provides four subscription options.
Pros
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
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.
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.
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?
Pricing: It offers a free trial and personalized pricing.
Pros
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
Alan M
Customer service usually takes a long time.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Social media competitor analysis tools study your competitors on social media to identify their advantages and disadvantages and compare them with your own.
Some of the best social media competitor analysis tools include:
By performing competitive analysis through social media competitor analysis tools, you can:
Here are some quick tips for you to perform competitive analysis using social media competitor analysis tools:
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.
About the Author
Maria Prakkat
Maria Prakkat - An avid reader, and writer, Maria is a Content Marketer at Beaconstac and an ardent knowledge-seeker of anything technology and marketing. She is a fervent supporter of environmental and eco-friendly activities. Maria also aims to write and spread the word on the latest innovation concerning technology and beyond.
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