Competitive analysis for social media.

An in-depth social media competitor analysis can offer invaluable insights to help you stay ahead of your competitors online. It can show you what works and what doesn’t, reveal how you measure up against the competition, and uncover what you need to do to elevate your social media marketing.

Discover your competitors’ social strategies, analyse their content and performance, and learn lessons to improve your own brand presence. Use this guide as a starting point, to learn how to conduct a competitive analysis for social media and explore how Adobe Express can help you smash your marketing goals.

What is a social media competitive analysis?

A social media competitive analysis is the process of gathering and assessing data relating to competitors’ social media platforms. It’s a deep dive into their social media presence – and is the best way to compare your posts and social strategy with their tactics.

The metrics you could evaluate include:

• Follower growth
• Engagement levels
• Platforms used
• Content types
• Post frequency.

This data can benchmark your statistics against competitors to see how you stack up. While zooming in on the things you don’t do as well can be uncomfortable, it can be essential to success and growth.

Competitor social media analysis can be crucial for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of other similar companies and comparing them with yours. These comparisons can help you easily identify gaps in your own social media performance and highlight opportunities to test out new social media marketing ideas for your brand.

Why is competitor analysis important in social media?

Regular check-ins regarding performance and processes are essential for any successful business to ensure you’re staying on the pulse of trends and efficiencies – and doing so with your social media presence is no different.

There are many reasons to analyse your competitors on social media, including:

• Benchmarking where your business ranks against key rivals for metrics such as followers, share of voice and engagement.
• Learning more about your target audience and how they respond to different things.
• Discovering the communication preferences of your audience according to the platform.
• Working out the best time to post content for your target consumers.
• Getting fresh ideas for posts and videos to upgrade and refresh your content plan.
• Finding a unique selling point (USP) that will make your brand stand out from the crowd in your industry.

How to do a social media competitor analysis.

If this is the first time you’ve done a social media competitor analysis, it can be tricky to know where to start. What you look at may be specific to your business, industry and areas of interest, but this step-by-step guide can help guide you through the process.

1. Work out your top competitors on social media.

You may have a decent idea of who your competitors are – but the nature of social media means audiences can reach far and wide. Google, alongside any keyword or social tracking tools you have available to you, will be your friends.

Focus on your direct competitors and cross reference your brand’s most relevant keywords with competitors also appearing for these terms. You can also use the platforms themselves to see who they recommend as similar to you.

2. Track competitors on different platforms.

Analyse how your sourced competitors use their different platforms – whether that’s X, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. You can use social media analytics tools to help automate the process or carry out manual in-depth research focusing on your chosen metrics. Add all the data you find to your social media competitive analysis template.

3. Review their activity.

Consider tracking the following:

• How active they are – how often they post and what time of day.
• The types of content they publish – is it mainly videos, polls, day-in-the-life content or Stories?
• Social personas – look at things like follower demographics, interests, behaviours and content performance to create and compare social personas of different brands.

4. Identify strengths and weaknesses against your own.

Once you’re satisfied that you’ve gathered all the information you need, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of all that data. You can use a SWOT analysis to identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses against your own. This is the perfect chance to look for opportunities to improve your current social media strategy.

5. Present your findings to senior stakeholders.

Clear findings are key to understanding the data and implementing effective change. So, why not turn your social media competitor analysis into a structured presentation? Then, you can present your findings to senior stakeholders and implement the approved changes.

6. Continue to monitor your competitors’ social activity.

Keeping a live document to revisit your competitive analysis for social media will help you stay on the pulse of competitor movements, compare them with your own and remain ahead of the curve. Add this to your quarterly or annual review admin using social media monitoring tools. Track trends, timings and more to keep things fresh.

Free social media competitor analysis ideas.

How Adobe Express can help with your social media competitor analysis.

Adobe Express can help businesses and marketers create their own social media competitor analysis in several ways:

Choose a competitor analysis template for social media.

Choose an analysis template from our extensive collection to simplify the job. A template is useful if it’s your first social media competitor analysis and you’re unsure where to start.

Add your branding.

It’s time to add your branding to the document, from your logo to your brand font and colour palette – it’s all possible with the Adobe Express one-click apply brand tool.

Transform your findings into a presentation.

Ready to present your findings to your wider team and senior stakeholders? It’s super easy to choose a template and design a unique presentation in minutes. Customise with a wealth of design assets.

Follow up with a social media strategy.

Once you’ve collated your data, presented your findings and discussed the next steps, you’re all set to enhance your social media strategy. Apply your insights and create a social media marketing plan in just a few clicks with the help of Adobe Express.

Use the analysis to inform your social content schedule.

Sorted your plan and ready to apply it to your content schedule? We can help you save bags of time and maximise your efforts with the Adobe Express Social Media Content Scheduler. Set your timings, preview your posts and schedule ahead for improved efficiency.

Try Adobe Express for free now

Good to know.

How to do a competitor analysis for Instagram?

You would do a social media competitor analysis for Instagram in a similar way to any other platform. Typical steps include:

• Identifying your competitors.
• Tracking their activity across Instagram.
• Comparing their activity to your own.
• Analysing their strengths and weaknesses in relation to yours.
• Presenting your findings.
• Setting up a way to regularly monitor competitor activity.

How competitive is the social media industry?

While it may vary depending on your business, industry and target audience, the social media industry can be incredibly competitive. However, staying on top of trends and regularly analysing your activity can help your business thrive online.

Is Adobe Express free?

Yes, our free plan offers many core features including thousands of templates, photo editing and effects, animation, and 5 GB of storage. See our pricing page for details and to compare plans.