In my last post, I had you do a little “stalking” of your top competitors to see what kinds of free and paid offers they were making to their audiences. I hope you got some good information from that exercise.
Today, we’re going to keep that stalking vibe going by doing some social media competitor research.
Social Media Competitor Research: The Process
Nothing fancy, really. Just some good old-fashioned detective work (aka social media competitive analysis). Here’s how you go about this…
- Go to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and search for your competitors. (Or, alternatively, you can go to their websites, where they’ll likely have all their social buttons right there, probably either in the header or the footer.)
- Read their profiles/About pages to see how they’re positioning themselves and what they’re saying to their audiences.
- Look at what kind of content they post on their social pages. How much of their content is simply “I was at so-and-so school yesterday working with their teachers”? How much of it is actual informational content for their audience? How much of it is motivational content, like quotations? How much is just “fun” stuff?
- How often do they include a “call to action,” asking the reader to go to their website to learn more about something or even ask them directly to buy something? Do they have any ads on any of these platforms? If so, click on the ads and see what you find on their landing pages.
- Also, look to see how much engagement they’re getting on their posts on the different platforms. If they’re getting good engagement, see if you can figure out how they’re getting people to respond. Are they asking engaging questions? Running a survey? Running a contest or giveaway of some type?
Add a column for “Social Media Competitor Research” to your database and capture any key ideas from your notes there.
That’s it for this step.
As I’ve said many times, social media isn’t a very good primary marketing channel, but it can be an excellent secondary marketing channel if it’s used intelligently and effectively to drive traffic to the person’s other (primary) marketing assets.
So, do this exercise and see what tips and tricks you pick up from your top competitors.
In my next post, we’ll see what you can learn about your competitors by listening to what other people are saying about them.
Till then…
To Your Success,
Willy
P.S.–You’ll likely find a few of your competitors who are only on one social media platform. You might even find someone who’s not on any of them. After all, just because it seems like the whole world is on social media 24/7, that doesn’t mean you should use it for your business unless it makes sense to do so.
More likely, though, you’ll find that many of your competitors are on four or five different platforms. And I want to take this opportunity to give you a little advice:
Just because they’re doing it doesn’t mean you should.
If you’re early in the growth of your consulting business, or even if you’ve been doing it for a long time but are feeling overwhelmed, it’s OK to just pick a single platform for your social media efforts.
Because the truth is, it’s more effective to post often and consistently on one platform than to post infrequently and inconsistently on four.
Now, if you have a social media person or team and they can do all your posting for you, great. Go for the broad approach. But if you’re a solopreneur, don’t feel like you have to do this.
OK…climbing off my soapbox now…
