Social Media Competitor Analysis: Study the IG Landscape

Instagram is a great place to foster a sense of community. You reconnect with the people you know and meet new people, too. However, if you want to grow a following, you have to care about your competitors. Engaging in some social media competitor analysis is a good idea. 

If you don’t know what that is, it may sound more complicated than it is. Learning to take your page to the next level is a great skill. We plan to explain all the technical details in this article. Ultimately, you should have the tools to be intentional about your Instagram page.

Learning from your competitors is a great skill to master. 

Read this article for tips on analyzing your competitors on Instagram and applying the information!

What Is a Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis studies other content creators in your field to improve your content creation strategy. It’s about capitalizing on strategies that work for people with similar goals. You take proven methods and apply what you can to your brand.

It’s about more than just copying people who are more successful than you. You still have to use the information you have for your unique brand. You will always need to tweak the findings because no two brands are identical.

It’s also about learning from other brands’ mistakes. Find out why a particular campaign failed, and use the lesson to ensure you don’t make the same mistake. 

Some brands may bounce back from a public failure with a little reputation management. Your brand might be in the fetal stages and cannot afford public scrutiny. 

Being aware of your competition is a no-brainer. Knowing what to do with the information will set your friend apart. Keep reading for our best tips on the topic.

How To Do a Competitor Analysis: Social Media Accounts in Your Field

You might be a small creator, which is not within budget. You will be happy to know you don’t have to spend the big box to revamp your page. Bookmark this page because this is how to do a competitor analysis on social media. We will give you four tips that some brands pay professionals for.

1. Identifying Key Competitors

Competitor social media analysis will only work if you choose the right competitors. You can’t compare yourself to just any popular brand on Instagram. Here are three tips for choosing the right social media accounts to study:

1. Consider brands that sell the same product as you. Perhaps they don’t directly sell but create content. Find those pages that create similar content to yours.
2. Find brands that are active on social media. You will need material to study. If the brand doesn’t post often, you won’t gather enough data about them. Some brands can maintain sales without posting often. Those aren’t the brands we focus on right now.
3. Find brands that may not sell the same product or create the same content as you. However, these brands have access to your ideal target audience. The same type of person may enjoy your content and their content. You can still learn from how they can intoxicate these users.

There is no ideal number of creators to pinpoint. Just ensure you can manage the data you collect on each creator. 

Depending on your brand, these brands should be local. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if your target audience is halfway worldwide. You can make this decision for your brand.

2. Tracking Their Social Media Activity

Tracking social media performance across multiple platforms would be tedious. Fortunately, we will just focus on Instagram. Decide on the metrics that you want to improve for your page. Do you want more likes on your posts? Do you want more shares? You may want more views on your Instagram Reels. 

Make a note of the numbers that you want to improve. Now, track the numbers within a definite period. How many likes do they get within a day or a week? Do they get a lot of engagement at first until it becomes a trickle? Or does it gradually grow over time?

You can make simple notes to document this activity. It doesn’t have to be very complicated. 

3. Analyzing Their Content

What does your competitor post on social media? Do they focus on posts that advertise products? Do they include informational photos on occasion? Maybe they like to make their followers laugh.

Do they hop on trending topics? Do they have a strong political stance that they vocalize on occasion? What is the reception like when discussing their political or social views?

They don’t make these posts haphazardly. Some brands deliberately balance sponsored content with aspirational content. If they keep their followers engaged, they can encourage future sales.

How often do they post on their Instagram Stories? Posting Instagram Reels there could help increase the views. Make a note of which type of content gets the most engagement. It may be the type of content that you could incorporate as well.

4. Assessing Their Engagement Metrics

You need to know what to do with these numbers and posts. There is likely a strong correlation between the numbers and how they post content. It is rarely as simple as the post just being good.

Posting on their Stories may increase the number of views. People may share their content more often because posts have very good calls to action in their captions. 

The creator could also be experiencing an influx of engagement from a recent collaboration. Or, they have achieved a good mixture of niche, popular, and branded hashtags.

4 Points To Make Note Of

It’s always good to know your brand’s standing on the platform. What are your strengths? Do they outweigh your weaknesses? Do you see any possible threats on Instagram? Or do you see opportunities that you need to take?

After doing your research, make notes about your brand. Here are four headings you could use.:

1. Strengths

Reviewing social media content could show you that you are doing something right. Much of your marketing strategy is ahead of the game in the competitive landscape. Well, if you notice these things, capitalize on them.

Perhaps you have a very good post frequency compared to your direct competitors. Don’t start to relax the frequency. Instagram tends to favor creators who put more content on the platform.

If you see that your Instagram hashtags are effective, keep the same formula. It’s important to know what works for other brands. That way, you won’t get rid of what is effective for you.

2. Weaknesses

Be aware of the ways you can improve your brand. No online brand is perfect. Some of them go through ebbs and flows depending on the climate. If you know you are experiencing low engagement, pinpoint the issue immediately. You don’t want to stay in this longer than necessary.

Or, perhaps, your brand’s longstanding problems. It might seem daunting to do a complete overhaul. However, it may be what your brand needs. Don’t be afraid to start anew on Instagram.

3. Threats

There is always a newer and shinier thing on Instagram. It’s important to keep your head on a swivel on social media. 

Do you see new content creators coming up? Do they resemble your content? Be sure to remember their names. Keep an eye on them. There may not be a reason to worry just yet. However, you need to be aware of their presence.

The threat may not be another content creator. It could be a new rule that Instagram is implementing. When Instagram Reels first emerged, many creators had to pivot. Then, Instagram stopped prioritizing Reels, and creators started uploading carousel posts instead.

Switching from photo to video is not easy for everyone. The culture on Instagram could be a threat to some creators.

4. Opportunities

All this talk of competition made us forget that social media has many opportunities. These content creators could benefit your brand through Instagram collaboration.

You could make a joint post to leverage the following each of you has. Or, you could host an Instagram giveaway to boost engagement. What you think is competition could be an opportunity for growth.

3 Best Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools To Monitor Other Accounts

You already snoop on your competitors’ pages. Why not take it a step further? You want to learn what your competitors are up to. It is even better to learn from what they are up to.

Sometimes, hopping on their page is not enough. Making sense of the numbers, posts, and metrics is not always easy. You might need help from some of the best social media competitor analysis tools on the market. Here are three options you can consider.

1. Sprout Social

This tool can help you track your competitors across X, Instagram, and Facebook. It will help you compare your own post’s performance to theirs. 

This way, it takes away a lot of the extra work. Sprout Social will use multiple key metrics to give you a good overview of your competitors.

2. Kompyte

Get a complete picture when you use Kompyte. Keep track of what your competitors are doing. With this tool, no one can blindside you. 

You will have full knowledge and have the best position to make decisions. This dashboard makes everything easier to understand.

3. Phlanx

Find out how active those followers are. An Instagram page may have a large following, but do their followers support it with their engagement? Phlanx will let you know the truth.

You can have a competitive advantage in the market with the right tools. Measure the social performance of other Instagram accounts. Then, create the best possible brand you can.

Frequently Asked Questions About Competitor Analysis

Content creators everywhere want to learn more about the competitor analysis social media creators engage in. They have many questions on the topic. We’ve gathered some questions below. Hopefully, these answers will help.

FAQ: Why is social media competitor analysis important?

Social media competitor analysis is important because Instagram is a competitive platform. Creators compete with other creators, whether they know it or not. Analyzing fellow creators helps a brand stay afloat on Instagram. It improves marketing strategies and gives creators new ideas.

FAQ: What is a social media competitor analysis?

Social media competitor analysis studies how content creators succeed on a social media platform. It involves researching the ways creators gain engagement on their posts. Specific attention goes to the types of posts that creators upload. 

Ultimately, this information leads creators to make better decisions for their brands.

FAQ: What should you do with your social media competitor data?

Use your social media competitor data to fine-tune your social media strategy. Make even better decisions regarding what, when, and how you post on Instagram. Also, use it to determine what aspects of your plan should remain.

We Can Put Your Growth on the Fast Track 

Studying your competitors is a great way to stay afloat on Instagram. You can remain in the conversation in your particular niche. However, you still need to have realistic goals when you track competitors. 

Researching and implementing plans will take up a lot of your time. It takes real effort to make positive changes to your social media platform. It doesn’t leave a lot of time to enjoy making content. Because of this, you should seriously consider getting assistance from a social media growth website.

Using social listening tools can keep you in the conversation on Instagram. But what about growing your own platform? Get some help from Plix for that. We have advanced AI technology at our fingertips. We use it to support our in-house platform for Instagram influencers.

You should join our platform. We are passionate about helping content creators reach their full potential. Social media competitor analysis is important. But don’t forget about growing your following.

Do you want to find your target audience? Sign up with Plixi today!