How to Gain Competitive Insights on Social Media Free of Cost

We all know this for a fact ā competitor analysis is a big part of digital marketing.

You need it in order to understand your target market and make better marketing decisions.

Today, a lot of companies gain competitive insights with the help of organic or paid traffic analysis. But one area that more and more companies need to pay attention to in order to gain such insights is “social media.”

Social media can unveil so much about your rivals’ strategies and that too for free! Just think about it – When you analyze your competitor’s social media business accounts, you get to know what best practices you should put in place for content creation. You can also see what your audience likes to engage with. You can even learn more about the “voice and tone” your audience enjoys the most.

Now, we know you are here because you are looking for ways to be more competitive and successful, so it’s time we discuss how to gain competitive insights on social media (that too free of cost!). Let’s begin.

Why is Social Media Competitive Analysis Important?

Before we move on to our main subject, let's discuss how monitoring your competitors' social performance helps your business.

Social media competitive analysis is the process in which you evaluate your rivals on social media platforms in order to develop strategies and search opportunities for growth. When you carry out such an evaluation, you get to recognize the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors. This, in turn, helps you create a solid social strategy of your own.

Another benefit of carrying out a competitor analysis on social media is that you get deeper insights into who your target audience is. You gain vital information about them, such as:

• The social media platforms they hang out on.
• The kind of content they are searching for.
• How they consume content.
• The best time to engage with them on social media.
• What their pain points are.

Image Source: Planoly

How Do You Get Free Competitive Insights On Social Media?

All said and done, it's now time we discuss how to gain free competitive insights on social media. Let's begin.

1. Check Your Rivals' Most Engaging Content

Chances are, you may have tested your own social content many times. And you may have also found the process resource intensive as well as time-taking.

The thing is, the time you lose in testing your own content can translate into missed opportunities and a lot of hits and misses. Instead, here's what we recommend you do ā check your competitors' best performing content to get an idea of the best practices you need to follow at your end. And, you can use a tool for it to speed up the entire process.

We suggest that you use Semrush's Social Media Tracker to identify the most engaging content of your competitors. The free tool tracks a massive database of social media business accounts. It can easily offer data-driven insights on your competition on social media.

Take a look at the steps you can follow to use the tool to check your competitors' best performing content:

A. Suppose you have chosen Facebook to check the kinds of posts that perform well on it for a competitor of yours. Enter your competitor’s domain in the Social Media Tracker and then choose the “Facebook” tab.

B. You will be presented with the posts that have got the most engagement during the time period you entered. Analyze the posts to know what you need to do in order to create content that your audience will like. Checking out your competitors' most engaging content will also give you creative inspiration for compelling post ideas.

2. Know the Best Performing Hashtags of Your Competition

Hashtags form an extremely important part of social media strategy. As they help people find your social media accounts, you need to select them carefully.

After searching for relevant and trending hashtags, you should also take a look at the hashtags your competitors are using. Ofcourse, branded hashtags won't be of any use to you, but you can look at the industry-specific hashtags that are performing well for them.

You can use Semrush’s Social Media Tracker to know the best performing hashtags of your competitors as well. Open the tool, follow the steps we discussed in the first point, and then select the “Hashtags” tab. You will get the list of the best performing hashtags for your competitor on Facebook (change the social platform to see hashtags for other platforms as well).

Along with the list of the hashtags, you will also get to know how they have been used. Pretty cool, isn't it?

3. Look at Your Competition's Paid Campaigns

We agree that it's important to review the organic social strategies of your competitors. But, it's equally crucial to analyze their paid campaigns.

Why do this?

To check the promotions and copy they have put in place to try to hook their target audience. You even get inspiration for your own campaigns.

To see all your competitors' active ads for free, use Meta Ads Library. Type in the name of your competitor in the search bar and you will be presented with their live ads. When you do this, you can easily check the products, keywords, and promotions that your competitors are focused on at the moment.

Tip: If you are looking for a 100% white-labeled Analytics platform for marketing agencies, then you can use DashClicks' Analytics app. The app helps you monitor and report on all your marketing campaigns in a single place. The best-in-class marketing analytics platform also allows for integrations such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, CallRail, and Google Analytics.

4. Check Your Competitors' Posting Schedules

One surefire way in which you can boost engagement on your posts is to post at the correct time. Yes, we are talking about the time period your audience is most active in.

To know the ideal days to post or the best times in a day to post, you can check the posting schedules of your competition by visiting their profiles.

5. Check Your Competitors' Long-Term Strategy

To stay competitive in the long run, you need to understand the long-term goals of your competitors. And for this, you need to see on which platform they are trying to develop a visible presence. You also need to see the different channels they are targeting for growth.

Checking your competitors' long-term strategy simply gives you an idea about where you need to focus more resources for further improvement. So, ensure you take steps for the same.

DashClicks' White Label Social Media Services

Are you a digital marketing agency that's currently struggling with social media for your clients? If yes, then you can think about hiring DashClicks' white label social media services. The social media marketing experts at DashClicks know how to gain traction online. They are well-versed with the art of getting more shares and likes and hold experience in interacting with audiences on LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Conclusion

From analyzing your competitor's most engaging social media content to checking their paid social strategies, you can easily gain extremely useful insights into the social media activities of your rivals (free of cost!).

Now that you are well aware of how to gain competitive insights on social media, you can begin to carry out your own competitor analysis. When you do this, you will gain in-depth knowledge about your audience and create a winning social media marketing strategy in the end. Good luck!