Let’s make a few assumptions: You want to improve your social media marketing and you haven’t really looked into what your competitors are doing with their social media. Good news: There are tools to help you figure out what’s working or not working for you and your competitors. They will even show you why. Here are some resources you can use for free.
Fanpage Karma
Fanpage Karma will analyze accounts across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest - basically the major players. With 90 days for free, you can receive reports and alerts along with the analyses. This tool allows you to easily do a side-by-side comparison including engagement, growth, top posts, etc.
LikeAlyzer
LikeAlyzer is specifically for your Facebook page and used mostly for competitive research. Two unique features include its own ranking system and averages within the industry or similar brands and metrics like the PTAT (People Talking About This) or engagement.
Klear
In addition to being an analytics dashboard, Klear serves best as an influence-identifier. You can search for these influencers by a combination of skill and location. A cool feature is that you can see activity and response levels with the people who interact the most with the social media account. This is also a great option for building outreach lists.
Takeaways
There are many tools available to stay in the know with what your competitors are doing. Remember when you saw that social media post that made you look twice? Think about how you could emulate the same experience for your followers. How can you engage them? How did your strongest competitor create its content and reach out? Social media is public and free - take advantage of the opportunities!