How do you use competitor analysis to stay ahead of SMM trends?

I check out what type of messaging they use in their content, and what format of the content is usually consumed by their audience. Noting the hashtags and relevant keywords also matters in staying ahead of SMM trends for brands.

Identifying your competitors is key - consider having these conversations early across various business groups to ensure business alignment. If you have budget restraints; consider following your competitors using a secondary social media account - make notes and compare performance of topics/themes that they are publishing about. If you are able to fund this activity more actively, tools such as BuzzSumo and Brandwatch can help to uncover even more insights that can then be integrated into your future content strategy.

I use competitor analysis to stay ahead of the SMM trends, by ensuring that my social media strategy is always fresh and engaging. In the long run, this will help me attract more followers, generate more leads, and boost my sales.

Once you've identified who they are, scan the content across their channels and specifically note down the engagement stats on posts. These can be; likes, comments, shares, saves, whichever is publicly available to you on those channels. This helps to paint a picture on what the audience are interested in. Which in turn can help you determine what content and trends are worth noting.

Take a moment to consider the metrics that you would like to compare with your competitors. Is it engagement rate as a % of their overall community size compared to yours? Is it the topics/themes that they cover? Or is it something more simple like the number of organic posts that they are publishing each week? Have these conversations internally so that your research can aid additional areas of the business but remember that all isn't what it seems on social media! There is still no clear way to understand if a company is using paid amplification to skew results to align to their personal objectives; be cautious of this as it can lead to incorrect assumptions on your part if taking figures at face value.

While it can be useful to see the metrics of your competitors to help you with content trends. I personally don't think it should be your north star. There are a lot of variables when it comes to metrics and I would take high level ones that can act as a benchmark should you need to demonstrate your own progress or rationale for doing something.

Observe what your competitors are doing to see if there is something you can learn and potentially something you can do better. If there is a piece of content that has been received moderately, what could you do to take it to the next level?

It's about understanding the 'why' behind it. Engagements, sentiments, feedback – they spill the beans on what works and why. Learn from their hits and misses, and cook up your own masterpiece. Your content should be as unique as your fingerprint, not a photocopy of your competition's. Stay on your toes, play around, and keep polishing your approach based on the golden nuggets of wisdom you gather.

Compare their audience to yours. See the differences? It's not just about snooping around, it's about figuring out how you can win over these folks better than your competition. Tailor your approach to match what they need.