In the same vein that led you to leverage social media marketing on Facebook and Twitter, more than likely, so have your competitors. The beauty of social media is that not only is the content that your competitors publish public, but you’re privy to their fan base’ reaction – whether your competitor’s recent promotion received positive reviews, or what online content is garnering a lot of ‘likes’. In the first installment of this blog post, we’ll explore key elements and tools to gain competitive insight on your industry competitors on Facebook.
Find Known and Unknown Competitors. If you’re a local business and you already know who your competitors are, you can find your competitors on Facebook by visiting their website and ‘liking’ their fan page – look for a button with Facebook’s logo. Now you might have hesitations about ‘liking’ your competitor’s page, but keep in mind that the valuable information to be gain outweighs this minor detail. Plus who’s to say that your competitors haven’t already ‘liked’ your page and have been inspecting your page. Another route to find your competitors and scout unknown competitors is by doing a Google search or use Facebook’s Browse All Pages directory.
Explore. Once you’re on your on competitor’s page, explore their page. See what Facebook applications they’ve installed to promote their business or product. Are you able to purchase their products directly from their Facebook page, or are you redirected to their website? What’s their landing page, what application did they use in its design, and, most importantly, how does yours compare? Check their websites and see if they’re using their page to feed other social media websites. If so, be sure to further explore these social media outlets. See if they’re eliciting customer reviews on their page.
Exploring your competitor’s page will not give you a direct blueprint of their marketing strategy, but you’ll be able to get an accurate sense of their strategy. What you want to keep in mind is what aspects of their page you can emulate or, better yet, do better.
Fan Activity. You’ll want to inspect your competitor’s fan activity by clicking on their page’s ‘Wall’. Remember that social media is an internet platform for businesses to interact with and have conversations with their customers. Checking out your competitor’s page will let you see what conversations your competitors is having with its fans – fans that could have something to gain from your business or brand. Look at what online content via status updates that your competitor is generating – do they take the form of articles, product promotions, online deals, or brand development tidbits? Gauge the response by the number of ‘likes’ it received, and by reading through some of the comments. Again, keep in mind what status updates you can emulate or do better.
Another thing to keep in mind is that not all updates will come from your competitor’s page or admin, and that fans enjoy contributing posts. Stay one step ahead of your competitors by seeing what their fans are posting and raving about, and post accordingly on your page.
In the next installment of this blog post, we’ll explore how to research your competitors on Twitter, the next biggest social networking website after Facebook.
Written By: Jaszver Bauzon