Social media is a cut-throat world.
The almighty algorithm makes it challenging to reach your followers — let alone get in front of new audiences.
And even if you manage to figure that out, you’re still fighting for attention with other brands in your niche.
But it’s not all bad news because those same rivals can be a major source of inspiration for your own social media strategy, helping you identify new opportunities and close gaps in your content calendar.
Read on to learn how to run an effective social media competitive analysis.
Step #1: Identify Your Social Media Competitors
Google might seem like an odd place to start a social media audit.
But it’s one of the most effective tools for identifying your true competitors — not just the brands you think you’re competing with, but those actively targeting the same audience as you.
For this step in the process, we’ll use the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to find sites ranking for similar keywords. Even if you don’t currently advertise with Google, the Keyword Planner is free, making it one of our favorite competitive analysis tools.
Once logged in, click the big box that says Discover new keywords.
Then, hit Start with a website, copy-paste your web address into the URL bar, and choose Use the entire site.
For the following scenario, let’s imagine we work for Brooklinen (I don’t, but man, those are some soft sheets).
Now we’re presented with a list of keywords, ordered by relevance to our (well, Brooklinen’s) website:
Exclude any branded terms (like “Brooklinen sheets”), then pick the top 5 – 10 keywords and Google them.
It’s a safe bet the likes of SILKSILKY and Blissy are among Brooklinen’s top competitors:
Choose maybe a half-dozen and make a note of them: these are the brands we’ll be digging into in our social media competitive analysis.
Step #2: Gather Top-Level Social Media Data
You’ve identified your competitors — now it’s time to find out what they’re doing on social media.
Start by gathering the following top-level information and social media metrics:
- Which social networks are they on?
- How large is their following?
- What is their engagement rate?
On that final bullet: unless you fancy adding up all their likes and comments yourself, you’ll need a tool to calculate the engagement rate. There are a couple of reasonable free tools available (like HypeAuditor’s free Instagram engagement calculator and Phlanx’s engagement calculator). However, you’ll be better off using a paid platform like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
Finally, be sure to gather all the same data points for your social channels to compare performance against your competitors.
Step #3: Capture Platform-Specific Data
It’s time to get granular by diving into each of your competitors’ social accounts.
You’ll be gathering slightly different data points for each social media channel — because every platform is different.
Here are the types of data you should capture for five of the largest social platforms:
Facebook Competitive Analysis
- How often do they post?
- What types of media do they post? What’s the percentage split of each post type?
- What do they say in their Facebook intro copy?
- What tabs or features do they use (e.g., do they have a shop section)?
- What themes do they post about?
- What tone of voice do they use?
- What is the primary purpose of this account?
- What hashtags do they use? Do they have a branded hashtag?
Instagram Competitive Analysis
- How often do they post?
- What types of media do they post? What’s the percentage split of each post type?
- What do they say in their Instagram bio?
- Do they use a link-in-bio tool? How often are they updating it?
- Do they use Threads?
- Do they post Instagram Reels and Stories? How often do they publish each?
- Do they share Stories highlights? How many do they have, and what are they about?
- What does that content look like?
- Do they use a brand-specific hashtag?
- What are their most-used hashtags?
- What themes do they post about? How does this vary across different post types (e.g., Stories, Reels, and image posts)?
- What is the primary purpose of this account?
- What brand persona do they adopt?
TikTok Competitive Analysis
- How often do they post?
- What key features or information do they highlight in their TikTok bio?
- Do they use a link-in-bio tool? How often are they updating it?
- Do they have a branded hashtag?
- Do they create TikTok playlists? How many do they have, and what are they about?
- What are their most-used hashtags?
- What themes do they post about?
- What is the primary purpose of this account?
- What brand persona do they adopt?
X/Twitter Competitive Analysis
- How often do they post?
- What key features or information do they highlight in their X bio?
- Do they have a verified account?
- Do they use a link-in-bio tool?
- What do they post about?
- What types of content do they share?
- What is the primary purpose of this account?
- What is their tone of voice like?
- Do they use hashtags? If so, which do they use most often?
Pinterest Competitive Analysis
- What information do they share in their bio?
- How many monthly views are they generating?
- What topics do they post about?
- What is the primary purpose of this account?
- How would you describe their tone of voice?
- What is their ratio of image to video content?
- What hashtags do they use most often? Do they have a branded hashtag?
Once you’ve analyzed one of your rivals, rinse and repeat for all the competitors you identified in step #1.
Of course, the platforms you analyze will depend on your niche and the audience you’re targeting. Just because Blissy has a LinkedIn profile, that doesn’t mean it’s worth monitoring from the perspective of a B2C brand like Brooklinen — (most) people aren’t going to buy bedding after seeing a LinkedIn post.
However, LinkedIn suddenly becomes relevant if recruitment or corporate social responsibility are key focuses of our imaginary social media strategy for Brooklinen. You’ll have to make a call on which platforms to include and exclude based on your overarching marketing goals.
Having conducted your analysis, don’t forget to add all the information you find to a spreadsheet or document so you can compare all your data points side by side.
Step #4: Perform a SWOT Analysis
By this point, you’ve collected a ton of juicy qualitative and quantitative data.
But all that information is only useful when you give it context: why does this matter, and what can we learn from it?
The best approach is to take a page from the business school handbook and perform a SWOT analysis:
- Strengths: These are areas where you’re currently ahead of the competition.
- Weaknesses: By contrast, these are how you’re lagging behind your rivals.
- Opportunities: Based on the information you’ve gathered (plus your knowledge of changes in the social media landscape), opportunities are areas in which you’ve got the potential for big performance gains.
- Threats: Lastly, threats are trends that could disrupt your niche and adversely affect your social media performance.
Here’s an (extremely simple) example of how that could look for Brooklinen:
As you may have gathered, the first two categories — strengths and weaknesses — speak to internal factors related to your existing performance, whereas the second two — opportunities and threats — are about external matters that could shake up the status quo in your niche.
Step #5: Bring It All Together
You’ve got a spreadsheet full of valuable information.
But, on its own, that’s not enough to build a social media strategy around.
That’s why the final step in the process is to bring it all together by pulling out all the key learnings you’ve identified and packaging them up in a user-friendly format that you can share with all relevant stakeholders (like senior leaders and other people on your social media team).
Here are a few tips to do this effectively:
- Visualize key data points: Let’s be honest: spreadsheets aren’t easy on the eye; it’s easy to miss important information amid all those columns of numbers. Use graphs and charts to communicate key data, such as your social media followings and engagement rates, versus your competitors.
- Select a handful of key learnings: Most people don’t need (or want) to dig through every takeaway in your social media competitive analysis — they just want the headlines. Pull out your 5 – 10 most important insights and write them up as bullet points.
- Explain why it matters: “Blissy has more followers on TikTok than Brooklinen!” Okay, so what? Explain why your key learnings are important and what could happen if you don’t address them. For instance, Brooklinen’s comparatively small TikTok following could indicate that they’re failing to appeal to younger demographics. This could hit the business hard as those demographics gain more spending power.
- Offer actionable solutions, not problems: Spotted a major threat for your brand? Provide actionable steps to tackle it. Following the previous example, Brooklinen may need to invest more heavily in platforms that skew younger, like Snapchat and TikTok.
- Share best practice examples: Don’t just describe the types of content you should be sharing based on your competitive analysis; include real-world examples of competitors that are getting it right.
Top 10 Social Media Competitive Analysis Tools
As you can see, running a social media competitive analysis involves plenty of leg work.
That’s why plenty of businesses invest in tools to handle some of the more labor-intensive stuff — freeing up social media managers to concentrate on higher-value strategic tasks.
With that in mind, we’ve rounded up the 10 best social media competitive analysis tools, taking into account:
- Features
- Pricing
- User ratings
Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Sprout Social
Summary
Sprout is an all-in-one social media management solution used by big names like Eventbrite, Glassdoor, and Square. Its social media analytics tools are some of the best on the market and offer a wealth of insights.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.4/5 | 4.4/5 | 8.7/10 |
Price
- Sprout Social costs $249 – $499+ per user per month when billed monthly.
- Get a 25% discount by choosing an annual plan.
- Premium solutions (including premium analytics and social listening) carry an extra, undisclosed cost.
Platforms Supported
- TikTok
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Track your competitors’ performance across multiple social media channels to identify new opportunities and create your own industry benchmarks.
- Create interactive charts and graphics to bring your competitive intelligence data to life.
- Use social listening to discover how consumers view your products/services (and those of your competitors) and calculate your share of voice.
2. Rival IQ
Summary
Rival IQ is a competitive social media analytics platform incorporating competitive analysis, social media audits, social listening, and more. It’s predominantly designed for agencies, CPG and health and beauty brands, higher ed institutions, and nonprofits.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.4/5 | 4.6/5 | 10/10 |
Price
- Prices range from $239 – $559 per month when billed monthly.
- Save 15% by choosing an annual plan instead.
Platforms Supported
- TikTok
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Use landscape and company filters to compare your social performance against your whole industry or specific competitors.
- Discover if one of your competitors boosted a Facebook post using the platform’s built-in machine learning, allowing you to learn from their approach or respond as necessary.
- Build competitive leaderboards based on engagement metrics, posting frequency, follower count, and more.
3. Socialinsider
Summary
Socialinsider bills itself as a “simplified and straightforward” social analytics platform for busy marketers. As well as competitive analysis, it offers AI-powered social listening on Instagram and social media API integration.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.9/5 | 4.6/5 | n/a |
Price
- Socialinsider pricing ranges from $99 – $239 per month when billed monthly.
- Save 16% by choosing an annual plan.
Platforms Supported
- TikTok
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Get a head-to-head comparison of your competitors’ social media performance across follower count, follower growth, posting frequency, and average engagement per post.
- Benchmark your social media performance against your entire industry, key competitors, or brands you admire.
- Use keywords, topics, and hashtags to group competitors’ social media posts and analyze the top-performing content in each category — helping you understand what works best.
4. Hootsuite
Summary
Like Sprout, Hootsuite is a one-stop shop for all your social media management needs, incorporating social media analytics, publishing tools, social listening, and more. Big-name customers include Adobe, IKEA, and the University of Chicago.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.4/5 | 4.2/5 | 8.2/10 |
Price
- Prices range from $99 – $249 per month when billed annually (Hootsuite doesn’t offer a monthly option).
- Save 20% by skipping the 30-day free trial.
Platforms Supported
- TikTok
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Create a competitor “watchlist” incorporating up to 20 of your top competitors (the number depends on which Hootsuite plan you choose).
- Generate competitive analysis reports including key metrics like posting frequency, average engagement rate, and audience growth rate.
- Not sure who your closest competitors are? Just use Hootsuite’s industry benchmarking tool to compare your performance across your whole industry, including changes over time.
5. Phlanx
Summary
Phlanx is a social media marketing solution predominantly designed for identifying influencers and analyzing their performance. But it also offers a simple competitive analysis tool for tracking engagement rates across four social platforms — Instagram, Twitch, X/Twitter, and YouTube.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 3.4/5 | 3.5/5 | n/a |
Price
- Phlanx is priced from $49 – $100 per month when billed monthly.
- Get three months free by switching to an annual plan.
Platforms Supported
- Twitch
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Find engagement rate statistics for your competitors’ 12 most recent posts on Instagram, Twitch, X/Twitter, and YouTube.
- See each account’s average engagement rates for each platform.
- Compare up to five competitors at a time.
6. Sprinklr
Summary
Sprinklr describes itself as an AI-powered customer experience platform, with solutions covering customer service, social media management, insights, and marketing analytics. Targeted at enterprise-level businesses, it has a bunch of big-name customers, including Acer, Honda, and Pepsi.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.2/5 | 4.3/5 | 9.2/10 |
Price
- Sprinklr doesn’t publish pricing information, so you’ll have to reach out for a quote.
Platforms Supported
- Quora
- Sina Weibo
- VK
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Compare competitor performance against key brand KPIs using 10+ pre-built dashboards encompassing content strategy, executive mentions, and more.
- Track down your competitors’ top posts and compare them by tone of voice, content theme, channel, customer sentiment, and more.
- Build automated competitive analysis reports, including alerts that notify your team following dips or spikes in key metrics.
7. Social Blade
Summary
Social Blade is a simple social media analytics tool offering user statistics for any content creator, live streamer, or brand — helpful for comparing influencers or analyzing your competitors’ performance. Best of all, much of its data can be accessed for free.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.4/5 | 4.2/5 | n/a |
Price
- Some data is available free of charge and without an account.
- Create a free Social Blade account to unlock certain hidden metrics.
- Access premium data by upgrading to a paid account, from $3.99 – $99.99 per month (or save up to $200 per year with an annual plan).
Platforms Supported
- Dailymotion
- TikTok
- Twitch
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Visualize performance across key social media metrics for up to three competitors at a time with a free account.
- Access stats like follower growth, posting frequency, and number of likes (data type varies by platform).
- See lists of the top YouTubers across 16 categories, including automotive, nonprofits, and travel.
8. Talkwalker
Summary
Talkwalker is a consumer intelligence platform incorporating social listening, media monitoring, and social benchmarking tools. It’s used by 2,500+ brands, including Adidas, Clarins, and HelloFresh.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.3/5 | 4.3/5 | 8.8/10 |
Price
- Talkwalker promises “simple and transparent” prices, but it doesn’t actually publish pricing information — so you’ll have to get in touch for a quote.
Platforms Supported
- Talkwalker says it supports “10+ social networks,” including X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Weibo.
Key Features
- Benchmark your performance against individual brands and industry standards across various metrics, including share of voice, sentiment, and brand mentions.
- Compare performance versus specific competitors across 10+ social media channels.
- Discover what content topics your audience engages with, their social media habits, and their demographics compared to your competitors.
9. Social Status
Summary
Social Status is a social media reporting and analytics tool that lets you create automated reports and spy on your competitors. It also offers generic social media benchmarks — like average click-through rate and organic reach — collated from a wide range of industries and account types.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| n/a | 4.7/5 | n/a |
Price
- Social Status offers a basic free-for-life plan, allowing you to monitor a single page or competitor account.
- Paid plans range from $9 – $199 per month when billed monthly.
- Subscribe to an annual plan for a 25% discount.
Platforms Supported
- TikTok
- X/Twitter (only included on Business, Agency, and Enterprise plans)
- YouTube
Key Features
- Compare your performance versus your competitors against metrics like post volume, engagement rate, and number of likes/reactions.
- Use Facebook Reactions (Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry) to track audience sentiment for you and your top competitors.
- Sort competitor posts by engagement rate, interactions, likes, comments, shares, sentiment, or time.
10. Fanpage Karma
Summary
Fanpage Karma is another all-in-one social media management solution, with tools spanning analysis and reporting, community management, content planning, and content research. The platform is used by customers in 180+ countries, including H&M, Lidl, and Spotify.
User Ratings
| Capterra | G2 | TrustRadius |
| 4.5/5 | 4/5 | 8.2/10 |
Price
- Track performance for a single account with the free-for-life plan.
- Upgrade to a paid plan ($69 – $799 per month when billed monthly) to analyze unlimited plans.
- Save 10% with an annual plan.
Platforms Supported
- TikTok
- X/Twitter
- YouTube
Key Features
- Add your profiles and those of your competitors to a single dashboard for an instant view of performance across key social metrics.
- Bring context to your data by assessing performance against global averages.
- Analyze posts by time of day, keywords, trends, and topics.
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Featured image by Freepik.
