Social media marketing has made the market a more equal playing field. And small businesses can too join the bandwagon with a few simple strategies.
For, you see, a major chunk of your clients turns to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, or TikTok for entertainment/educational content.
With a social media presence, you can
- Increase brand awareness
- understand your target customer
- connect with customers
- post regular Facebook Ads
- get insights on the latest social media trends
Therefore, it is mandatory for a growing business to at least have a Facebook business page/account or an Instagram business handle.
However, with the growing popularity of these spaces, you can also expect an exponential increase in the market competition.
And how do you outshine the other businesses vying for your target customer base? For starters, you figure out their marketing game.
At Page Potato. we have a team of social media experts to help you with market research and competition analysis.
We set up and run targeted Facebook ad campaigns to capture relevant leads. At the same time, we also keep an eye out for your peers in the industry.
We have a wide range of social media tools to analyze your competitor’s content strategy. This gives us a fair idea about the latest trends of the industry.
Competition analysis is especially important if you share a common customer group with your competitor.
Look out for the kind of posts, reels. stories, video posts, etc. other companies are using.
Find out what trends have they capitalized on, how much engagement every post is generating.
Once you have this data, you can either apply it to your social media strategy or figure out unique ways to outshine those around you.
So, without further ado, let us talk about the 5 things you should be doing to find your competitor’s top-performing content on social media.
Keeping an Eye on the Competitors Top Content
Most brands measure their growth on social media by looking at the number of likes. shares, comments each post generates.
And while that is a useful metric, it doesn’t give you a fair idea about your place in the market.
You might have doubled up your engagement rate over a month’s time, but is it enough?
What about your competitors? What is their growth rate?
Now, I get it, small businesses like cafe owners, bakers, consultants. professional service providers don’t have that kind of time to analyze every move their peers make.
You have your own business to work upon. And this is where we come in.
Page Potato helps you identify your key competitors. We keep an eye out for their top-performing posts, social media content, and metrics.
A quick note before we begin: It is very easy to fall into the trap of numbers. I, in no way, endorse the fact that you should always be comparing yourself to others.
However, a little healthy competition never hurts anyone. On the contrary, it gives you insights on areas you need to work on,
Our team gives you constructive strategies, based on market research and competitor analysis campaigns.
What makes your competitor’s strategies work?
There are three main factors that affect your post’s popularity and reach.
- relevancy
- uniqueness
- timing
And these are not easy things to crack, especially when you are still learning the ropes of social media marketing.
Let me illustrate my point with an example.
Imagine you have a small business (a cupcake shop. for instance). You have recently created a Facebook business page to create brand awareness and attract more customers to your shop.
You also want to use this page to promote a new recipe- mint chocolate chip cupcakes- and attract more people to visit your shop.
Now, a bakery from down the street, (with a recently launched new cupcake section) is your major competitor. They too have a Facebook business page with a hundred followers already.
Both of you share the same customer base and have similar business goals- expansion and boosting sales.
With competition analysis, you find your footing in the market.
Looking at the posts of the bakery shop, you have a fair idea of the things you need to work on.
First, you aspire to reach the same level as your competitors, then you strive to outdo them.
So, instead of shooting arrows in the dark, wherein you don’t know what kind of posts work for a cupcake business, you can take some inspiration from existing businesses in the same domain
Looking at your competitor’s content might give you some ideas on your initial posts.
What flavors are the most popular among customers? Do people love watching video ads over text-based posts? When and how frequently should you schedule your posts?
These are but some of the questions that you find answers for when you analyze your competitor’s top-performing content.
On Facebook, short video posts work best. Videos are visually more stimulating, successfully capturing the audience’s attention.
Our experts can help you create a crisp video that sells your idea effectively.
To follow or not to follow your competitor’s footsteps?
Let me just clarify something before we begin, getting inspired by your competitors isn’t the same as copying them.
Imitation and inspiration are two very different things.
By analyzing your competitor’s social media strategy, you are simply trying to understand what your posts lack.
And you don’t necessarily have to do everything your competitors do. The entire point of this exercise is to give you ideas- ideas that you then execute in your own way.
You might think of this as unethical, but it truly isn’t. You are being smart by using someone else’s acquired knowledge to grow your base but you are doing it your way.
Growing an audience base from scratch can be time taking and require a lot of effort.
The next sensible thing to do is replicate someone who has already had the upper hand. This can be a blessing when you are trying to gain the same followers as your competitor.
Content strategy is a very important aspect of any business. It is your way of communicating to the customer all that your brand represents.
Our team of niche-based writers can come up with customized content pieces that suit your brand.
Only when the content is strategized, it reaches the right people and drives them further in the business’s sales funnel.
This same content is marketed on multiple social media platforms and the business’s website. The reason behind this is the huge volume of the audience that is already there on those platforms.
Why businesses can’t afford to make mistakes on Facebook?
Nearly 2 out of every 3 adults in the U.S uses Facebook.
Facebook has a wide customer base and no business can afford to lose out on that number.
This is the same reason; it can be an extremely crowded marketplace too.
One cannot afford to experiment with a fussy and busy audience today. As a business, you want to try out tactics that have worked in the past for others.
You cannot leave any scope for error or misunderstanding.
However, using posts that brought results and engagements in the past can do wonders for your business.
We get a lot of clients who have a solid reputation IRL and want to convert the same success online.
For instance, one client, Bronte Price, was an already established wedding celebrant in Australia. He also had some well-written blogs, training material, and other content pieces ready when he approached us.
Page Potato helped Bronte refurbish old content pieces, revamp them a bit and make them more relevant to the online audience.
Other than that, we had other strategies to help Bronte boost his Gay Celebrant website as well that you can read about in Bronte’s Case Study.
So, how do you find your competitors?
As a business owner, you might have an idea about 1-2 competitors in the neighborhood. However, the market is not limited to the next street.
Your competitors will increase if you want to expand your business to a different state or even go international,
So, how do you find your competitors?
I have a 5-step process to help you through the process:
Step 1: Go to Facebook Insights
Go to your business’s Facebook page. And then click on the Facebook insights tool, on your left top corner.
Step 2: Find “Pages to Watch”
In the overview tab, keep scrolling down as shown by the arrow and scroll down to “Pages to watch”. This would look something like this.
Step 3: Search for Your Niche
Now you click on “Add Pages”. Add the Facebook targeting pages of the competitor whose posts you want to keep a check on.
For example, if in case I am a fun page for students, I would type the same keywords for suggestions.
It automatically suggests pages you can take inspiration from. I can now select the pages I would like to watch in my niche, based on the number of likes they have.
All I have to do is click on “Watch Page”.
If I already know the competitor’s page, all I have to do is, type the name like this. In my case, I was looking for Social Beat’s page.
Step 4: Select Pages You Want
Now that we have selected a couple of pages we would want to keep a watch on, our screen looks like this.
You can see the total number of posts they have made in the last week, their engagement, and the percentage of growth they have had since the last week.
These insights go a long way in telling how many posts in a week is a good number for growth.
Step 5: Analyse the Insights
What if you won’t know which posts are doing well on a page?
There’s an answer to that as well. You will have to click on the competitor’s website like this.
This will help you strategize your weekly posts accordingly.
You will be able to see their best performing posts on the page in decreasing order of popularity.
This highlighted number goes down as you scroll down.
Now that you know how to check the best performing posts in your market, it’s easier to make more sales.
You can take inspiration from your competitor’s page and add your own element and make it more creative and fulfilling for your customer.
This is how you make a mark for yourself in a fast yet fussy marketplace.