Life on Twitter has changed in the last few years. At first, people used to pay so much attention to what they were posting on Twitter, but now they seem to have lost interest.
Most of them post things to stir conversations and find out updates from every industry.
Competition thrives even in the less popular corners of social media. Twitter doesn’t make an exception.
Today we’ll learn together more on conducting a Twitter competitive analysis to improve your performance. Ready? Let’s do it!
How to perform a Twitter competitive analysis
- What is a Twitter competitive analysis?
- Most common questions about Twitter competitive analysis
- Benefits of doing a Twitter competitive analysis
a) Strategy optimization
b) Staying on top on industry trends
c) Identify gaps in your content
d) Spot opportunities - How to perform a Twitter competitive analysis
a) Identify your competitors
b) Make a list of top competitors
c) Competitor hashtags
d) Create precise competitive analysis goals - Key metrics to track in a Twitter competitive analysis
1. What is a Twitter competitive analysis?
Competition is everywhere, chasing us in every aspect of our lives. When it comes to social media, you have to always be aware of who is right behind you, trying to surpass your performance.
According to our social media benchmarks study, Twitter is almost dead for all industries. Everything you post as a brand on Twitter brings you an engagement rate of 0.05%.
However, this doesn’t mean that you should take a vacation from this social platform. If you do it properly, you have nothing to lose.
Twitter marketers are focused on promoting their services and products via short tweets and videos which have a great potential to stir conversation and become viral topics.
Conducting a Twitter competitor analysis means examining your top Twitter competitors, and benchmarking their Twitter marketing strategy against yours.
Put plain and simple, a Twitter competitor analysis means taking a look at the types of content your competition posts on Twitter, at their frequency and the results they get.
2. Most common questions about Twitter competitive analysis
How can you analyze your Twitter competitors?
In order to conduct a Twitter competitive analysis, you must, of course, turn to social media analytics.
When performing a Twitter competitive analysis, you’ll have no access to your Twitter competitor’s data, you have to use a third party social media analytics tool, like Socialinsider.
Going through this process usually implies more than comparing your account’s followers number.
A more in-depth Twitter follower analysis of your competitors will show you what type of posts your competitor’s fans on Twitter like the most - by analyzing the most engaging tweets, distribution of likes, retweets and so on.
This type of data can be very precious for your future Twitter marketing efforts.
But even if you choose to use a Twitter analytics tool, you must keep in mind some metrics are still private information, being available only for own accounts.
Why analyze your Twitter competitors?
Conducting a Twitter competitive analysis is an essential step for every successful company.
Everything will lead to insights that will help you improve your performance on social media and attract more followers. This can’t be a bad thing, right?
But this is not all. Here are a lot more benefits for developing a Twitter competitive analysis:
- It helps you identify the value of your product
- You can better understand your customers, find out what are their needs and what they love the most in your products
- You will know what your competitor is doing right - which will help you improve your social media strategy
- You will also know what your competitor is doing wrong - which helps you identify new opportunities in the marketplace
- You will learn what’s missing in your industry
- It provides you with a benchmark against which you can measure your own growth
3. Benefits of performing a Twitter competitive analysis
Developing a Twitter competitive analysis it’s not an easy process. It requires time, energy, and a good strategy that comes with all of these.
Of course, there are ups and downs, but the benefits are the ones you should consider first - this way, you will definitely feel motivated enough to start doing your Twitter competitive analysis more often.
Strategy optimization
When starting a Twitter competitive analysis, before looking into content and post design on Twitter, you should start with some strategic questions.
First analyze how creative your Twitter competitors get with their posts, as in if they post GIF’s, if and how often they are doing live streaming sessions on Twitter, or what tone of voice they use.
All these details related to the way your competitors design their marketing strategy on Twitter help you reconsider your own business plan.
Staying on top of industry trends
If your brand was just “born” on Twitter, a Twitter competitive analysis can help you stay on top of industry trends.
Maybe your Twitter competitors have had past collaborations with important influencers on the market, or they’ve established some relationships that helps them be informed at all times about trends related to your field of operation.
Of course your goal is to build real connections and establish fruitful relationship, but this requires times and patience.
Until then, you can take advantage of the new things you find out from your competitors through your Twitter competitive analysis.
Until your business reaches a certain development level, you still need to be connected with the environment.
This is why doing a regular Twitter competitor analysis is so important, offering you a lot of useful insights.
Identify gaps in your content
A Twitter competitive analysis is extremely helpful especially when you need to create some quality content for your social media calendar.
When you lack inspiration and have no idea what to write, an in-depth research of your competitors will spark new ideas.
Remember, just being on the platform is not enough. Moreover, sending one tweet after another just to check a task off your list isn’t going to give you the success you desire.
By keeping an eye on Twitter competitive analysis, you’ll be able to see how much engagement your Twitter posts had, and optimize them based on the results you get.
You should also consider benchmarking your results against your Twitter competitors. This will help you have a deeper understanding of how well your business is performing.
For example, if your Twitter competitors have a greater engagement rate than you do, you should take a peek and evaluate the content they post.
Are they posting contests? How is their audience reacting to that? Are they doing video testimonials or webinars? Do users love that? And how often are doing all of these?
By answering all these questions, you’ll be starting to have a direction for your next content calendar, that you know your audiences will appreciate.
Spot opportunities
Social media trends change all the time. Even now, as you read this. By developing a Twitter competitive analysis, you can discover customer needs that your competition on Twitter is missing to fulfill.
In this situation, you can step in and draw that segment of audience on your side, gaining competitive advantage.
Through a Twitter competitive analysis you can spot opportunities by identifying what’s lacking in your competitor’s strategy.
Then, make sure you can accomplish the audience’s needs with your services and products.
4. How to perform a Twitter competitive analysis
If you thought the hard part it’s over, well, you were right. Now that you’ve learnt what is a Twitter competitive analysis, it’s time to put everything into practice and learn how to perform one.
In case you didn’t pay too much attention to your competitor’s results on social media so far, it’s time to closely analyze their performance and content.
We are going to walk you through all the steps you need to take to develop a Twitter competitive analysis.
Here is the list you should follow to make your life a bit easier when it comes to social media.
a) Identify your Twitter competitors
Firstly, you have to identify who are your competitors to learn what social media “weapons” you need to use to surpass their performance.
If you don’t have much information about your competitors, there are a few ways to find them on Twitter:
- Hashtags: Most definitely you and your Twitter competitors use similar hashtags. You both target the same audience, so your strategies could be pretty close to each other.
For example, if you are the proud owner of a bookstore in Berlin, try to look for hashtags like #bookstoreberlin, #bookshopberlin, #berlinbooks, #booksinberlin and so on.
Search and discover which hashtags you have in common and see who’s using them and how.
- Twitter analytics: Chances are your followers are also following some of your Twitter competitors. You can discover a few interesting things in the Twitter analytics section.
- Google: A quick Google search will prove to be very helpful since you will learn a lot more things about your competitors than expected. Try some keywords and phrases that you aim to rank for. You could type “Berlin bookstore”/ “Best bookstores in Berlin” and this will help you with your Twitter competitive analysis. You will probably get redirected to their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram so you have plenty to choose from.
b) Make a list of top competitors
This should be a must-list for you. Twitter provides a nice and easy way to create lists. You can group your Twitter competitors so it will be easier for you to track them.
The list can be private or public, but I imagine that you’d want to keep yours private. You can also create as many lists as you want.
Be sure to decide on your top Twitter competitors to develop an accurate Twitter competitive analysis.
Too much is too much and it won’t be useful in any way if you will have a never-ending list.
c) Competitor hashtags
Hashtags are among top important parts of social media. When it comes to your Twitter competitive analysis, the hashtags you use can help you improve your postings performance big time.
You have to monitor hashtags to grow your Twitter profile, while you also think about the hashtags used by your Twitter competitors.
Try to check what hashtags they used when developing their latest social media campaigns.
This year, Sephora’s Christmas campaign is “Believe in your wish”. Through this campaign, the makeup brand encourages customers to believe in their beauty wishes and values.
The hashtag #believeinyourwish has gained popularity.
d) Create precise Twitter competitive analysis goals
It’s time to be realistic. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve when performing a Twitter competitive analysis.
Do you want to find out what are your competitors’ flaws and use them in your favor?
Are you searching for new trends in your industry to adapt your marketing campaign?
When you know for sure what you really want to achieve, your Twitter competitive analysis will be one step closer to success.
This is the only way to be a step ahead of your Twitter competitors. To determine your exact social media goals, you should make a good analysis of your Twitter competitor’s feed.
All the information you’re gathering needs to find a dedicated place in your notes.
Making lists is the key.
By looking at the strengths and weaknesses of your top Twitter competitors will help you determine the threats that arrive. Consider how you can make the most of your strengths, and see what you can learn from your Twitter competitors.
5. Key metrics to track in a Twitter competitive analysis
A Twitter competitive analysis also includes relying on solid data. That’s why you will need an analytics tool to look at Twitter metrics and compare.
To do so, here is a list of the most important ones:
- Engagement - total number of times a user has interacted with a tweet.
- Engagement rate - sum of the reactions, comments and shares divided by the number of posts, divided by the number of followers the profile has, all multiplied by 100.
- Follower growth - check how your competitors are performing by considering the new followers they have.
- Mentions - see who has mentioned your page or your competitor’s.
- Tweets by type - even if the image is the most preferred type of content, maybe some of your competitors are performing really well when they post some creative videos.
- Timing - this means that there may be a specific timeline when the profile publishes the tweets.
- Top hashtags - the most used hashtags by that profile.
We recommend using specific competitive analysis-oriented tools to gain insights that will help you get a competitive advantage.
When using the Twitter’s native app, you'll get insights only for your accounts such as: impressions, reach, mentions, followers, profile visits, and the number of tweets.
However, if you want to see Twitter analytics for other accounts, you’ll have to go in-depth with the data analysis and start looking at specific social media analytics tools.
Using a dedicated Twitter analytics tool, you’ll be able to have all the above-mentioned social media metrics, plus other relevant ones, as well as download comprehensive branded reports.
When it comes to tweets comprehensive analysis, using tools like Socialinsider you’ll be able to see and download Twitter reports that include:
- the distribution of tweets
- the average number of tweets/day
- the average engagement per tweet and profile
- your top three tweets
- your follower’s growth
- top three mentions and distribution of mentions, as well as top mentioners.
- your best hashtags by engagement
You can also download a report of your competitors' top performing posts. In Socialinsider, the Tweets newsfeed can be customized using the various sorting and filtering options available.
For instance, you can filter this list to see only their Image posts, or Quote Retweets.
Since we’re talking about Twitter competitor analysis, one of the most important features that an app like Socialinsider has, is the comparison feature, which allows for instant competitor benchmarking and Twitter performance.
This comes in handy when you want to compare your business activity on the platform with one of your Twitter competitors, measure results side by side, and come up with new strategies to improve your Twitter performance.
Final thoughts
Conducting a Twitter competitive analysis is time-consuming, but it’s definitely important when trying to develop a strong marketing campaign.
This type of analysis will grant you access to some valuable insights that will help you grow your business.
This is how you’ll know exactly where you stand in the industry, what to do to improve your marketing strategy and how to satisfy your customers.
Analyze your social media performance and benchmark competitors!
