Analyze the competition on Instagram step by step

Whatever your sector is, you have to be clear about one thing: It is crucial to carry out a good analysis of your competitors, follow them closely, and analyze their online and offline strategies. Companies used to keep track of their competitors for products or services, but few paid attention to their competitors on social media.

Things have changed, and nowadays, if you are not in the world of social media, you are nobody, right? This explains why it is so important to design a winning strategy and to do so; you need to analyze your competitors to optimize your social media presence.

Analysis of social media competitors

Knowing what your competitors are posting on social media is essential. Understanding why your content works well or not will guide your strategy, and you will have a better overview of the market where you are.

Instagram is the king of social networks. It has gained a lot of market share and is the most popular network worldwide. So if there is a social platform in which you have to investigate your competitors, there is no doubt that this is the one.

Why analyze the competition on Instagram?

I have already given you many reasons why it is crucial to analyze your competitors closely on a regular basis on Instagram. But just in case I haven’t convinced you yet, here are the main reasons why you should do it:

• It keeps you abreast with what is going on in your sector: social networks are constantly changing and evolving at an impressive speed. Therefore, analyzing what your competitors are doing keeps you alert to any trends or changes that may occur.
• You discover new ways to reach your target audience: You will realize that there are multiple Instagram accounts related to yours, so seeing what they do can be helpful to discover new ways to reach your goals.
• You will find inspiration: you will see which content works for them and find a way to adapt it to your strategy and company. Also, you will come up with actions and content that can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors. This way, you will be more attractive to your target audience.
• It will prevent you from making mistakes: active listening and competitive analysis will help you foresee which techniques have worked well or poorly for your competitors. That way, you can always be on the safe side.
• You will learn more about your target audience: by analyzing your competitors, you will also discover what your audience target thinks. You will see comments, posts, or reviews that they will publish on social media. Apply this gained knowledge into your strategy.

What are your thoughts? After listing all the advantages of benchmarking on Instagram, it’s time for you to get to work.

How to analyze the competition on Instagram?

To analyze your main competitors, you have to follow these next simple steps:

Find your competitors

The first thing is to locate the Instagram accounts of your competitors:

• Search the websites of the competitors that you already know.
• Search with keywords related to your sector.
• Monitor hashtags in your sector.
• Look for influencers in the sector (even if they are not your competition in terms of product, you can learn a lot from these accounts).
• It is also interesting to search for organic traffic. You will extract valuable information that will come in handy for your competitor analysis.
• And last but not least, do social listening. You will be amazed by all the information you can get.

Once you have finished your search and have a list of the competitors or accounts you are interested in, it is time to add it to excel to prevent you from missing one.

Analyze accounts to draw conclusions

Ok, now you have the accounts you want to analyze. The time has come to get down to work with your benchmark. You have two options:

• Carry out a manual study where you analyze account by account and write down the data in Excel or word. In this way, you can save this data periodically to compare different periods. This first option is very arduous, and it can take you a long time when analyzing account by account, but don’t worry, we have an alternative.
• Analyze your competitors with external tools. We are in the Internet era, and there are tools for everything that will save your precious time. In this case, I present to you Metricool: a social media analysis and management tool that allows you to analyze your competitors on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube.

It is easier than doing it manually, and you can sort the table to your liking to analyze your competitors.

4 tips for analyzing the competition on Instagram

Before you start making your own benchmark, I wanted to add an extra section to offer you some tips regarding the analysis of your competition.

• Analyze regularly and periodically: by comparing periods, you will be able to extract much more information. Make sure you always analyze the same data so that it makes sense to see the evolution of the accounts.
• Look beyond your direct competitors: the world of social media is full of accounts. There are accounts of influencers, digital magazines, or specialized media that can inspire you or help you when creating your strategy, so include them in your analysis.
• Analyze your own strategy as well as that of your competition. In this way, you can compare yourself directly with the accounts you analyze and draw conclusions.
• Don’t go crazy with the data. In the digital world, there is data on everything. Select what is most interesting for you and always analyze the same information. An example: number of followers, posting frequency, likes…

I hope this article will help you analyze your competition on Instagram and get out the most of it to improve your own micro influencer marketing strategy. Are you ready to start?