How to Analyze Competitors on Instagram

Knowing what your competitors are doing on Instagram isn’t about endlessly scrolling their feed and feeling behind. It's about gathering intelligence to find your own hidden advantage. A thoughtful competitor analysis shows you what’s working in your niche, where the bar is set, and most importantly, what gaps you can fill to make your brand stand out. This guide will walk you through a step-by-step process for turning that competitor research into an actionable strategy for your own account.

First, Understand Why This Matters

Before you start digging, it's helpful to know what you're looking for. A good competitor analysis isn't about creating a copycat strategy, it's about making smarter decisions for your own brand. The goal is to:

• Spot opportunities: See what content themes, formats, or angles your competitors are ignoring. This is your chance to be different.
• Understand your audience better: See who is engaging with your competitors. Are they the same people you want to reach? What kind of content makes them comment and share?
• Establish realistic benchmarks: Get a feel for average engagement rates and follower growth in your industry. This helps you set better goals for your own account.
• Spark new content ideas: See how competitors tackle certain topics and let it inspire a fresh, unique take for your own brand.

Step 1: Identify Your Real Competitors

You can’t analyze everyone, so it's smart to focus your efforts on a few key players. Your competitors generally fall into three categories.

Direct Competitors

These are the obvious ones - businesses that offer a similar product or service to the exact same target audience as you. If you run a local coffee shop in Brooklyn, every other specialty coffee shop in Brooklyn is a direct competitor.

How to find them: Search on Instagram for the keywords your customers would use to find you (e.g., "Brooklyn coffee"). See who pops up.

Indirect Competitors

These businesses solve the same problem for your customer, but with a different solution. For that same coffee shop, an indirect competitor might be a company that sells high-end espresso machines for home use, or even a local tea house. They’re both competing for the morning beverage budget of your target customer.

How to find them: Think about what your customers would do if your business didn't exist. What are the alternatives? Search for those terms.

Aspirational Competitors

These are the big players or thought leaders in your industry. They might not be direct competitors for your immediate customers, but their social media presence is something you can learn from. For our Brooklyn coffee shop, an aspirational competitor could be a nationally recognized brand like Blue Bottle Coffee or an influential coffee blogger with a massive following.

How to find them: Look at industry publications, blogs, or "best of" lists. See which brands are consistently recognized as leaders in your space.

Choose 3-5 competitors - a healthy mix of direct, indirect, and maybe one aspirational brand - to start. This gives you enough data to spot patterns without getting completely overwhelmed.

Step 2: Start with a High-Level Profile Audit

Think of this as the first impression. When someone lands on their profile, what do they see? You’re looking for a quick snapshot of their overall Instagram strategy.

• Username & Profile Picture: Is the username simple and searchable? Is their logo clear and easy to recognize even when small?
• The Bio: This is prime real estate. What are they using it for? Look for a clear statement of what they do, who they do it for, and any relevant keywords. Do they use a branded hashtag?
• The Call-to-Action (CTA): What are they asking people to do? "Shop Now," "Learn More," "Book a Class"? Note what action they are trying to drive.
• Link in Bio: Are they using a tool like Linktree to direct traffic to multiple places, or are they sending traffic to a single homepage? Poke around the link to see what they’re prioritizing.
• Instagram Highlights: How are they using Highlights to extend the life of their Stories? Common uses include: FAQs, About Us, tutorials, product showcases, or customer testimonials (user-generated content). This tells you what information they consider most valuable for their new followers.

Step 3: Dive Deep into Their Content Strategy

Now it’s time to analyze the actual meat of their strategy: the content itself. You’re looking for patterns across formats, themes, and performance.

Identify Their Content Pillars

Content pillars are the main topics or themes they consistently post about. A fitness brand’s pillars might be workouts, nutrition tips, motivational quotes, and community spotlights. Scroll through their last 15-20 posts and categorize each one. Do you see 3-5 recurring themes? This shows you the core areas of their brand's "voice" and what they believe their audience wants to see.

Analyze Their Content Mix

Instagram isn't just about photos anymore. Pay close attention to the formats they're using and the balance between them.

• Reels: As the dominant format for reach and discovery, how are they using short-form video? Are their Reels educational, entertaining, trendy, or behind-the-scenes? Note their editing style, use of audio, and captions.
• Carousels: These are great for education and storytelling. Are they sharing step-by-step guides, breaking down complex topics, or showcasing different product angles?
• Static Images: Are they high-quality, professional shots or more candid, user-generated content? Look for patterns in their style - color palette, filters, and overall composition.
• Stories: These are harder to analyze since they disappear, but try to watch them for a few days. Are they using polls, quizzes, and question stickers to drive interaction? Are they sharing a lot of behind-the-scenes footage or promoting new feed posts?

Spot Their Top-Performing Posts

Manually scan their feed for standout content - posts that have a noticeably higher number of likes and comments than their average. This is gold. Don't just look at the post, look for the pattern. Why did this particular post do so well?

• Was it a tutorial that solved a common problem?
• Was it a relatable meme or quote?
• Did it feature a person's face (which often performs better)?
• Was it user-generated content that made their community feel seen?

Look at their top 3-5 best performers from the last couple of months. What do they all have in common? Answering this question gives you an incredible insight into what their audience truly cares about.

Step 4: Evaluate Their Community Engagement

A huge follower count is nice, but it's often a vanity metric. A highly engaged smaller community is far more valuable. This is where you can look under the hood of their brand loyalty.

Calculate Their Engagement Rate

This metric puts everything in context. An account with 100k followers and 100 likes per post has a much lower engagement rate than an account with 10k followers and 100 likes per post. Here’s a simple formula to calculate the rate for a specific post:

(Total Likes + Total Comments) / Follower Count * 100 = Engagement Rate %

Calculate this for 5-10 of their recent posts and find the average. A "good" rate varies by industry, but anything over 1-2% is generally solid. This tells you how much of their audience is actually paying attention.

Watch How They Talk to People

Social media is a two-way street. How is your competitor managing their community?

• Do they reply to comments? If so, what is their tone?
• Are the replies canned responses or genuine conversations?
• Do they 'like' or feature user-generated content?
• Do they post questions in their captions to spark conversation?

If you see a competitor who ignores their comments, you’ve just found a massive opportunity. Building a community that feels heard and appreciated is a powerful way to win on Instagram.

Step 5: Document and Analyze Everything

All this research is useless if you don't organize it. Create a simple spreadsheet to keep track of what you find. This will help you see the big picture and draw clear conclusions. Your columns can include:

• Competitor Name
• Profile URL
• Follower Count
• Average Engagement Rate
• Posting Frequency (e.g., 3x/week)
• Primary Content Formats (e.g., "Reels heavy")
• Top 3 Content Pillars
• Overall Bio & CTA
• Key Strengths
• Key Weaknesses/Gaps
• My Opportunity (This is the most important column!)

Filling out the "My Opportunity" column for each competitor is where the magic happens. For example:

• If Competitor A is amazing at polished product shots but never shows their face, your opportunity could be to build a more personal brand with daily behind-the-scenes Stories.
• If Competitor B has great educational carousels but posts inconsistently, your opportunity is to become the reliable, go-to source by posting valuable content every single day.

Final Thoughts

Regularly analyzing your Instagram competitors helps you move from reactive content creation to proactive brand strategy. By understanding the landscape, you can pinpoint what makes your brand different and double down on the content and engagement tactics that your audience is truly looking for.

Keeping all this competitive insight straight while planning your own content can feel like a tall order. When we built Postbase, we focused on making the planning part as clear as possible. Our visual calendar lets you lay out your whole strategy in one place after you’ve done your research, so you can easily spot your own gaps and plan cohesive campaigns. It’s designed to help you execute on those opportunities you’ve found - from scheduling the Reels you decided to focus on to seeing your content balanced across every platform.