How to Analyze My Social Media Competition

Knowing what your competitors are doing on social media gives you a massive advantage, but a true competitive analysis is more than just a quick scroll through their Instagram feeds. This guide breaks down exactly how to analyze your social media competition, find actionable insights, and use that information to build a stronger content strategy that genuinely connects with your audience.

First, Identify Who You're Actually Competing With

Before you can analyze anyone, you need a clear list of who to watch. Most businesses focus only on direct competitors, but that's just scratching the surface. To get a complete picture, you should track three distinct types of competitors.

1. Direct Competitors

These are the usual suspects. They sell a similar product or service to the same target audience as you. If you run a local coffee shop, other local coffee shops are your direct competitors. If you sell project management software for startups, other PM software companies targeting startups are on your list. These are the brands you're most likely competing with for clicks, followers, and customers.

How to find them:

• A simple Google search for your keywords (e.g., "handmade leather wallets" or "yoga studio in Brooklyn").
• Use social media platform search functions. Type in your main keywords and see which accounts pop up.
• Check the "Suggested for you" or "People also follow" sections on platforms like Instagram when you view a known competitor's profile.

2. Indirect Competitors

Indirect competitors solve the same problem your audience has, but with a different solution. They aren't selling the exact same thing, but they are competing for the same share of your customer's wallet and attention. For the local coffee shop, an indirect competitor might be a high-end tea house or a cafe that specializes in energizing juices. They all solve the customer's need for a "morning beverage and a place to work." For the project management software, an indirect competitor could be a to-do list app or even productivity frameworks being taught by a popular business coach.

Watching these accounts helps you understand the broader desires of your audience and can inspire creative marketing angles you hadn't considered.

3. Aspirational or Industry-Leading Competitors

These are the brands in your industry that are absolutely crushing it. They might not be direct competitors - they might be much larger or have a slightly different audience - but their social media presence is best-in-class. Following them isn't about direct competition, it's about education and inspiration. Study how they launch products, build community, and handle their visual branding. What can you learn from their success and adapt to your own strategy?

The Data You Need to Collect (and How to Triage It)

Once you have a list of 5-10 competitors (a mix of all three types is ideal), it’s time to start gathering data. Don't get overwhelmed by numbers. Focus on the metrics that actually tell a story about what’s working.

Create a simple spreadsheet to keep everything in one place. Your columns should include:

• Competitor Name
• Platform (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn)
• Handle/URL
• Follower Count
• Posting Frequency (e.g., avg. 5 posts/week)
• Average Engagement Rate
• Common Content Formats (e.g., Reels, Carousels, Stories)
• Notes on Tone & Visuals

Key Metrics to Look For:

Follower Growth

Don't just look at the total follower count, try to track its growth over time. A smaller account adding 500 new followers a week is often doing something more interesting than a massive account that's stagnant. Slow, steady growth often signals a sustainable strategy, while huge, sudden spikes might indicate a viral hit or a paid ad campaign.

Posting Frequency & Consistency

How often are they posting on each platform? Is it daily, a few times a week, or sporadic? Consistency is a major factor in social media algorithms. Notice which platforms they prioritize. If they post to Instagram Stories daily but only post on their Facebook page once a week, it tells you where they believe their audience is most active.

Engagement Rate

This is arguably the most important metric. A huge follower count means little if nobody is interacting with the content. Engagement rate gives you a baseline for how much an audience cares about what a brand posts. You can calculate a simple engagement rate per post with this formula:

(Total Engagements [Likes + Comments + Shares] / Follower Count) x 100 = Engagement Rate %

A "good" engagement rate varies by industry and platform, but comparing your competitors' rates to each other and to your own will give you a powerful benchmark. Pinpoint their posts with unusually high engagement - these are goldmines of information about what resonates with your shared audience.

Content Themes & Pillars

Tag every one of their posts for the last month into a few categories. You'll quickly see patterns emerge. Are their posts mostly:

• Educational: How-to guides, tips, tutorials
• Inspirational: Quotes, success stories, behind-the-scenes
• Promotional: Product features, sales, testimonials
• Community-Focused: User-generated content, questions, polls

Understanding their content mix helps you spot potential gaps. If all your competitors focus heavily on promotional content, you have an opportunity to stand out with more educational or community-building posts.

The Competitive Analysis Checklist: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you know who to watch and what to look for, here’s how to put it all together into an actionable analysis.

Step 1: Perform a Content Audit

Look at your competitors’ feeds and ask yourself the hard questions:

• What Formats Prevail? Are they heavily invested in short-form video like Reels and TikToks? Or are they winning with text-based posts on LinkedIn and X? Note the performance difference between formats. For example, you might find their Reels get 3x the comments of their static image posts.
• What’s Their Visual Identity? Is their aesthetic bright and modern, or dark and moody? Do they use high-quality custom photography, or do they rely on stock images and graphic templates? Consistent branding fosters recognition.
• What is Their Tone of Voice? Is it professional and authoritative, or witty and informal? How do they write their captions? Are they long and descriptive, or short and punchy? Notice if their tone matches the platform (e.g., more professional on LinkedIn, more casual on TikTok).
• How Do They Use Hashtags? Do they use a large block of generic hashtags, or a small handful of highly targeted, niche ones? Are they using branded hashtags for campaigns? You can learn a lot from their hashtag strategy.

Step 2: Analyze Their Community Engagement

Scroll through their comments section. How a brand interacts with its community reveals its true personality.

• Do They Reply to Comments? If so, how quickly? Are the replies genuine, or are they canned, generic responses? A brand that takes the time to have real conversations is building a loyal following.
• How Do They Handle Negative Feedback? Do they ignore it, delete it, or address it thoughtfully and professionally? This shows their level of customer service and transparency.
• Are They Fostering Conversation? Look for posts that ask questions, run polls in Stories, or encourage user-generated content (UGC). Active community building is a sign of a smart social strategy.

Step 3: Put It All Together with a SWOT Analysis

Now, take everything you’ve learned and organize it into a classic SWOT analysis for each main competitor, as well as one for your own brand. This framework turns raw data into a strategic plan.

Strengths: What are they doing exceptionally well?

Example: Competitor A has an extremely high engagement rate on their educational TikTok videos. They're great at simplifying complex topics.

Weaknesses: Where do they seem to be falling short?

Example: Competitor A has a weak presence on LinkedIn, and their comments section often has unanswered customer questions.

Opportunities: What content gaps or platforms have they missed?

Example: None of my main competitors are using Instagram Stories effectively for behind-the-scenes content. There's also a big opportunity to create data-driven content for LinkedIn since they are neglecting it.

Threats: What are they doing that could negatively impact you?

Example: Competitor B is running a very effective ad campaign targeting our exact keywords, which could be driving up our ad costs.

Transform Your Insights Into a Winning Social Strategy

A competitive analysis is useless if you don't act on it. Use your SWOT analysis to inform your own content plan.

• Lean Into Your Strengths: If you're great at customer interaction, double down on it. Feature more testimonials and community conversations.
• Address Your Weaknesses: If your video content is underperforming, use insights from your competitor's successful videos to test new ideas and formats.
• Seize the Opportunities: Did you find a content gap? That’s your chance to own the conversation. If no one is creating detailed guides in your niche, go be the one to do it.
• Mitigate the Threats: If a competitor is owning a specific hashtag, find a new, emerging one you can dominate or create a branded hashtag for your own campaigns.

The goal isn’t to copy your competitors. It's to understand the landscape, learn what connects with your target audience, identify the gaps, and find opportunities to position your brand in a unique and valuable way.

Final Thoughts

Regularly analyzing your competition - at least once a quarter - helps you stay agile, spot trends early, and make informed decisions instead of guessing what content will perform. This process helps you move beyond simply posting content and towards building a thoughtful, strategic social media presence that actually drives results.

As you gather insights about what works, tracking your own performance becomes the other half of the equation. It can be a challenge to understand what’s working across different platforms and formats, which is why we built the analytics in Postbase with a single, clean dashboard. Our platform lets you see everything in one place, so you can easily compare your performance, spot your top-performing content, and turn those powerful competitor insights into a strategy that you know is working.