Social Media Marketing and the measurement thereof is always a hot topic. In part three of this exclusive 7-part series we'll be discussing Competitive Research.
Hello, everyone and welcome to part 3 - Competitive Research - of the exclusive 7-part series on Social Media Marketing Analytics.
I last left off at Brand Monitoring. For those who have not read part 2, I suggest you take a few minutes to do so. If you are short on time, below is a brief recap:
Part 2 recap
In part 2 I covered:
- The definition of Brand Monitor
- Brand Monitoring, to put it simply, is the understanding of who, what, where, why, when and how 3rd party sources or customers are referring to your brand
- Why it is important?
- Performance
- What are the benefits?
- Knowledge
Now on to part 3...
Competitive Research
According to Wikipedia, a broad defintion of competitive research or intelligence is "the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization."
The key is track your competition the same you can track your own brand. It is vital to analyze content & conversations around your brand as well as your competitor's. Social media marketing monitoring tools such as Alterian SM2 can track competitors in the same way you can track your own brand. These analytical insights give you the benefit of understanding how well your competition is performing online and are also very useful for uncovering potential opportunities that competitors may be not paying attention to.
Why is this important?
One word... PERFORMANCE.
Just as you do for your own brand, it is YOUR job to be on top of what your competitors are doing, LISTEN and be attentive of what is being said about them. YOU need to be aware of what they are doing well and what they are doing not-so-well.
What are the benefits?
One word... KNOWLEDGE.
- Who is talking about them?
- What are they talking about?
- Where is this happening?
- When is this happening?
- Why are people talking about them?
- How they are referring to them?
Having the answers to these questions allows you to recognize where/what your competitors are focusing on because you will most likely need to follow suit.
Also, where/what they are not focusing on so you can crawl in and kick some digital butt!
If anyone has questions, comments or concerns or would like to discuss this in further detail - because rest assured this is only scratching the surface, please feel free to post them here, our Facebook page or via Twitter.
And stay tuned for Part 3 - Strategic Development coming next Thursday!
Sources: Google Images, Wikipedia