Social media tools can benefit marketers several ways, including analyzing how consumers are responding to a competitor’s social media campaign. If your competitors have the same target audience as your brand, you can research what type of content appeals to them before you start an expensive social media marketing campaign. If your competitor’s campaign tanks, you’ll know not to waste your money on a similar idea.
How is Customer Sentiment Measured?
Innovate companies, such as NetBase, use artificial intelligence with machine learning to analyze hashtags, emotions, brands and behaviors. While other companies are offering social media sentiment analysis, NetBase’s AI is more accurate. The information gathered by NetBase’s AI is transparent so brands can learn to trust the sentiment analysis and use it to plan their own social media campaign. Not only is the data accurate, it’s delivered quickly so you can plan your social campaigns without waiting around for data.
Identifying Competitors
Your competitors are not just the largest brands in your niche; they are also the small businesses and emerging brands in your niche. You can usually find your competitors with a simple search on Google. Go to their website and look for their social media accounts.
What Not to Measure
It doesn’t really matter how many followers your competition has on their social media platforms. Sometimes people follow major brands to enter a contest or because they want discount codes. They may never engage with the brand again. Worry about engaging the followers you have and the number will grow naturally. It’s better to have a thousand engaged followers than 10,000 indifferent ones.
One thing you should measure is how often your competitors post new content. Even if you don’t have a marketing department which can create new content every day, you should try to post or tweet almost as frequently as your competitors.
Learning from Other’s Mistakes
If you use social media tools to analyze what people are saying about competitors, pay attention to what people find offensive and don’t make the same mistake. Typically politics and other hot-button issues don’t belong in social media campaigns. Angering or offending social media users is dangerous because they can share a post with thousands in a day. You can also use social media tools to pick up your competitor’s disgruntled customers by upping your social media campaign when a competitor has a reputation crisis.
What You Need to Know
Finding out what your competitor’s customers are saying is vital to understanding your competition. All you can see is what they say in their marketing communications. Every company says their product is the best, but on social media, customers tell the truth about products. If you see your competitor’s customers complaining about how their product isn’t sturdy, you can create a video emphasizing your product’s sturdiness to run in your social media campaign.
When studying your competitor’s customers, pay attention to your own with available social media tools. Your competitors are probably looking at what your customers are saying and making plans accordingly.