There is an amazing amount of information on your competitors in the social web waiting to be unlocked Differentiating your brand and your organisation presumes you know what your competition is doing Creating a smart strategy for customer engagement means knowing what your competition is doing Competitive analysis can help you understand what works and what does not.

1. Social Business Intelligence
Assessing the Competition

2. “There have always been companies who have used
data to inform their marketing and those who have been
foolish enough to fly blind. It‟s hard to say whether the
greater accessibility of big data will be of benefit to the
former group and a wake-up call to the latter. I also am
a big proponent of „small data,‟ with particular relevance
to brands or even individual products.”
Neil Glassman

3. Agenda
 Why assess the Competition?
 What to assess regarding the Competition
 Listening
 Monitoring basics
 Using the social networks
 Marketing insights
 Summary
 More resources

4. Why Assess the Competition?
 There is an amazing amount of information on your
competitors in the social web waiting to be unlocked
 Differentiating your brand and your organisation
presumes you know what your competition is doing
 Creating a smart strategy for customer engagement
means knowing what your competition is doing
 Competitive analysis can help you understand what
works and what does not.

5. What To Assess at the Competition?
 WHAT are your competitors doing on the social web?
 WHAT are they saying?
 WHEN are they engaging?
 WHERE are they engaging?
 HOW are they engaging?
 HOW are they perceived?
 WHO are the key people at your competition?
 WHO are your competition engaging with?

6. Listening is the Key to Engagement
 All Social Media initiatives need to start with Listening
• Understand where you are
• Understand the topics and issues of interest
• Creation of meaningful goals for your own initiatives
 The creation of a Social Business Strategy requires:
• An agreed goal/s
• A resource plan to support it
• Knowledge of what your competition is doing
• A set of metrics to measure progress
 Listening to competitors and their networks provides:
• Future key hires
• Insight into programs, tactics and strategies
• The means to differentiate and stay ahead

7. Results You Should Expect
 Competitors and their most active team members, names
of the competitors‟ customers, names of the competitors‟
partners and alliances
 Contributor, users, influencer…
 Understanding of issues your competitors are dealing
with – their own and their customers issues
 Emotions, sentiment around their brand, products,
services and teams
 Places and spaces = they and their entire ecosystem are
present

8. Competitive Monitoring Basics
 Monitor the key competitors:
• brand
• products and services
• key executives
• key partners
• with the same tags as keywords that you use
 Use Word Clouds to assess whether competitors are
using different keywords

9. Competitive Monitoring Basics
 Identify:
• the places and spaces the competition is active
• the competitors customers activity, discussion and
sentiments
• the influencer of the competitors teams and those of
their partners
• the competitor‟s partners activities
 Create a factual analysis with some initial thoughts
 Facts lead to a competitive threat analysis

10. Use Basic Search to Begin
Google Alerts Basic Google Search

11. Advanced Competitive Monitoring
 Requires a Social Business Intelligence tool with more
sophistication than Google Analytics
 Can be done as a research project to develop initial
social business strategy
 Always active – opportunities come along every day!
 Should be as real time as possible
 Must include Share of Voice analysis
 Must include comparative demographics

12. Using Social Networks
Suggestions for Key Network Tools

13. Using LinkedIn
 Company Pages are a
great place to start
tracking competitors
• See how many employees
are in LinkedIn
• See how many followers they
have and who they are
• See what Products and
Services they have and how
they are described
• See how YOU are connected
to the competition either
directly or through your
network

14. Using LinkedIn
 Check the company statistics:
• Where employees worked
previously
• Where employees have left
to go
• Who are the most
recommended employees
• Growth in LinkedIn
presence
 Follow the competitors
• Get alerts on
promotions, departures,
open positions and new
hires

15. Using LinkedIn
 Check out which groups
your competitors
employees are active in –
by looking through
relevant groups. You may
want to be there as well.
 Check out the Twitter
accounts of key
competitor employees if
listed and follow if
appropriate

16. Using Facebook
 Search for the Fan Page
through Google search or
Facebook „Browse all Pages‟
 To see all the tabs etc you
need to become a Fan
 Check out their activity and
Fan engagement
 Check out which Pages they
Like
 What content is being posted
and is it driving engagement?
How does this impact you?
 Consider a FB ad to the
followers of your competitors

17. Using HyperAlerts
 Great way to track your
own Facebook page as
well as your competitors
 Can send the alerts to
any email address – not
just your Facebook email
 Can track any Page
 Can set frequency of your
alerts
 Can include posts,
comments, own content

18. Using Twitter
 Use Twitter Search,
Google Search or their
website to find their
Twitter Handle
 What kind of content are
they posting?
 Who are they following?
 What kind of
conversations are they
having?

19. Using Twitter
 You can see all of your
competitors followers
 This could partly be their
client list
 Do a search on Twitter for
the replies to their
username, @mycompetitor,
and you will see valuable
information
 Monitor the @mentions of
your competitors for fan
sentiment

20. Other Twitter Tools
 Tweepi allows you to see follower details all on one
screen, including:
• Bio information
• Location
• Number of followers and following
• Number of updates and even when they last tweeted.
 Great for analysing competitors‟ followers

21. YouTube
 Check out your
competitors‟ video
marketing strategy by
finding their YouTube
channel and seeing what
types of videos they post
and their popularity
through number of Likes
and comments

22. Social Mention
 Real-time social media
search engine to find your
competitors on other
social networks, and view
mentions about your
competitors
 Also has an alerting
feature
 Also try „Backtype‟ to
track URL or person.

23. Geo Location Networks
 Are your competitors taking advantage of Foursquare,
Gowalla, Facebook Places, Whrrl or other location-
based social media? Find out and be sure your company
is “check-in” friendly if applicable.
 See if they are running location based deals
 Use tools like „Venture Labs‟ to understand the level of
checkins, sentiment, issues, demographics of those
checking in.
 Create „nearby specials‟

24. Local Search
 Be sure to check out your competitors‟ profiles on review
sites such as Yelp, Merchant Circle, Google Places and
more to find out if they‟re garnering reviews from their
customers, sharing discounts and taking advantage of
local search to dominate in search results.

25. Competitive Marketing Insights
Find Competitive Keywords Search Marketing Tools
Don’t forget Google Adwords tools

26. Q & A Networks
 Use sites like Quora and
Yahoo Answers
 Keep tabs on competitors
 See what others say
about them
 Post specific questions
regarding them

27. Forums and Bulletin Boards
 Boardreader - don‟t just
focus on social media!
Some of the strongest,
most loyal community
members can be found in
forums
 Boardreader will help you
find your competitors and
conversations about them
on forums and message
boards throughout the
web

28. Bonus – for the Machiavellian
 Pipl for truly scary details
on people you wish to
track
 Klout to see if they matter
or not
 Backtype to see the
competitors social impact
 Slideshare to see how
much content they are
creating and sharing on
this medium

29. Summary
 Social Networks are a
rich source of competitive
data
 Start simple and build to
more complex tools
 If there is a lot of data to
research enlist the help of
a specialist Social
Business Intelligence
organisation like iGo2
 Competitive analysis
requires resources, time
and knowledge.

30. Thank You
Contact Us
Address: iGo2 Group Pty Ltd
153 Walker Street, Level 8
North Sydney 2060
Australia
Email: contact@iGo2Group.com
Phone: +61 2 9954 0070
Website: www.iGo2group.com