Social Media Competitor Analysis

What is a social media competitor analysis and why is it important for your business?

It’s important to know what other companies in your sector are doing, and the aim of a social media competitor analysis is to learn from your competitors and identify any strategic opportunities.

Is a social media competitor analysis essential?

It should be a vital part of your company’s marketing plan. By undertaking a competitor analysis, you can benchmark your business, learn from your competitors’ strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses, establish the level of service that your target audience expects, what they engage with the most and determine a niche to set your company apart.

Investors and key stakeholders will be particularly interested in a competitor analysis; they want to know that you are both realistic about your positioning in the market and thinking strategically about what direction you need to be heading in to future proof your business.  Here is a useful article from Entrepreneur which also gives you an overview and contact us for details of how we can help.

How do you do it?

Firstly, you need to know who your competitors are; a minimum of three competitors should be identified at local level and at least one at national level.

You should then determine where each holds an online presence across the various social media platforms. On each platform, you should note:

• Are there core channels that each competitor is active on?
• How are your competitors using these core channels to meet their goals of sales, brand engagement and customer service?
• What is the frequency of updates? Are they taking a consistent approach, or is it an ad-hoc?
• What content is being used and how?  Do they use a mix of media content?
• What people/companies respond to the most/best?
• Are they creating tailored content for each channel?

Summary

Once you gather this information for each competitor you will be able to identify who are the leaders in each area, what they are doing best, what your target audience responds to the most, what everyone does well and what nobody does well.  Once you have this information, it will allow you to benchmark your social media marketing plan, by creating an easy to understand competitor matrix, rating each area on the above set of criteria. 

To compete in the world of business you must know your competitors!  For more information on the services BizWizUK offers please click here, call us on 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.

By Ann Davies, Director

Back To Basics

Not every social media platform is right for every business and before you get started, let’s get back to basics, starting with the what, which and who:

What are your company’s goals for using social media?

Are you raising awareness, promoting your products and services, raising awareness of your culture, updates on projects, success stories, or engaging with stakeholders?

Which platforms are we going to prioritise?

Where is your audience/s and what platforms are your competitors using?

Who is going to take ownership?

Who in your company will take ownership for your social media strategy, or will this be a shared role?  Are you going to offer any training to support them, this needs to seamless because mistakes on social media will affect your company’s reputation, and how will you review and evaluate their effectiveness, always testing and measuring success?

Complete a competitor analysis

A competitor analysis in social media marketing is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of your current and potential competitors. Your analysis should be able to identify opportunities and threats.  This doesn’t have to complicated, here’s our guide. 

What is your content strategy?

Your content strategy should relate to the planning, development, and management of content, whether this is written, video or other.  Consider the sources of your content, will your content come from reputable sources, will someone within your company write the content, such as blogs, commentary on latest industry news, case studies or success stories, or will it be outsourced?

Get the tools!

If you don’t have the right tools to help you manage your social media strategy, it will become all too overwhelming.  There’s a never ending array of tools, here are some ideas and recommendations for you to try, depending on your budget.

Evaluate

Over time, you will get to understand, what topics your followers like, and the imagery working alongside.  How many enquiries or call-to-actions (CTA’s) did you receive, or which posts had the most engagements?  You can set your company’s own key metrics depending on what you deem suitable. However, it is important to start at the beginning, back to the basics.

Leave it to us!

We pride ourselves on getting to know our clients’ business’, their products, services and audiences, tailoring solutions to suit.

If you’d like advice or to talk through your current social marketing plan and how we can help, whether it’s a training requirement or outsourced solution, please contact us or give me a call on 0161 826 7181 or connect with me on LinkedIn to discuss ways my team and I can support your business.  Alternatively, we have a whole host of complimentary fact sheets to help you on your own social media marketing journey, right here.

By Ann Davies, Director

10 Fresh Social Media Ideas

One of the hardest parts of managing any kind of social media marketing campaign is coming up with new ideas.  If you’re expected to juggle numerous social media platforms and keep them up-to-date with fresh posts then I’ve put together some fresh ideas especially for you – enjoy!

1.Run a competition or giveaway

Everyone loves a freebie, and they’re a great way to encourage engagement.  However, it’s not as straightforward as you may think;

Is your giveaway going to be related to your brand?  Consider free products, free membership, free guides, free videos, free advice.  It’s not necessary to relate the giveaway directly to your brand but it can be useful to do so, especially if you do have branded freebies to give away.

Does your competition have terms and conditions, point of contact, contact details, etc?  You must include terms and conditions if anything goes amiss, plus it shows your competition in a legitimate light.

2.Create bite-size video

Video is necessary for brands but sadly many don’t see the investment worthwhile.  However, video gets loads more engagement than text alone and especially useful on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  There are some great ideas from the @KrispyKreme feed here.

3.Re-purpose your content

For every piece of content created, either written or video think about ways to promote it beyond its original format.  For example, pull a client testimonial or quote and re-purpose it into an image via Canva (my team really like this platform).  Likewise, re-purpose your video content into bite-size previews of your longer video from your YouTube channel.

4.Tutorials and how-to’s

Free advice, and step-by-step guides and tutorials are a great way to educate your followers.  This can works especially well in the food and drink sectors for cocktail making and food recipes – think Jamie Oliver for one.  Consider short, to the point videos while still giving loads of free information.

5.Go live

There’s nothing more compelling than live video to capture your audience’s attention.  All social media platforms offer the opportunity to stream live.  Whether you’re vlogging from your kitchen table or conducting a Q & A session, responding to your followers in real-time establishes a more personal connection.  Don’t forget you can re-purpose and use again across your platforms.

6.Give your clients the spotlight

What better way to promote your brand than to ask your clients for a testimonial, here’s one that we made earlier.

Alternatively, you could show your clients how much you appreciate them by giving them a shout-out.  This goes beyond tweeting those who support your business with something much more powerful and special.

7.Take advantage of trending news

The best ideas come along when you least expect them to.  Trending news on Twitter and Facebook signify a way for your brand to capitalise on a window of opportunity for such content to be relevant.  Use Google Alerts for hot-off-the-press news and various industry-appropriate news channels as soon as it goes live.

8.Run a social-media exclusive deal

Adding a promotional code to any offer will help you to get the insights you need to know how many are buying from you and how much they are engaging.

9.Respond to your followers

Brand should always be willing to talk to their followers.  Time is precious and taking the time to respond, shows that you care.  Whether you’re praising, addressing a concern or question, or just saying hello, your response can represent your brand in a whole new light.  Think about combining customer service with a humorous twist, telling them how much you value your followers’ feedback.

10.Go behind the scenes

Show the people behind the brand because the core of any brand is their people.  “People buy people before they buy your services.”  Offer a “behind the scenes” snapshot of your people in the office, over a team lunch or team get-together.  It’s important to humanise a brand!

BizWizUK can take your business to the next level by supporting your social media marketing plans. If you don’t have the in-house resource or expertise, we provide an outsourced tailored solution.  Get in touch with me at info@bizwizuk.co.uk or call on 0161 826 7181 or via our contact page.

By Ann Davies, Director

Your Startup on Social Media

Getting your startup business on social media has never been as important and with 3.48 billion people now use social media, that’s an increase of 9% from last year¹. This means an astonishing 45% of the total world population are using social networks, and that is growing every day.

Check out my 5-step process to help your startup get started.

1. Set S.M.A.R.T Goals – Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.  For example, you may want 50 new followers in 30 days.  Use analytics platforms to track your online activity in real-time, we use and recommend Cyfe.
2. Competitors – Look at your competitors by conducting a competitive analysis that will help you to understand who your competitors are and spot any opportunities, strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses.  This is also a great way to draw on inspiration from other businesses that are great on social media, taking note on the different types of content they publish and how they engage with their audience.
3. Set up Accounts – Determine which platforms you are going to use, looking at those where your target audience lie.  Set up and optimise your accounts, completing all profile fields using your industry specific keywords and any hashtags, use branded images that correctly reflect your new start-up and are correctly sized for each individual platform.
4. Start a Social Media Calendar – Start creating a content schedule that lists the date, time and different types of content for each channel.  Use a social media management platform, which will help you to makes finding, scheduling, managing, and reporting on social media content much easier, we use and recommend Hootsuite.
5. Test, Measure and Test Again – Tracking your activity and data using one of the monitoring tools above will help you to see what works and what doesn’t.  Evaluate and test again until you see what works and what doesn’t.

Summary

Help to improve your startup’s brand loyalty, engage with your audience, and build stronger client relationships by getting on social media. This will set you apart from your competitors by showing your audience how your company is different and reinforcing that your business is the experts in their field.

Should you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch, whether that’s for a bespoke LinkedIn workshop for you or your team, a face to face or a remote-based one to one workshop or ongoing, outsourced social media marketing support.

¹ Hootsuite

Deleting my LinkedIn account!

Someone recently said to me “I’m deleting my LinkedIn account”, when I asked why they said, “because I think it’s a waste of time”.  This is what people generally say who aren’t active on LinkedIn.  If you haven’t updated your personal profile in a very long time and don’t want to leverage LinkedIn to help grow your business then yes, delete your account – go straight to your settings and click “close account”.

So, lets’ turn this question on its head.  Think, “what’s in it for me – how can I use LinkedIn in a proactive way?”

Here’s my top tips for starters:

• Upload a professional-looking profile picture

• Add a background image (normally in relation to your company’s brand)

• Make your professional headline more than just a job title – think of your 30-second elevator pitch!

• Turn your summary into your story – who, why, where, when and goals for the future

• Grow your network – connect with people you know and those you meet out networking

• List all your skills

Here’s my top tips that you may not know:

• Edit your public profile URL – if it’s currently your name and a long set of numbers then you can change this which also makes it easier for people to find you.  I use my URL on my business cards, email footers and any other marketing material.

• Showcase your expertise by attaching copies of any certificates to your profile, we should shout about our expertise, it might be the difference between winning that new contract or winning your new job!

• Ask for recommendations (testimonials) from people you have worked with, such as clients, contractors and members of your team – ask others to tell the world how good you are at your job!

• Writing articles to Publisher is a great way to improve your thought leadership position, establishing yourself as the expert in your field, which and will increase your credibility and visibility.  As with any content marketing plan, consistently write a new article, say, one per month (to start with).  However, if something in your industry suddenly became a hot topic of conversation, writing an article will help you position yourself in that topic.

• Use LinkedIn to generate leads through LinkedIn Lead Generation forms.  Companies looking to advertise on LinkedIn can collect quality leads using forms that are pre-filled with LinkedIn profile data and when a member clicks on the call-to-action button on a LinkedIn ad with an attached Lead Gen Form, the form is automatically filled with their contact and profile information.  For more information click here

• Use LinkedIn Search to search as part of your lead generation strategy.  Look for those who are in your target audience.  For example, if I wanted to run a search for an ideal client, the search would look a little like: “Facilities Manager” > “Education” > “Manchester”, you can specify these search terms in the fields provided.  Remember to always tailor your reason as to why you want to connect.  Download one of my free fact sheets here.

Summary

Still want to consider deleting your account?  Think again!  There’s so much to LinkedIn and I hope this blog has been useful, given you a great insight and opportunity to consider some of the less obvious features of LinkedIn, which when understood can take your efforts to a whole different level, including the search capability, which is a free resource within LinkedIn.

Should you need any further assistance please don’t hesitate to get in touch, whether that’s for a bespoke LinkedIn workshop or ongoing, outsourced social media marketing support, to help ensure that your brand stays on top in 2019.

By Ann Davies, Director

Exploring LinkedIn Pages

LinkedIn Pages are often overlooked so let’s explore how your employees can be more engaged and help support your marketing team. LinkedIn Pages are a platform where employees have an opportunity to share the latest news and achievements of your company and to show how much they are engaged.  Pages is also a place to highlight what day to day life is like at your company, whether you’re recruiting or offering potential clients a sense of what it’s like to do business.  This will not only show what dedicated employees your company has but it will also support your culture at the same time.  Use your Page to establish yourselves as leaders in your industry and build brand awareness.

There’s also LinkedIn Elevate, which is a paid-for product that helps companies find content for their employees to then share on the platform. Whatever your company’s aims, it’s important that everyone in your company helps to support the awareness of your brand on Pages by helping to share the news.

However, if you do not have a company Page, LinkedIn’s ‘how to’ instructions are here.

Here’s how you can support your company’s LinkedIn Page efforts from just 10 minutes a week:

• Actively engage and reply to Page updates, by:
  • Following your company’s Page
  • Liking an update
  • Commenting on an update if you feel appropriate (include your own point of view on an interesting update or statistic)
  • Sharing and commenting on an update to your connections (again, including your own point of view on an interesting update or statistic)
• Above all, ask yourself: What will my connection take away from the content I am sharing?  What will help them to click to read more?

Each month your marketing team will be looking at your LinkedIn Pages’ key metrics, and they’ll be looking for analytics such as:

• Page followers
• Post clicks
• Engagement
• Comments

Remember, from just 10 minutes a week your employees can support your Page and that’s great news for all involved!

I have a complimentary factsheet with lots of tips and ideas to support your LinkedIn marketing plan.  If you’d like a copy, please contact me.

Should you need any further assistance please don’t hesitate to get in touch, whether that’s for a bespoke LinkedIn workshop or ongoing, outsourced social media marketing support, to help ensure that your brand stays on top in 2019.

By Ann Davies, Director

Image courtesy of LinkedIn