How to search for competitors on Instagram? It can be done in many ways, from doing it yourself to third party tools. In this article, we will examine one of the methods that include external software, in particular, Talkwalker. We will not so much advise you on purchasing it, but to show you the way to proceed that you can use these tools. Talkwalker is a powerful social listening tool, with a cost designed for small and medium-sized businesses, but there are several at variable prices.
Looking for competitors is part of a broader social strategy. But looking at what our competitors are doing is an essential element. Understand what is happening in our niche allows us to understand the problems and issues of a given niche, and create our campaigns accordingly.
With a social listening tool, you can beat competitors over time and catch trends that are emerging. Or, find all the competitors who are dealing with a certain topic.
To go back to the tool mentioned above, Talkwalker allows, for example, making fairly accurate research on online buzzing. In this software, there is an "Analytics" part that allows, for example, entering the Instagram channels of any company that interests us because it is very active with certain hashtags and keywords.
A further tab, "Themes," allows you to get a clear idea of ??what is going on in the trends, a kind of search for keywords (which we could, of course, go to use) directly on Instagram. You can also search for the most important hashtags and messages. (Of course, Talkwalker makes available already organized data, but it cannot be said that with a little effort, arithmetic and basic statistics this cannot be done independently.)
Another "fastest" and free method is to analyze your major competitors with a tool that tells you exactly which hashtags they are using and what feedback they are using. The program in question is Ninjalitics. Let's start by saying that Ninjalitics is truly a godsend for those who want to launch an Instagram profile from scratch or who want to start increasing their engagement rate, as it provides a lot of data for free and fast, saving a lot of time.
So let's start to understand what to do:
When you use it for the creation of a profile and manage and, as you can immediately see from the following screen, the tool will initially show you some very important data:
If the profile is doing, follow /, unfollow activities.
As mentioned, the powerful tool mentioned allows us to understand what our competitor is doing, and if he is doing it well. For example, we can choose a company that emerged in the previous search for keywords as very active and followed and focuses on it. A Talkwalker chart will allow us to see how many daily Instagram posts are published.
It is also very useful to know what the competitor has just done during the last week, in terms of posts, impressions (comments and likes), and reach potential. If you do it on your own, you will have to be careful what the most successful posts have been a fundamental element for benchmarking.
Here, however, the more "human" analysis intervenes. If the precise data tell us that certain contents are successful, we will have to go into more detail and understand why posts are successful, why images are liked, and if they use tools such as promotions, etc. We must also consider which influencers are involved, if any, by our competitor.
Talkwalker also allows you to see from which countries comments and likes are made. But this figure may be less significant for European business companies, perhaps more interested in the regional distribution of its leads and customers.
As in any self-analysis marketing activity, it is absolutely necessary to have clear ideas with which audiences interact with our competitors. This will also allow our business to take advantage of the same segment, potentially interested in our products.
(A further analysis of our company and product strengths will allow us to create a campaign that constitutes a valid alternative to that of the competitor).
This means, for example, publishing in the same hours as our competitor if these are more appropriate to reach our audience, use similar language to what they already show they like, etc. To return to Talkwalker (but remember that with a little extra work, this can also be done independently), in this tool, there are methods to filter the demographics of the competitor we are analyzing.
A final element is to create, after analyzing each competitor, a table to determine what our "market share" is. It will allow you to see our level immediately and, in the long run, to determine what will be our ideas, our online marketing, and our campaigns are working.
Of course, having a "visual" tool can be a good thing, but in essence, as we said, this can also be done with inexpensive tools and with a little patience and common sense. A good marketing strategy helps you to increase your following count and Instagram likes.
Which tool did you use for the competitor analysis on Instagram? Share your experience with us in the comment box!
