Brand marketing on Twitter requires a strong and impactful strategy because the platform is buzzing with lots of activity. Though most brands focus on Instagram for their brand marketing activities, Twitter has now become a crucial platform for the same and cannot be avoided.
Twitter can give you detailed insights on both your competitors and audience but brand owners are often clueless about how to use this platform effectively. Twitter competitor analysis is now gaining momentum because of the increasing number of users and brands on the platform. Having a powerful brand presence on Twitter is important because it helps you connect with your existing and potential audience. In this blog, we will focus on Twitter competitor analysis and competitor analysis tools.
What is Twitter Competitor Analysis?
Twitter competitor analysis, in a nutshell, involves tracking all your competitors on Twitter. You spy on your competitors’ Twitter activity and make sense of their strategy, albeit through ethical means. With the data that you derive using Twitter competitor analysis, you can build well-rounded plans for your brand on Twitter.
To clear out your doubts, let’s take a look at some of the commonly asked questions around ‘Twitter Competitor Analysis’.
Common Questions Associated with Twitter Competitor Analysis
How do you analyze competitors?
To analyze competitors, first and foremost, you need to know who your competitors are. Doing thorough research is important- there are direct as well as indirect competitors. To analyze any competitor, whether it is their offline activity or social media activity, you need to keep track of their performance.
A good competitor analysis tool will help you do just that. There are many merits to getting a competitor analysis tool- about which we will talk later in good detail.
How to perform a social media competitive analysis?
To conduct social media competitive analysis, pick the competitors against whom you want to benchmark your performance. Dig into your competitors’ activity and how they are performing on social media platforms.
Get a social media competitive analysis tool to do the job for you. With the help of the data derived, you can take all important decisions around your social media presence.
What is the purpose of competitor analysis?
No matter what industry you belong to, you do not exist in a vacuum. There will always be other players in the market. This means you will need to keep an eye out for what these ‘other players’ are up to.
The purpose of competitor analysis, in this sense, is to gather competitor data and gain an edge over them.
Once you understand their strengths and weaknesses you are in a better position to know how to frame and implement your marketing campaigns.
Let’s move on to the process of conducting Twitter competitive analysis for your brand.
How To Conduct Twitter Competitor Analysis?
Step 1- Identify your Twitter competitors
The first step to conduct Twitter competitor analysis is to identify who your competitors are. Study your niche and see which other brands offer similar products and services. Finding out your competitors can be done with the help of hashtags. See which other brands use hashtags similar to yours to get a better idea.
Once you shortlist your competitors it becomes easier to compare and analyse.
Step 2- Analyse the audience base of your Twitter competitors
Every brand caters to one or the other set of audience. When conducting Twitter competitor analysis make sure to analyse the audience base of your competitors. This will also help you understand if you are catering to the right audience or if you are missing out on an important audience base.
The participation level of the audience on your competitors’ posts will tell you more about their followers’ quality.
Step 3- Analyse the kind of content your Twitter competitors are putting up
Twitter competitor analysis is incomplete without content analysis. Make sure you don’t just focus on the number of tweets but also keep an eye on the kind of content your competitors are curating. Twitter can be used for more than just text-oriented tweets. Moreover, with the introduction of Twitter Fleets, it is now possible to create lots of creative content.
See whether your competitors are posting more of video content or are posting tweets with images. These competitor insights can tell you where you are going wrong with your strategy.
Step 4- Check the response your competitors are getting for their content on Twitter
The performance of a brand on any social media platform depends on its content. The same goes for Twitter too. See to it that you analyse the kind of response your competitors are getting on the platform for their content. Check the comments they get, the shares they get for different tweets, etc. These competitor insights will help you gauge what kind of content works in your niche and what is the audience interested in. Knowing about the reach and engagement rate of tweets will give you a better idea.
Step 5- Keep an eye on the frequency of their tweets
It is very easy for the audience on Twitter to forget your existence if you are inactive for a long period of time. See how active your competitors are on Twitter. Check how often they post and whether they are quick when it comes to following trends. These details will help you schedule your tweet content better. Simply studying your Twitter competitors will not help you. It is best to rely on Twitter competitors analysis tools to gain detailed insights into your competitors’ Twitter strategies.
Top 5 Twitter Competitor Analysis Tools
Twitter Competitor Analysis Tool #1: Unbox Social
If you want to track your Twitter competitor insights, Unbox Social is a great option! This is a multi-faceted social media competitor analysis tool that helps you track your competitors’ activity through a comprehensive dashboard. The most helpful part about this tool is that it captures all your Twitter competitor data for you.
Let’s look at how you can conduct Twitter competitors analysis with Unbox Social.
- Start by creating your competitor bucket list
Once you click on ‘Competition Tracking’ from the dashboard you will see a ‘+’ sign from which you can create your own competitor bucket list.
- Get an overview of your chosen competitors
Once you create your list of competitors to track, you will get an overview of those competitors with details on follower count, total number of tweets, estimated reach, engagement rate, and most engaging post.
- Get deep insights into your competitors’ content strategy
The tool provides in-depth insights on content and gives details on audience interaction, tweet activity, interactions on the basis of content form, hashtags used by competing brands, retweet ratio, and mentions.
- Know about your competitor’s audience
Further, you will be able to fetch insights on your competitors’ audience base. The tool will also give you a brand score for each brand which will help you see where you stand in comparison to your competitors.
- Get detailed insights on your competitors’ posts
The tool will give you statistics on your competitors’ tweets. Check the engagement rate of tweets, favourites, retweets, and interaction rate.
Twitter Competitor Analysis Tool #2: Vaizle
Vaizle is a Twitter competitor analysis tool that lets you compare engagement levels and Twitter activity in the past 30 days. This free Twitter competitor analysis tool gives you a brief summary of your performance against that of your competitors.
To benchmark Twitter performance, all you have to do is enter your URL and that of your competitor. You can compare your Twitter activity with one competitor at a time, to get an in-depth Twitter competitor analysis.
Twitter Competitor Analysis Tool #3: Social Insider
This is a Twitter competitor analysis tool that helps you monitor your mentions and analyze your performance. It also helps you get a bird’s eye view of your competitors’ performance. Here’s a snapshot of the tool-
Twitter Competitor Analysis #4: Tweet Binder
While Tweet Binder is known to be an effective hashtag tracking tool, it turns out to be great for analyzing Twitter competitors. With Tweet Binder, you can monitor specific hashtags that your competitors are using. Tweet Binder lets you track mentions around specific hashtags. In doing so, you can find out how your hashtag strategy is faring against competitors’.
Twitter Competitor Analysis Tool #5: Tweepsmap
Tweepsmap helps you with audience engagement by giving you information about audience interest and audience sentiment. The tool also gives you insights on the best time to tweet to increase the engagement rate and reach. With the help of the tool, you can also conduct hashtag analysis.
The above-mentioned Twitter competitor analysis tools will surely scale up your Twitter marketing strategy. Let’s look at the latest Twitter marketing trends to improve your campaign planning.
Twitter Marketing Trends For Your Brand
1. Keep an eye on what’s trending on Twitter
The audience on Twitter needs quick updates and are looking for informative content. Make sure you know what’s trending on the platform. Frame your tweets based on the audience preferences and you are likely to get a good response.
2. Make use of Twitter Fleets
The newly launched feature ‘Twitter Fleets’ can be beneficial for your brand because it lets you post content creatively. Fleets are like stories that disappear after 24 hours. Twitter Fleets let you post images, GIFs, and videos. Anything that you can’t post on your feed can be incorporated into Fleets.
3. Don’t overuse hashtags
Using hashtags is important on Twitter because it tells the user what your post is all about. However, overdoing the same can put the user off. Make sure you research the hashtags and use the ones that are in tune with your tweet.
4. Mention relevant CTAs in your tweets
Brands often focus a lot on creating unique and valuable tweets but forget to mention CTAs. See to it that your tweets subtly mention the CTAs because that will get you near to your campaign objectives.
5. Curate more video content
Brands often stick to images and text when it comes to Twitter. But video content is the best way to bring your brand up on the Twitter map. Videos can fetch you a good engagement rate which can help you increase your followers.
Building a strong Twitter strategy takes more than just looking at the data behind your own Twitter performance. You also need to dig into your competitors’ strategy if you really want to ace your Twitter game.
Here are a few more blogs to help you with Twitter marketing.
