Analysis of competitors in Instagram is necessary to take into account their experience and actions when building your own promotion strategy in Instagram. And it is important not to copy your competitors, but to do better. Ideally, you should regularly do analysis and use this data.
In this article we’ll tell you exactly what to analyze and what this data gives us, and also we’ll take a real example of analyzing your Instagram profile.
Features of competitor analysis in Instagram
An important point: competitors may not know more than you do and it is not a fact that they do everything right. Also, their strategy is not necessarily right for you. Therefore, you need to analyze and use the data wisely, taking into account the characteristics of your profile and the goals you have set for yourself.
Who our competitors are
These are all the people we’re competing with for attention in the feed – commercial profiles and bloggers. Especially those whose target audience is the same as ours. Someone is our direct competitor, and from someone you can spy useful tricks.
There are several levels of competition in Instagram:
- Companies and bloggers compete with all profiles for the attention of those who are just browsing the feed and not looking for anything in particular.
- If a user searches for a product or similar companies to you, you are competing with them for how easy you are to find in search, and who has better visibility. For example, you sell flowers in Moscow, and you have 50 other companies doing the same thing. You’re competing with each other to see who shows up first in a search, who a user will look at first, and whose profile they’ll look at.
- When a user knows exactly what he wants and has chosen several companies, he starts comparing who has better prices, terms, payment methods, service level (for example, how quick the response is, what are the ways of communication).
First it is necessary to make a list of competitors. Immediately discard the empty and semi-vital profiles, as well as those where the only bots. It is better to present all data in the form of a table.
How to search for competitors (several ways):
Search Instagram profiles of those you already know as a competitor. If you have their name and websites, find social media links.
Search Instagram profiles in search engines using keywords.
Search Instagram by keywords, hashtags, geolocation.
What does the analysis of competitors give us
What to pay attention to when analyzing competitors in Instagram? We note not only the advantages of competitors, but also the disadvantages.
What parameters to evaluate:
- Product and service. What kind of product does the competitor offer, how is it better or worse than yours, how is the logistics arranged, how is the communication with clients and so on.
- Appearance. How the account is designed and what kind of impressions it evokes, whether people want to subscribe to it.
- Content analysis. What competitors post and how they design their profile. It is possible to see the ways of design, tricks, UTP, to analyze which content causes the greatest response from the audience.
Analysis of the audience. Analysing specific figures (with the help of services): the number of subscribers, the subscriber outflow/inflow for a selected period, the level of engagement, ER (ERrich, ERview, ERpost, ERday), reach, the number of likes and comments, whether there are bots. - Prices. Perhaps, everything is very trivial – your competitor’s prices are cheaper. Analyze prices, availability of promotions and bonuses.
- How are they promoted. Your competitor is using paid or free promotion methods, what are they? For example, he can attract the audience with content alone, or he can use mass-following or buy advertising.
- Doing everything themselves or not. Competitors can write posts and take photos themselves, or they can turn to freelancers, agencies, or hire an SMM specialist on staff. More often than not, you can tell if a person is writing or not by the style of their writing. And by the profile itself – commercial mostly hire specialists for money.
- Approximate budget for promotion. Exact costs, of course, no one can say, but you can estimate how much advertising. For example, a competitor advertises a blogger – ask about his rates.
- Timing of the promotion. You and blogger N started a page in Instagram at about the same time, but he already has 100 thousand subscribers, and you have 10 thousand. Let’s figure out why he was ahead of you.
- Where else are posted. Competitors can promote themselves in several social networks at once and drive traffic back and forth. For example, getting subscribers to Instagram from TicToc and YouTube.
Important: you can analyze not only Instagram profiles, but also the company as a whole, so it is better to monitor all social networks and the site.
How to do competitor analysis in Instagram
Let’s analyze in more detail.
Product and service
Analyze the product and service of your direct competitors with whom you fight for the attention of specific users – those who are looking for a product or service. Here you can also present the approximate target audience of your competitors.
The design of
We look at how the account is designed and what it feels like in general. You can put yourself in the shoes of the average user and ask the question, “What is it about this profile that attracts/disappeals to me, and do I want to subscribe to it?”
Separately, we study the profile description – whether it has enough information for a potential buyer/subscriber, whether it has a SCC.
Let’s compare two profiles for flower delivery.
Shooting from a single angle, the emphasis on the bouquet, high-quality processing of photos, you can see the details, there are no distracting elements in the photo.
Example #2:
In the profile only shows the site on a free domain, to order must follow a link or write to Direct, write immediately to messengers is not possible. But there are highlights with prices, reviews, reviews, delivery information.
Photos
Collage is used, there are distracting elements, a small photo of the product itself, and it’s harder to see the details.
Conclusion: it is obvious that the first profile causes more desire to subscribe, the second is inferior in design, and it has less contact data.
Content analysis
Conduct a detailed analysis of all content. Here it is better to set aside personal preferences and look at how the audience reacts to the posts, especially the texts. You may not like its content, but subscribers “go for it,” which means you need to understand why. Content should like the target audience, not just you.
- The volume of text and how it is designed – long posts or short notes, whether the text has design or is written as a solid canvas, whether there is a call to action in the text, whether emoji are used.
- The number of hashtags and how relevant to the content topic, popular or not.
- Design and quality of photos – how visually appealing the profile is.
- Number of posts per month.
- Stories – how often they post storis, what they post, whether they use stickers for storis.
- Posting tactics – what time they usually post.
- Engagement, coverage – how active subscribers are, how many comments and likes, etc.
- Whether the author uses all the features of Instagram, whether he follows trends.
Analysis of the audience
Walk through the metrics and see specific numbers. How many fakes and bots, how many live audience. You can also compare the gain and loss of subscribers for the selected period. If people actively like and comment, it means that the content is interesting for them or they are motivated to be active, for example, the author carries out “Like-times”, contests, asks questions in posts, and touches on current topics. But it should be taken into account that comments, reviews and likes can be paid for.
Services for analyzing their own and other people’s statistics:
- Livedune;
- Picalytics;
- Iconosquare;
- Trendhero.io;
- Minter.io.
Prices
We ask for prices (naturally, under the guise of a normal person). Look at the posts, go to the site. It may just be cheaper at the competitors. You can also measure the speed of response to price inquiries, and how competitors communicate with the potential client. Also, look at whether they conduct lotteries, whether they have loyalty programs for customers, what they write in reviews.
Advertising and promotion
Does the competitor use mass activities: view stories, massfollowing, massfollowing, commenting, tagging and so on. Does it use targeted advertising. What kind of posts are running in the ads, what kind of creatives are in them. Whether it collaborates with bloggers. This also includes the approximate advertising budget, whether he promotes himself or turns to specialists, how long he has been promoting himself (how many months/years the account is).
Of course, you won’t be able to track the whole advertising campaign, but there are some things you can see – spy-services will help:
- Livedune;
- ADLover;
- Publer;
- Advancets.
Conclusions from the analysis + real-life example
What can be learned from the analysis? You get a rough portrait of your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use this for your promotion strategy. For example, you have analyzed the data and realized that you need to improve the quality of content, write texts differently, post more posts, and answer subscribers’ questions more often. Your task is to push back on the information you get and do better.
How a competitor analysis in Instagram could look like – on the example of the profile of a psychologist @psiholog.elenalatysh (88 thousand followers). A brief example, you can do an extended one:
| Product and service | Psychologist services, mainly online training for women. Responses during the day. Target audience – women 25-50 years old who want to find their purpose and fulfillment in life. Interested in spiritual development, ready to do meditative practices. |
| Content Analysis |
Minus – no contacts, there is only Direct, or you have to go to the site and there to find Watsapp. The link leads to one training – no links to a more detailed site or social networks where you can learn more about the author. Photo design:
Minus – plates with the name of the training in some photos are made on a gray background in small letters, does not attract attention, you can not see.
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| Content Analysis | Text: Posts of 500-600 characters, mostly announcements of live events, they are often accompanied by questions to subscribers, for example, “Do you feel fear during public speaking?” – This motivates subscribers to leave comments. The posts are broken up into short paragraphs, and there are emoji – 2-3 pieces per post. Announcements use mentions of other bloggers with whom they are co-hosting. The texts are most likely written by the author himself, or by a copywriter involved in the process, that is, who knows the details of the work. More like author’s texts. Minus – most of the texts – is the announcement speeches and appeals to participate in the live broadcast, not enough posts-lectures touching on important topics, they are, but want more or more in-depth. It turns out that the important information can be heard mainly on the air or at the training, but not everyone has the opportunity to be present. On the other hand, the intrigue is preserved and it is possible to gather those who are interested in the information, and therefore potentially ready to undergo a paid training, so that here 50 to 50. Hashtags: Not used. Photo: High-quality professional photography, the emphasis on the author – gives a feeling of self-confidence and a desire to be like her. Number of posts per month: regular, with the frequency of 1 post every 1-3 days. Stories: posts stories, mostly announcements of marathons and answers to subscribers’ questions. Uses a “Questions” sticker. Posting tactics (what time are they published): *see in services Engagement, outreach: High engagement (*see service for specific figures) |
| Audience Analysis | 88,000 subscribers. Live audience, each post gathers 50-250 comments and up to 10,000 likes, there are responses from those who are aware of the training content (that is, not bots), the author tries to respond to comments. * Concrete metrics with numbers to watch in the services. |
| Price | 2 500 for a training course lasting 7 days. There are periodic draws for free places to participate in the training, there are regularly free live broadcasts.
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| Advertising and promotion | *see in services The first post is posted on November 3, 2019. |