How To Conduct A Competitor Audit on Social Media

Curious about how you stack up against competitors in your industry?

Conducting a social media audit is a key part of your social media marketing plan.

A social media audit assesses how well your current social media use works for you. We can waste time and resources trying to improve things that don’t need improving while neglecting the things that we really need to work on.

An audit is a great way to take stock of where you’re at and identify what you can improve on going forward.

Download My Free eGuide To Conducting Your Social Media Audit

How To Conduct A Competitor Audit

One of the key components of conducting a social media audit is to compare your competitors’ digital footprints against your own. Competitor analysis allows you to benchmark your metrics against others to see how you stack up.

While it’s tempting to go straight to vanity metrics such as follower numbers, it will be of more benefit if you skip the quantitative analysis for qualitative.

• What type of content are they creating and how often are they sharing it?
• Which content is performing well?
• Which content is most shared, commented on, etc?
• How have they chosen to use videos and images?
• Which social media influencers are they interacting with?
• Are they active on networks you aren’t?

Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your findings. Keeping a spreadsheet makes it more scalable (SproutSocial has a neat spreadsheet template to help you get your competitors in order).

Pro Tip: Here’s a super tip from Duda:

One of the best ways to begin a competitor analysis is by identifying the URLs on your competitor’s site that you’re directly competing with. The idea of analyzing an entire website against your own can be overwhelming, so start with the areas of direct competition. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword “best apple pie recipes,” identify the top ranking URL(s) for that particular query and evaluate them against your apple pie recipe page.