Considering Your Competition’s Use of Social Media

November 12th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson in Biz, Marketing, social media

Photo Credit: Griszka Niewiadomski

For detracting from the intelligence of social business as we know it, I advocate flogging the next person you hear say, “we’re really pleased that we have 100 more Facebook fans than our top competitor” (unless he or she is your boss, in which case a more diplomatic approach may be warranted).

Beyond the Surface Level

With as much good advice there is out there about social media ROI, it’s appalling to me that many companies still use fluffy anecdotal evidence to support how they stack up against their competition in the social sphere.

Just because your company has a Twitter account with 1,000 followers and your competitors only have 100 doesn’t mean you should celebrate.

Social media engagement is secondary to customer engagement in general. Companies have been engaging and interacting without social networks for the last century. Maybe it’s not Twitter but an email newsletter that gets killer click-through and conversion.

My point is, if you’re only considering you’re competition’s Facebook fans and Twitter followers, you should be prepared to wake up one morning to find a that your competitors launched a killer social app that transcends the social tools and actually fuels real customer conversations, feedback, and conversion.

It goes without saying, but things happen fast online. You could be on top today, but fail hard and fall tomorrow. What’s really worth your time is not whether or not you’re outperforming your competition today, but in understanding why the community you’ve built and the strategies you use to maintain it are stronger than your competitors’ community and strategies.

The only way to really measure up you’re social media standing with other companies is to track volume, reach, engagement, customer sentiment, and conversion, not just for your company but for your competitors too.

You must, must, must benchmark. Platforms like Radian6 exist not only so you can track your own brand mentions, but so you can benchmark your competition. If you don’t have a listening platform in place, know that you’re analysis of social engagement will be at best surface-level.

What to do with Benchmarks

Benchmarks are only useful if they lead to two questions: How? and Why?

How are my competitors getting so much traffic/so many mentions/etc.?

Why are my competitors getting so much traffic/so many mentions/etc.?

Although these questions look very similar, they are in fact, very different. How questions mechanics—what platforms are they using, how often are the updating, what types of campaigns are they running? Why questions the motivation behind a customer’s engagement with a company.

Too often we spout off, “it’s all about relationships,” without thinking about what that really means. The relationship between brand and customer is less about touchy-feelys and more about giving your customers a voice.

Enabling voice is what the My Starbucks’ Idea campaign was all about, and what lead ENGAGEMENTdb to report that Starbucks is far out-engaging it’s competitors (and big brands in other industries for that matter).

As you’re measuring engagement, pay specific attention at how and why your competition is or isn’t empowering their customers.

Then look beyond your industry for examples of companies that are excelling. And I don’t just mean how @delloutlet and @zappos are leveraging Twitter. I mean like how 300 year-old Fiskars allowed online communities to transform how it does business.

How else do you use benchmarks?

I’d love to know. Please leave a note.

-Andrew

Photo Credit: Griszka Niewiadomski (datarec on Stock Exchange); original photo

Tags: competition, ROI, social media

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Jason Markow

Not sure how I never came across Radian 6. It looks like the exact tool I need right now.

It is easy to forget that the goal of all things social media is not to improve the way you get your message out, but to improve the way you listen to the message coming in.

You listed some great benchmarks. I am actually sitting down with my company to discuss our branding and media strategy for 2010 on Monday and your post has helped me look at my proposal from a different angle. My only question is this- What if the competition is not even competing/ engaging users online/ etc.?

What I mean by that is that the company I work for is so far ahead of the curve that the competition is not even online. I'm not kidding, a twellow search of my target market can all be displayed on one page (compared to a search like "entrepreneur" which yields over 1,400 PAGES of results). How would you recommend setting a benchmark if you are the only competitor?
Andrew Swenson

If your competition isn't online, then seeing how you stack up won't be terribly important, at least initially.

But the fact remains that people in your target market are exposing a need for your services in their conversations. So, if you can see how many conversations there are out there that relate to your business already, you can set some relative benchmarks.

For example:

-We want 15% of consumer conversations about Y topic to include a mention of our company.
-We want to increase the number of consumer conversations about Y topic 20%.
-Etc., etc., etc.

This way you start with a baseline and then you can track how your interactions are helping you improve on that baseline.

Does that make sense?
abbyannette

be aware of your competition, but don't focus on them. your benchmarks should be things like increased engagement with followers, an increased awareness of twitter presence by consumers, looking at what value your followers gain from you, seeing the percentage of negative comments on twitter lower while the positive/neutral goes up, social media partnerships, to name a scarce few.
Andrew Swenson

I like to follow the "customer is more important than the competition" maxim.

You are exactly right. Per usual.