How To Perform a Social Media Competitive Analysis (+ Free Template)

How does a brand like BÉIS rack up a 400% spike in video views while consistently launching products people (this writer included) can’t travel without? It’s more than great design, it’s smart, competitive strategy. 

BÉIS uses Competitive Insights and Benchmarking to measure performance, identify high-impact content and turn those insights into entertaining product tutorials, aesthetically pleasing and aspirational yet, achievable content. This helps them craft a social strategy that turns insights into content audiences truly care about: it’s polished, purposeful and perfectly on-brand.

A social media competitive analysis is the process of comparing your performance, social media strategy, paid social content and overall visual style to your competitors. Conducting a competitive analysis helps you develop, strengthen and keep your content performance at its best. It lets you refine your overall tactics, find strategy gaps and source new inspiration. 

A social media competitor analysis should be conducted on a fairly regular basis, at least once per quarter. It’s also wise to conduct a competitive analysis when starting a new social media campaign or embarking on any new marketing initiatives. Even when you’re confident in your ideas, a competitive analysis ensures you leave nothing in your strategy to chance.

A template helps make sense of all the data involved in a competitive analysis. In our free competitive analysis template, we cover:

• Keyword landscape analysis. 
• Overall competitive landscape that breaks down brand summaries, competitive advantage, target markets, key platforms, marketing strategies, product overview and a SWOT analysis. 
• A social analysis for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, X, Pinterest and LinkedIn. 
• A simple ‘Recommendations’ tab to break down data for each platform and help streamline action items.

Here’s how to use our competitive analysis template:

• Start by renaming it to reflect your time frame (e.g., “Competitive Analysis June 2025”). 
• Review all instructions, tabs and examples to familiarize yourself with the content before diving into your competitors. 
• Begin with the Keyword Landscape tab, then identify your top 3–5 competitors and complete the Competitive Landscape tab with their info and yours. 
• Use the Social Analysis tab to dig into performance metrics, then summarize insights and next steps in the Recommendations tab.
  Share with your team and revisit regularly (we recommend revisiting once a quarter) to stay sharp and aligned with your goals.

While this template is very thorough, you might want to make a few small tweaks to perfectly customize it based on your goals. Tailor the categories to match your brand’s goals. These goals could range from video performance, influencer partnerships or customer service responsiveness. This criteria will help you know what aspect of your competitor’s strategy to hone in on before you start recording your analysis. 

There are approximately 200 million global brands on social media, making standing out amongst competitors no easy feat. The first step to letting your brand shine is understanding how to do it by benchmarking your social performance against key competitors. Does this mean looking at the most followed Instagram accounts and comparing your brand against them? Not necessarily, even if your main goal is to have a comparable number of followers. 

Benchmarking helps your team pinpoint where you’re starting so you can draw a direct line through your tactics, strategy and overall social media goals to where you’d like your performance to eventually be. 

Audience Targeting: Learning Who Competitors Are Talking To

Analyzing your competitors' content matters, as does understanding who they’re reaching. Do you target similar social media demographics? More importantly, are your competitors successfully engaging that audience? If they’re not, they might not be a relevant competitor to compare yourself to on social media. Conversely, if they do successfully reach the audience you’re trying to reach, it’s worth taking a closer look at their content. 

Content Strategy: What’s Working for Them and What’s Not

Analyzing competitor content gives you a front-row seat to what captures audience attention and what’s being scrolled past. It helps you spot patterns in the types of posts, tones and formats that resonate with your shared audience. Maybe they crush it with short-form video, or maybe their carousels miss the mark. Understanding these nuances lets you fine-tune your own content strategy, so you can lean into what works and steer clear of what doesn’t, without all the trial and error.

Engagement Insights: Benchmarking Your Performance

Once you’ve taken a look at a competitor’s brand voice, who they target, which platforms they’re on, the visual content’s look and feel, along with any other aspect of their content marketing strategy, it’s time to dive into the information behind the numbers. To analyze the data, you’ll likely need to tap into a competitive analysis tool that makes pulling and calculating the data easy. Manual calculations will simply take up too much time and energy from your team, but tools make the data not just easy to pull, but also easy to interpret. 

Cost-Effective Testing: Save Your Brand Time — and Money 

Conducting a competitive analysis isn’t only essential for smart brands — it’s cost-effective. It can feel easy to turn to costly consultants, external agencies and expensive tools to improve your social media strategy. And while these things have their place in many brand strategies, it’s not the best use of your spend before doing the work yourself to analyze competitors. 

Conducting a competitive analysis also lets you glean useful information about what works and doesn’t without taking the risk yourself. For example, let’s say a higher-up is convinced that highly corporate, overtly branded images are the right move for your brand. However, you’re convinced this type of content won’t land with your audience. Doing a competitive analysis and seeing how similar competitor content performs (or doesn’t) can go a long way in pleading your case and making room for better, more strategic content. 

Consider a competitive analysis as your testing ground. You can see how celebrity ambassadors, brand partnerships and influencer marketing work for competitors so you can make informed choices for your own strategic direction. 

Industry Trends: Staying Ahead, Not Just Afloat

Some industry trends probably popped out at you in the content strategy phase, but this stage is where you can dive deeper into how your competitors use social media trends to stay ahead. Even the most viral trends aren’t necessarily perfect for your brand. Pay attention to which trends competitors tap into, what they leave behind and how similar target audiences engage with them. This will help inform your team (and maybe even help create some guidelines) to help social media managers determine which trends are for your brand, and which aren’t.

Before planning your next social media campaign, do a little recon. A basic social media competitive analysis can show you what works (and what’s a dud) for others in your space or those who are trying to reach a similar audience. A structured competitive analysis gives you a great starting point and an easy-to-follow structure to discover the best observations.

1. Identify Your Competitors

Start by rounding up 3–5 brands that either offer a similar product, target the same audience or serve a related need. They don’t have to be carbon copies of your business; think of them as friendly rivals whose moves you want to keep tabs on.

2. Choose the Right Platforms to Analyze

Now, don’t go chasing every platform under the sun. Focus on where your audience hangs out and where your competitors put in the most effort. This could be Instagram Reels, TikTok or LinkedIn thought leadership, stick to what matters most to your audience.

3. Analyze Their Content Strategy

This is where the fun begins. Scroll through their feeds and take note of what they post and how they show up. Are they big on behind-the-scenes videos? Do they drop carousel posts with value bombs? Study the tone, visuals and hooks they use to spark engagement.

4. Track Key Performance Metrics

The final, ongoing step is to track performance metrics. While competitive analysis should be conducted quarterly, the measurement phase should be carried out fairly regularly. 

Metrics tell the real story. Peek behind the curtain to see what content hits and what fizzles. Consider the following social media KPIs during this step.

Engagement Metrics 

Track engagement rate, click-through rate and how often content gets shared. Likes, comments, shares and CTRs reveal what’s actually resonating with their audience and what’s getting ignored. 

Content Metrics

Look at posting frequency, post length and hashtag performance. Content metrics should answer these questions: How often do they post? When do they post? Which hashtags (and their frequency) drive traction? These details help you understand the rhythm of competitor content and their visibility tactics.

Audience Metrics

Analyze follower growth rate and the most important audience demographics. Look to answer these questions: Do competitors gain followers steadily? Are they reaching a particular age, location or even users with similar interests? These answers tell you who competitors are reaching and how they’re doing it. 

Reach and Visibility Metrics

Keep an eye on impressions, relevant mentions and share of voice. Use reach and visibility metrics to answer key questions: Who consistently shows up in feeds and conversations? How often are they mentioned by key audiences? These metrics reveal which competitors are seen the most and how much market presence they carry on social.

5. Apply Insights to Your Strategy

Take everything you’ve learned and put it to work. These insights will help you refine your strategy. Maybe you post less frequently but with content that’s more strategically focused. Perhaps you spot a trend they’ve missed. Overall, look for how the data can inform posting cadence, shift creative direction or even rethink platforms that deserve (or don’t deserve) your team’s attention. Use competitor advantages to fill in gaps they’ve missed and double down on what drives results for your brand. 

Competitive analysis is about more than just observation; it’s about action.

Understanding who you’re measuring your brand performance against is vital to the entire competitive analysis process. Direct competitors are brands offering similar products or services to the same audience. Indirect competitors might not provide the same thing, but they compete for attention within your niche or industry. For most brands, analyzing direct competitors provides the most actionable insights.

However, you must take a closer look at how their social media impacts their business goals. Let’s say you’re a food brand experiencing growth on social media. You might look at a direct competitor and see they post infrequently, have low engagement and aren’t necessarily driving sales from their social media posts. This could be due to in-store activations or other areas of their marketing strategy driving the most sales.

Social teams should aim to track 3 to 5 competitors. This provides a solid comparison set without overwhelming your analysis. Too many, and the data gets diluted; too few, and you could miss key insights or trends.

Finding the right competitors to benchmark against isn't always straightforward. If your direct competitors make sense for comparison, great. If not, these quick methods can help you uncover brands that are competing for your audience’s attention, whether directly or indirectly: 

• Google search: Look up top brands in your category to find obvious competitors you may have overlooked.
• Social listening tools: Use platforms like Dash Social, Brandwatch, Sprout Social or Talkwalker to see which brands your audience mentions most often.
• Hashtag research: Explore popular industry or campaign-specific hashtags to spot who’s consistently showing up in conversations.‍
• Platform recommendations: Check Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn for suggested accounts when you follow or engage with competitors — these often lead you to similar brands worth tracking.

You don’t need to stalk every competitor manually to stay ahead. The right tools can uncover what’s working for other brands, and fast. Whether you’re tracking engagement or surfacing content trends, these platforms help you analyze the competition without burning hours in spreadsheets (but there’s an option for that, too). Here's a breakdown of free and paid tools that make social media competitive analysis smarter and more efficient.

Free Competitive Analysis Tools 

Here’s a peek at how free competitor analysis tools compare based on a 5-star rating system. To determine this ranking, we looked at the robustness of the reporting features, the number of data sources the tool pulls from and the speed at which a relative novice can use the tool to its fullest potential. 

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Meta Ad Library

Meta Ad Library gives you a searchable look at every ad currently running across Facebook and Instagram. It’s especially useful for spotting how competitors position their products, what kind of creative they use and what messaging they're testing. Brands can use it to track ad frequency, seasonal campaigns and even see how different regions are targeted.

TikTok Creative Center 

TikTok Creative Center surfaces trending ads, songs, trending TikTok hashtags, creators and more. It’s a go-to resource for understanding what’s performing on TikTok right now. Brands can use it to analyze top-performing content in their category, spot emerging trends and find creative inspiration that aligns with audience preferences.

Google Sheets/Excel

Spreadsheets might not look flashy, but they’re powerful when used right. Brands can track competitor post performance manually over time, log content themes and benchmark frequency and engagement. Paired with simple formulas or automation tools, Google Sheets or Excel can become a scrappy yet effective dashboard for basic competitive monitoring. 

Paid Tools 

Here’s a peek at how paid competitor analysis tools compare based on our 5-star rating system. To determine this ranking, we looked at how expensive each tool is, whether or not they offer a free demo (and how easy it is to access), the number of data sources it pulls from and how many platforms the tool offers. 

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Dash Social

Dash Social helps brands monitor and benchmark their competitors’ visual content performance across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Its strength lies in its ability to surface which posts and formats drive the most engagement, making it easy to develop successful strategies. Brands use it to compare multiple competitors side by side, track share of voice and analyze visual trends with Predictive AI in one place. 

Pricing: 

• Advanced (Most popular and includes Competitive Benchmarking): $1,599 monthly, unlimited users 

Free Trial: 30-day free trial available 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social offers competitor tracking as part of its reporting suite. It lets brands analyze how often competitors post, what content types they use and how their engagement stacks up. The suite also includes platform-specific comparisons, competitive industry benchmarks and publishing trends to help brands refine their own strategy.

Pricing: 

• Professional: $299 per seat, per month 
• Advanced: $399 per seat, per month 
• Enterprise: Custom — Designed for organizations with large-scale social media operations 

Free Trial: 30-day free trial available 

Which tool is right for you?: Dash Social vs. Sprout

Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics provides real-time competitive intelligence by tracking what’s being said about your competitors across social media, blogs, forums and news sites. It helps brands analyze competitor sentiment, top-performing keywords, and share of voice, which is ideal for monitoring how rivals are perceived and talked about online.

Pricing: 

• Essential, $141 monthly, billed yearly (best for small to mid-sized brands)
• Advanced, $249 monthly, billed yearly (best for mid-sized brands)
• Pro, $416 monthly, billed yearly (best for medium-to-large brands)
• Business: $624 monthly, billed yearly (best for large brands and agencies)
• Enterprise: $833 monthly, billed yearly (best for enterprises, multinationals and organizations) 

Free Trial: 14-day free trial 

Brandwatch

Brandwatch specializes in large-scale social listening, making it a strong tool for tracking competitor mentions, sentiment shifts and campaign reactions across platforms. Brands can monitor how audiences respond to competing products or campaigns, benchmark conversation volume and detect rising trends tied to competitors. 

• Pricing: No public pricing
• Free Trial: No standard trial, but demos are available upon request
• Which tool is right for you?: Dash Social vs. Brandwatch

What are the 4 P's of competitor analysis?

The 4 P’s stand for Product, Price, Place and Promotion. In a competitive analysis, this framework helps you compare what competitors offer (Product), how much they charge (Price), where they sell or promote (Place) and how they market their offerings (Promotion). It’s a simple way to assess how your brand stacks up across key marketing areas.

How to do a SWOT analysis for social media?

Start by listing your brand’s strengths (ex. high engagement, strong visuals), Weaknesses (ex. low posting frequency), Opportunities (ex. untapped platforms) and Threats (ex. fast-growing competitors). Do the same for competitors to see where you can improve or differentiate. Keep it honest and data-driven for the best insights.

How do I find my competitors on social media?

Use a mix of tools and tactics: Google search your category, explore hashtags on Instagram or TikTok and see which brands show up in conversations with social listening tools. LinkedIn and other platforms also suggest similar accounts when you engage with competitors — these are great leads for further analysis.

How often should I conduct a competitive analysis?

At a minimum, review your competitive set quarterly. Social media trends shift fast, so checking in every few months helps you stay current. For fast-paced industries or during key campaigns, a monthly review can give you a sharper edge.