Page 56 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Analyzing Competitor Efforts

Just as it’s important to understand where your consumers participate in the
social web, it’s also necessary to understand how your competitors engage in
the social web. But where should you start? The following are some types of infor-
mation to consider when you are planning your SMM investigation:

» Keywords being used by competitors.
This is something you have probably heard again and again, but its impor-
tance can’t be overemphasized. If you don’t use the right keywords, you won’t
be found. Make sure to note which ones your competitors are using. They
may not all be “home runs” for you, but evaluating them is important.
» Where their traffic is coming from.
Using a host of tools (detailed in the three sections that follow: “Setting up
Google Alerts,” “Setting up Twitter alerts,” and “Monitoring social networks”),
you can learn more about the traffic to their website and other channels. It’s
worth noting that the strongest brands get significant traffic from social
referrals (people coming in via Facebook and Twitter) along with the search
engines.
» Rankings by important engines.
You can do a quick look at major ranking engines such as Alexa (www.alexa.
com) to see how their sites compare with yours. For very large competitors,
sites like Quantcast (www.quantcast.com) can help you determine how many
people are visiting your competitors’ websites and whether they are visiting
the desktop or mobile versions. Another important tool to look at is Google
webmaster tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools), which lets
you see the approximate traffic of a website and the profiles of the people
visiting, including the other sites they visit and their various interests.
» Which social media platforms they are on and which distribution
channels they use.

As we discuss earlier, if you don’t know where your customers spend their
time, you won’t be able to market to them where they are most comfortable.
You can’t count on their going to your website. Most businesses are now using
several channels besides their websites (such as a blog, Twitter, and so on), so
be aware of their choices and see what could work for you. And as you look at
this data, keep in mind that you may not have the resources to have strong
social presences in all the places that your customers are — you’ll have to
make strategic choices on where to spend your time and money.

40 PART 1 Getting Started with Social Media Marketing