In this post, we will cover the following items:
- Funniest joke you will hear today
- How to observe your competitors?
- How to analyze your findings?
- Using best identified practices to grow your business
Funniest joke you will hear today
A young man is riding the subway in NYC. About two stops later, a young woman boards the subway and sits next to him. He looks at her, smiles and says, "You look a lot like my wife." The young woman gives him a stern look and then slaps him across the face real hard.
The young man holding his red cheek says, "Habits match too."
Hope you enjoyed that! Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. Shall we?
When I say using your competitor’s marketing budget, I don’t
mean sending them invoices for the money you spend on your marketing. Far from
it, actually! What I’m saying is observe their marketing efforts closely. Then
use that learning to improve your marketing and generate better results for
you. This is especially helpful if you have tried a bunch of things on your own without any successful results.
How to observe your competitors?
Identify your top 1-3 competitors and subscribe to their social media channels. Look at everything they post and take copious notes. Some things you want to look at are:
Blog Posts:
- Blog titles. Are you compelled to open them when you first read it?
- Length of their blog posts.
- How good is their content? Do you want to read the entire post or close the browser half-way through?
- What kind of content do they post? Text? Podcasts? Presentations? Infographics? Videos?
- How do they begin and end their post?
- How many comments do their posts get on average?
- Do they post the links to their blog post on other social media channels?
- If you want to really drill down, you can look at the relativity of the picture posted along with the post, font type face & font size (is it easy to read or a strain to your eye?), what keywords could be used find this post, how often do they use those keywords in the body of the post, etc.
Facebook:
- Is their Facebook page branded? Do they have a profile picture and cover photo that match their website?
- How is their description written?
- How often do they post on Facebook?
- What kind of content do they mostly post? Text, pictures, infographics or videos?
- What is their content posed as? Questions, statements or links?
- If links, are they from their site or other sites around the web?
- Which posts get the most engagement (likes, comments & shares)?
- Not all their posts will get good engagement. Look at why some of their posts get lot of engagement and some don’t?
- Are they using Facebook applications? Which ones?
- Are they encouraging people to follow them on Twitter and other social media channels?
- How many people like their Facebook page?
Twitter:
- Is their channel branded? Do they have a profile picture, header background and a custom page background?
- What do they tweet about?
- How often do they tweet?
- Do they engage in a lot of conversations or a few?
- What are some of the things they write in Twitter conversations?
- Do they host Twitter chats?
- How many followers do they have?
YouTube:
- Is their channel branded?
- What kind of videos do they post? Marketing messages type? Educational?
- Are the videos interesting to watch?
- What is the average length of the videos?
- Have any of their videos received lot of views? Why do you think that is?
- How many people have subscribed to their channel?
This is just the beginning. But, I’m sure you get the picture. Once you collect all your data, it’s time to analyze it.
How to analyze your findings?
- Identify what is currently working for them.
- Can you replicate these things in your business?
- Can you improve upon these things?
- If you were to do something differently, what would it be?
- Identify what is not working for them?
- Are they not working for any specific reason? Can you improve upon them and make them work for you?
Using best identified practices to grow your business
Done with your analysis? Let’s get into action and put everything you learnt into practice. You will definitely see a difference in your results much faster than you would have otherwise.
I understand this exercise requires a lot of work. But, it is also going to save you tremendous amount of time and money in the long run. Think about it. Companies like GE, Coke, Ford, etc. are spending millions of dollars, thousands of man-power hours and many other great resources to come up with a social media strategy that works for them. All you have to do is subscribe to their channels, find out what is working for them and implement it to grow your business. It’s a simple and effective way to legally use your competitors marketing budget to meet your online goals.
Social media has leveled the playing field where the small guy has just as much advantage as the big guy. Winning in marketing is not about budgets anymore. Companies with most user engagement will win regardless of budget size.
I know I missed writing on some other large platforms
notably LinkedIn and Pinterest. But, that’s where you come in. IF YOU ARE ON
LinkedIn and/or Pinterest, write how you are using those sites in the comment
section of this post (see below). This way, we all can learn from each other.
Cheers,
Mayur
These tricks are really smart and I will surely be utilizing these methods for my new business. After some research I also have got some suggestions for bulk SMS method that is affordable but super effective. Quite interested in getting professional Heymarket business texting app for managing those campaigns.
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