Competition is something desirable, no matter the industry you belong to. However, youβd want to use your competitors as teachers and as a means to grow and develop a better marketing strategy on LinkedIn.
To that end, you should learn how to start a LinkedIn competitor analysis, and how to keep improving this process until it yields useful insights.
So let's go over the steps need to complete a LinkedIn competitive analysis and the benefits it provides.
How to develop your LinkedIn competitor analysis
- 2.1. Establish the purpose of your research
- 2.2. Manually gather LinkedIn data from competitors
- 2.3. Analyze your competitors' content
- 2.4. Analyze your competitors' interactions on LinkedIn
- 2.5. See what hashtags they use
- 2.6. Look at your competitors' ads performance
- 3.1. Learn from your competitors' strategy
- 3.2. Get more LinkedIn insights about your industry
- 3.3. Discover new LinkedIn trends
- 3.4. Establish LinkedIn benchmarks
1. What is a competitive analysis on LinkedIn?
A competitor analysis on LinkedIn is the process through which you compare your LinkedIn performance with the one of your competitors. It's a way through which you look at your competitors and understand their strategy, campaigns, products, strengths and weaknesses compared to your own.
Your competitors are all those who sell similar products and services like you or offer solutions to the problems your customers encounter.
To keep your success in check and make sure your brand is on the right path, you should consider running a competitive analysis on LinkedIn every quarter and every year.
These insights will help you develop a better marketing strategy for your brand and better understand the requirements of your clients.
2. How to conduct a LinkedIn competitive analysis
Now that we have broadly defined what a competitive analysis on LinkedIn means, we can get started with the process.
By performing a LinkedIn competitor analysis, you will better understand the market and your place in it and you will stay on top of major changes in niche or indsutry
Wondering how can you build a complete LinkedIn marketing strategy for your business? Check out this article about marketing for LinkedIn B2B pages!
2.1. Establish the purpose of your research
First things first, you need to give your analysis a purpose to establish exactly what insights you want to retrieve at the end of your research.
After you find out who your competitors are, you should consider writing down the reasons why you need a competitive analysis on LinkedIn and what are your expectations.
Maybe you want to see what patterns your competitors follow when posting content or maybe you want to debunk their marketing strategy based on their behavior.
You should also take a look at the way they interact with their clients and online community to learn some new tactics.
A LinkedIn competitor analysis also helps you be aware of the latest trends in your industry.
Youβd surely want to get one step ahead of your competition.
2.2. Manually gather LinkedIn data from competitors
To gather LinkedIn metrics about your competitorβs followers and engagement, head to the native app's analytics section.
There, under the Competitors tab, you will find yourself among your competitors, and you'll be able to instantly spot any major differences in terms of followers:
Or engagement:
If you decide that you are going to do this without the native app's help, pick up a pen and paper or their digital equivalent: create a social media competitive analysis template. By the way, here's the template I created for Socialinsider's accounts.
First, you need to collect all the data from your competitorsβ LinkedIn page.
If they have a high number of followers, it means they are very popular and they have already built brand recognition across the platform.
Then check how many of their followers actually interact with their content. Now is the point for you to calculate the engagement rate.
Next, pay attention to how your competitors respond and interact with their followers.
Use all the data to develop a report that you will manually complete, using the insights youβve discovered.
2.3. Analyze your competitorsβ content
Once youβve established who your LinkedIn competitors are, you need to prepare for some serious research. To get an idea about their types of posts, you should access their LinkedIn page and scroll through their posts.
Pay attention to the hours they post, the way they write their content, how they insert the keyword, the type of content they use the most. This data could inspire you to alter your brandβs strategy.
2.4. Analyze your competitors' interactions on LinkedIn
Once in while, you should take a break from all the metrics and data, analyze the way your competitors interact with their prospective clients, leads and customers.
The way your rivals are interacting with their followers says a lot about their brand.
Try to learn from their mistakes and initiatives. Pay attention to the tone of voice they use and how fast they manage to answer customersβ queries.
2.5. See what hashtags they use
Another key aspect you should look at is related to hashtags. The hashtags they use for their LinkedIn content says a lot about the kind of users they manage to attract.
With those hashtags that work as keywords, a lot of LinkedIn users get to their content and, if they like it, they even interact with it.
Maybe you should explore the way hashtags work on LinkedIn too and learn how to efficiently use them for a constant evolution.
2.6. Look at your competitorsβ ads performance
After using all of LinkedIn's features for competitive analysis, navigate to the ads section to access paid campaigns.
By analyzing your competitors' paid content, you can determine your focus. Targeting your ads towards your audience's interests can increase engagement rates.
See whether their paid posts reach more people than the organic content. Depending on your conclusion, you may have some changes to make to your LinkedIn strategy.
Here's how to get LinkedIn ads from your competitors:
3. Why is a LinkedIn competitor analysis so important?
A comprehensive analysis of your competitors on LinkedIn can help you evaluate your performance, identify content trends, and understand your audience's interests.
Below you can find a list of reasons why you should consider conducting a LinkedIn competitive analysis
The benefits of competitor analysis on LinkedIn
3.1. Learn from your competitors' strategy
It's important to pay attention to your competitors' LinkedIn marketing strategies, even if they make mistakes or have success stories to tell.
Take a close look at the type of content they use and how their audience engages with it. Observe how they interact with their followers and learn from their tactics.
To increase brand awareness and attract more leads, your content strategy should have a stronger baseline than your competitors. This will give you a competitive edge and help you stand out in the crowd.
3.2. Get more LinkedIn insights about your industry
Analyze your industry and niche by examining both direct and indirect competitors on LinkedIn to understand how quickly and to what extent things have changed.
Keeping up with the latest trends and updates in your industry might feel like a burden, but this process is definitely the spark that lights up the fire of success.
The sooner you learn what's working and what's not, the faster you can implement the changes in your strategy and improve your LinkedIn engagement metrics.
It's important to conduct competitor research on a monthly or quarterly basis to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in your industry.
Keep a close eye on how other brands in your industry are introducing new trends and take note of their content campaigns.
Pay attention to the hashtags they use to follow relevant discussions and content related to your niche, so that you don't miss any important developments.
3.3. Discover new LinkedIn trends
A LinkedIn competitive analysis is not just about understanding the weaknesses or powerful points, but also about discovering new trends on LinkedIn.
Here's how to collect data from the competitors on LinkedIn to get trends for your page:
- track your competitors' content over the years
- tag and group LinkedIn content to spot industry trends
- analyze their visuals to understand how the audience reacted to specific messages
- monitor hashtags and mentions over the years
- track individual profiles, such as the C-level people from your competitors
- understand how fast your competitors respond to specific trends or campaigns
- analyze what influencers or SME are posting. Identify the trending hashtags with higher views/posts.
- pay attention to what their followers are reposting.
Gain deeper insights from LinkedIn's competitive analysis and analyze data within context.
3.4. Establish LinkedIn benchmarks
Benchmarks against top competitors and evaluate the following LinkedIn metrics:
- followers growth
- total engagement
- engagement rate / post
- type of posts by engagement
- likes rate
- comment rate
- share rate
These LinkedIn KPI metrics can help improve your strategy and find new business opportunities.
4. Best LinkedIn analytics tools
4.1. Socialinsider
Socialinsider is the best LinkedIn analytics tool. With Socialinsider, you can effortlessly keep track of important metrics like engagement, impressions, post clicks, video views, and post-level analytics among others.
Additionally, you can easily understand how your LinkedIn content is performing by tagging and grouping your posts into specific content pillars. This will give you valuable insights on how to improve your content and engagement on LinkedIn.
4.2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool which also includes LinkedIn analytics. It also has a scheduling service that comes in handy for their users.
The first plan for using Hootsuite starts at $49/ month.
4.3. Social Pilot
SocialPilot is yet another social media management app which offers LinkedIn analytics.
Using SocialPilot helps you manage your brand on social.
The starting price for SocialPilot is $170/month, but you have several other plans accustomed depending on your needs.
4.4. Klipfolio
Klipfolio is a cross-forward analytics tool that also includes data for LinkedIn. The app analyzes your LinkedIn performance to help you understand what priorities to set.
The advantage is that you can compare your progress month by month, if you need to see your evolution. The starting price for this tool is $99/ month.
4.5. Agorapulse
If you are searching for a social media management tool that could help you with your analytics on LinkedIn, AgoraPulse can come in handy.
For this tool, the starting price is $79/ month.
4.6. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is a tool for scheduling social media posts. Additional, Β this tool offers insights on LinkedIn performance.
The pricing for this app starts at $49/ month.
Final thoughts
A LinkedIn competitive analysis will have you winning not only a lot of experience with this social media platform, but also winning at your LinkedIn marketing game.
Learning what your competitors are doing and how they are handling their business is an opportunity for you to develop better content, better marketing strategies and better products to be one step ahead of them.
Hopefully this article on competitive analysis on LinkedIn is helpful enough for you to determine you to become better than the rest of the brands in your industry.
FAQs about LinkedIn competitor analysis
#1.What metrics do you need to include in a LinkedIn competitor analysis?
When developing a LinkedIn competitor analysis, you need to look at the main KPIs to measure your competitor's performance. On your list of LinkedIn KPIs you should include:
- engagement
- impressions
- follower growth
- likes
- comments
- shares
#2. How often you should perform a LinkedIn competitor analysis
Performing a competitor analysis on LinkedIn should be done regularly to stay up-to-date on your industry's latest trends and strategies.
The frequency of this analysis will vary depending on your business needs and the pace of change in your industry, but it is generally recommended to conduct one every month or when a significant event occurs.