Keeping a pulse on your competition’s social media marketing just got a little easier. Over the last month, Facebook released an update allowing business pages to track the number of competitors’ followers. Let’s explore this functionality and ways to use it to your company’s advantage.
On a routine basis, how many of us actively search out our top competition to get a feel for their social media marketing? If you are like me, it’s always on my to-do list and never gets done. Right? Within a few seconds, your business can now attain a quick snapshot of how many followers your biggest competition is accumulating weekly.
To start the process, you need access to your Facebook administration panel. Once logged in, you will find a “New! Pages to Watch” field in the middle of the page. Please see example below.
How do you find your competition in this tool? Facebook pulls your organization’s competition based on two criteria. First, by the address you have placed on your profile, and second by the category or industry in which your company belongs. If your category and geography do not match your competition, then you won’t see them to pick. You will need to do some research if you don’t see your competition right away. Changing your geography and category can be done by clicking the Edit Page tab at the top of your administration panel.
After you select the competitors you want to watch, the tool ranks all pages in order of who has the most likes. Please see below image. We really like the ability to see how many likes each competitor gets on a weekly basis. You can find these analytics on the right of the screen.
Once you have selected all of your competitors to watch, you can see it in a middle panel on the front of the administration side.
Insight & Time Management
The idea behind this new functionality is to help you create a mini competitive analysis and save time. Using this tool allows your business to keep a weekly or monthly log of your competitors’ Facebook likes. It gives you a window into how important social media is to your competition and their social media marketing.
If one competitor starts to spike in new followers, you will know to investigate what’s going on. This new tool helps save time by indicating something new has happened. It gives you great insight into when to check out their page and see if they were running some sort of new social media marketing campaign. If you find this article interesting, we ask that you share it on your favorite social media site.
