3.2: Engaging with Publics
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(The followiung section is a remix of a chapter by Cheryl Lawson, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,)
Once you’ve established who your target publics will be, you also need to conduct research on your competition. All organizations, businesses, and even public figures have competition. Ignoring what your competitors are doing on social media is not an option. You can learn from their tactics, their successes, and their failures.
So, who are these competitors?
Direct Competition: These are your most obvious competitors. If you’re selling pizzas, it’s the other local pizza shops. If you are a political candidate, your direct competition is the other candidate(s).
Indirect Competition: These are a bit more complex. If you have a toy shop downtown, your indirect competition might be Amazon, who sells toys online to children across the globe.
Replacement Competition: This one is about the alternatives, the substitutes. The folks who sell something different, but can still replace what you’re offering. Like Kindle becoming the replacement for traditional books. If you are the St. Louis Blues NHL team, depending upon the time of year, your replacement competition (for ticket sales and attention) may be the St. Louis Cardinals MLB team or the St. Louis CITY MLS team.
Why should you bother to perform a social media competitor analysis for your strategy?
First and foremost, understanding your competition gives you an understanding of your customers. It’s easy for businesses to get tunnel vision, focusing on their strengths while forgetting to take a look around at what’s happening in the marketplace. Competitive analysis, especially on social media, gives you a fresh set of eyes and a clearer perspective on what your customers want and need.
Secondly, it helps you identify potential threats. Keeping tabs on your competitors’ social media activities gives you a heads-up on potential threats lurking around the corner. Whether it’s a new market entrant or a disruptive technology, a thorough analysis of your competitors’ social media activities will alert you well in advance.
Thirdly, it allows you to set relevant benchmarks. Businesses often set performance standards or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but without a solid understanding of the competitive landscape, these benchmarks may be out of step with the market realities. Monitoring your competitors on social media helps ensure your benchmarks are in line with industry standards.
Moreover, a social media competitor analysis is a fantastic tool for recognizing market gaps. Even in a crowded market, there’s always a blind spot your competition is missing. Through a careful study of your competitors’ social media activities, you could discover an untapped niche or a customer group that’s been overlooked.
For instance, say you’re in the furniture business. You might find that none of your competitors are targeting the millennial market on social media. There’s your gap. You can then develop a social media strategy to engage millennials with modern furniture designs and grow your customer base.
A deep dive into your competitors’ social media might uncover some struggling businesses. Here’s where potential opportunities for acquisitions or mergers could come up. By merging with or acquiring these businesses, you could expand your operation, improve your product quality, and tap into their distribution network to reach new markets.
In conclusion, a social media competitor analysis isn’t just a “nice-to-have” for your social media strategy; it’s a vital tool that can steer your business in the right direction, help you stay ahead of the curve, and ultimately, succeed in the marketplace.
How to Perform a Social Media Competitive Analysis
This article from Hootsuite outlines a step-by-step process for conducting a social media competitive analysis, which is a critical tool for any business wanting to excel in the online space. Here’s a summary of the key points:
- Identify Your Competitors: Start by listing out who your competitors are. These could be businesses that offer similar products or services, operate in the same geographical area, or target the same audience demographic. You can use social listening tools, many of which require a subscription (Mention, Sprinklr, Meltwater, etc.), or conduct a simple Google search to identify these competitors.
- Choose Which Social Networks to Analyze: Your competitors may not be active on all social networks, and neither should you. Prioritize the platforms where your target audience is most active.
- Analyze Your Competitors’ Social Media Presence: Look at your competitors’ overall presence on each platform. How many followers do they have? How frequently do they post? What’s their brand voice and personality?
- Evaluate Your Competitors’ Content: Study the types of content your competitors share. What gets the most likes, shares, or comments? Is it videos, images, infographics, or user-generated content? Use this information to inform your own content strategy.
- Measure Your Competitors’ Engagement: Look at how your competitors interact with their audience. How do they respond to comments or complaints? Do they use any specific hashtags? Do they run contests or giveaways?
- Track Your Competitors’ Posting Frequency: How often are your competitors posting? This can help inform your own posting strategy.
- Analyze Your Competitors’ Audience: This involves studying the demographic details of your competitors’ followers. What’s their age, gender, location, and interests?
- Use Tools for Social Media Competitive Analysis: There are various tools available that can help streamline this process, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or BuzzSumo.
- Document Your Findings: As you gather all of this information, document it in a way that allows you to make direct comparisons between your social media performance and that of your competitors.
- Make Strategic Decisions: Finally, use all this information to make strategic decisions about your own social media strategy. Maybe you need to post more frequently, diversify your content, or engage more with your audience. Whatever it is, a competitive analysis will help you spot the areas where you can improve.
SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis is a useful tool for evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to your organization – or in this context, your social media strategy. Here’s how it applies to social media:
Strengths: These are the things your organization does well on social media. Maybe you have a highly engaged community, your video content receives massive views, or your customer service via direct messaging is top-notch. This could also include factors like having a well-defined brand voice that resonates with your audience, or having influencers or brand advocates who regularly share your content.
Weaknesses: These are the areas where your social media campaign could use some improvement. Perhaps your post frequency is inconsistent, your engagement rate is low, or your content isn’t resonating well with your audience. Or maybe your response time to public queries is too long. Identifying these weak points can help you devise strategies to improve them.
Opportunities: Opportunities are external factors in your organizational environment that could provide a boost to your social media presence. Maybe there’s an emerging social media platform where your competitors are not yet active, or a trending topic that aligns with your brand which you can capitalize on. Perhaps there are relevant events, holidays, or popular hashtags related to your organization that you could leverage for increased visibility.
Threats: Threats are external factors that could potentially harm your social media presence. This could be anything from changes in social media algorithms that decrease your organic reach, to negative reviews or public relations crises that emerge online. Also, it could be potential actions of your competitors – if they’re planning to launch a big social media campaign, for example, it could overshadow your own efforts.
Conducting a SWOT analysis in the context of a social media competitive analysis involves not just looking at your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, but also those of your competitors. This can give you a clearer picture of where you stand in the social media landscape and help you identify ways to improve your performance and gain a competitive edge. Remember, the goal isn’t to copy your competitors, but to understand what they’re doing well and identify areas where you can differentiate yourself.
Example SWOT Analysis for Social Media Competitive Analysis
Company: SunnyFit Apparel
SunnyFit Apparel is a startup in the activewear industry focusing on sustainable and inclusive fitness clothing. The company wants to evaluate its social media presence in comparison to competitors like Lululemon and Gymshark.
Strengths
- Engaged Niche Audience: SunnyFit’s target audience actively engages with their content due to its focus on sustainability and inclusivity, resulting in higher engagement rates compared to larger competitors.
- Authenticity: Their brand story, focused on eco-friendly materials and body-positive messaging, resonates strongly with their followers, creating a loyal and vocal fan base.
- Content Creativity: High-quality, diverse content, including user-generated posts, influencer collaborations, and behind-the-scenes videos, enhances their relatability and visibility.
- Growing Platform Presence: SunnyFit has rapidly expanded on Instagram and TikTok, leveraging short-form video content to drive virality and brand awareness.
Weaknesses
- Limited Budget: As a startup, SunnyFit has fewer resources for paid social media campaigns, making it difficult to compete with the ad budgets of larger competitors.
- Inconsistent Posting Schedule: Lack of a structured posting calendar occasionally leads to dips in visibility and engagement.
- Platform-Specific Strategy Gaps: Strong on Instagram and TikTok, but underperforming on Twitter and LinkedIn, where professional engagement and industry thought leadership could improve.
- Analytics Deficiency: Limited use of advanced social media analytics tools means SunnyFit struggles to track ROI and optimize campaigns effectively.
Opportunities
- Expanding into Untapped Platforms: Growing a presence on Pinterest and YouTube could attract new segments of the fitness community.
- Partnerships with Micro-Influencers: Collaborating with niche influencers who share SunnyFit’s values can drive authentic engagement at a lower cost than major sponsorships.
- Sustainability Trends: Increasing consumer demand for sustainable products aligns with SunnyFit’s mission and can be highlighted through strategic campaigns.
- Innovative Social Features: Leveraging new features like Instagram’s shoppable posts and TikTok’s live shopping can directly drive sales.
- Localized Campaigns: Engaging regional fitness communities through location-specific campaigns could boost brand visibility in untapped markets.
Threats
- Intense Competition: Established competitors like Lululemon and Gymshark dominate the market, with larger followings and more significant resources.
- Algorithm Changes: Changes to Instagram or TikTok algorithms could negatively impact organic reach and engagement.
- Negative Publicity Risk: As a sustainability-focused brand, any missteps—like perceived greenwashing—could harm SunnyFit’s reputation.
- Platform Saturation: Overcrowded social media spaces in the fitness industry make it harder for new campaigns to stand out.
- Economic Downturn: Reduced consumer spending on non-essential goods could impact overall sales and social media ad budgets.
This SWOT analysis helps SunnyFit identify where it excels in the social media landscape and where improvements are needed. While they’ve cultivated an engaged niche audience and excel at creative content, addressing weaknesses like inconsistent posting and underperformance on certain platforms will be key to staying competitive. By seizing opportunities such as platform diversification and micro-influencer partnerships while mitigating threats like algorithm changes, SunnyFit can strategically enhance its social media presence.
In conclusion, research is fundamental in the public relations process for developing strategies, targeting key publics, and measuring the success of campaigns. It ensures PR efforts are efficient and aligned with organizational goals, helping professionals design campaigns that resonate with their target audiences. Research also enables PR practitioners to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns by tracking metrics like a target public’s behavior before, during, and after initiatives. It fosters two-way communication by understanding the needs and preferences of publics, allowing for more meaningful engagement.
Without research, PR would rely on instinct rather than data-driven decisions, undermining its strategic role within organizations.
1. Why is research considered essential in developing PR strategies, and how does it contribute to the effectiveness of public relations campaigns?
2. How does research support two-way communication in PR, and why is this an improvement over one-way communication methods?
3. In what ways can PR professionals use research to justify their value within an organization, and what risks might arise from a lack of research?