Why it is a good idea to follow your competitors on social media

With so much around us to create content from, it is inevitable that you will find a wide array of competitors bringing out different ideas and concepts regularly. When addressing the question, whether you should follow your competitors, you might immediately say a big NO. As an individual trying to hack their way into social media, you might not be all that keen on following and maintaining contact with your competitors on the social.

With your primary goal to gain the attention and following of users, this is understandable. Nonetheless, watching your opponent can provide you with valuable insight into your business and motivate you with new marketing strategies. I know this might make you skeptical, but here are some reasons it is a good idea to follow and maintain contact with your competitors on social media. 

5 Reasons you should follow your competitors on social media

• Know what you’re competing against: It is always good to research and understand your competitors to help you better decide your own approach towards the market. You can briefly join their social presence without having to follow to get the essence of style and content, but joining their page you will experience their marketing strategy every day (if they have one). Sit back and track their daily activities and take notes. Keep an eye out for information, arrangement, and layout of the materials.

• Know what works in the market: You for sure agree that social media is a great way to keep up with your friends and families, your favorite brands and more. Social media can also be a great way to keep track of your competitors. You will quickly determine what works for your rivals by daily evaluation so that you can adopt their good strategies and improve the quality of your own company.

• Draw inspiration: Over time, you’ll be subjected to a range of contents from adversaries and start noticing a trend on language style and color/branding image. Take these ideas and make them your own, put them into your brand page so that every post resonates with the story & mission of your brand. You can also figure out what doesn’t work and what gets a greater audience engagement. 

• Keep a check on their progress: Checking on your competitor’s progress and what they are doing to stay ahead in the game can be vital. Examine them and their pages to understand their content quality, branding and more. This will help you determine what is going to work the best for your brand and what your next move is. 

• Stay up-to-date with the industry news: With social media, you always want to be the first one to do something. It is a race against time and who can get the trendiest content out before anyone else. Following your competitors on social media helps you track their progress and yours. This helps you better understand the industry trends and what’s new serving as a guideline to digital success. 

In Conclusion,

Competition isn’t all negative and your competitors will give you a great view of what’s going on and what isn’t effective. From cautionary tales to insights and inspiration, and all in between, competitors are a gold mine of promotional material-you just need to know what to look for! Through keeping things professional, original and creative you can save a great deal of time and effort while you are working hard to build your business. Therefore, we believe you should definitely follow your competitors on social media.