It doesn’t matter what sector you work in, what products or services you’re selling or how you approach digital marketing. Two words are of paramount importance: content strategy.
Long gone are the days when content strategy something you could either have or not. Put simply, all brands need a content strategy of some description. Without this it’s difficult, if not impossible, to figure out what is working and what isn’t, and you’ll often find yourself rushing poorly-conceived ideas in a mad dash to get something up and shared.
Earlier this year we ran a blog post on the things content marketers shouldn’t do if they want to succeed. That’s all well and good, but how do you figure out what your biggest competitors are doing right?
After wracking our brains, we’ve come up with these top tips for analysing competitor content strategy.
Opt-in to email updates, these are a core part of content strategy
BtoB Magazine claims 59% of marketers see email as the most effective channel for revenue generation. Believe that or not, you need to be signing up for emails your competitors are sending to prospects and customers. Discretion is advised on the email address you use.
Review their videos
By this we don’t mean giving an honest opinion of the special effects or plot line. Well, not to begin with. By assessing videos you can gain an understanding as to the format and form your audience responds to most. Look at engagement to ascertain if a video was well received or not. Then consider length, tone, title and keywords in description to figure out why it worked so well. Subscribing to YouTube channels is a good idea to gauge this side of content strategy.
Rival IQ
There are so many content marketing tools out there we barely scratched the surface with this list of the best. That mainly focused on tools for content creation and idea generation, though, so what about ways we can get help analysing other people’s activity? We recommend Rival IQ, which monitors the social media moves of other companies— you choose which ones— across all networks.
Target keywords (properly)
If you don’t know Ahrefs then get to know it. The software shows you keywords associated with those competitors are using, search volumes and the quality of keyword copywriting on their best posts. This allows you to build a more effective arsenal of keywords to help rise through the search results pages, which is a fundamental content strategy goal.
Copycat is not a content strategy
All this might sound like we are advocating borrowing, or lifting entirely, your competitor’s social strategy. This isn’t the case. You can be guided by what works elsewhere, but ultimately your own content strategy needs to be unique, individual and authentic. Just like the content itself. Otherwise the audience simply will not respond.
Here in Manchester we are social and content strategy experts. Let’s look at how we can improve your plan.
Get in touch.
