Rolling your content strategy out to markets that transcend borders requires a good strategy. Many...
"Knowing your enemy" might be a bit extreme in terms of choice of nomenclature, but the sentiment still stands.
Knowing your competition is an absolute must for all tech marketers out there.
It is only second to - knowing your customers.
Here are 6 online competitor checks every tech marketer should be making each week.
1. Monitor Social Media; Facebook
Keep a weekly check on the number of likes and members your competitor's Facebook pages have. This can be a good barometer for how your performance is comparing to theirs.
This could be an early indicator that your practices in your field are changing and give an idea of how people are reacting to it. Good or bad.
Review their performance against yours to see whether you need to tweak your own Facebook marketing policy.
2. Monitor Social Media; Twitter
Track not only followers but the use of Twitter by your competitors.
Are they gaining better numbers? What's causing it; hashtags, humour, images, promotions, interactions?
Decide what you can use and what you can avoid; do both to make sure you're staying ahead of the pack.
3. Blog Posts
Look at your own blog posts over the past month and compare how many there are to your competitors.
How many have been posted? How long are they and what are they about?
Combining this with the next point will allow you to gauge what makes for effective blogging in your niche and really gets exposure.
4. Blog Sharing
This is a great indicator of how blog content has gone down.
Big shares equates to big popularity (usually; check that shares are meaningful and genuine, and don't be tempted to ever buy fictional followers and shares of your own).
Look at which posts are more popular and try to give the readers what they want.
5. Email Frequency
Sign up to your competitor's mailing lists and keep a track of how often they are making contact.
Are your emails swamping inboxes and being ignored or are they too infrequent and getting lost in the crowd?
Balance the need to nurture with the need to avoid spamming and causing unsubscriptions.
6. Content Offers
Look at your website and those of your competitors.
How many free content downloads (eBooks, checklists etc) are you all offering? A good spread to check would be the last five blog posts.
It would be very rare for a customer to travel further back in time than that in search of something to take away.
Get The Full Checklist
This is only an introduction to our quick and handy, FREE competitor comparison tool.
Fully editable and and usable, hit the yellow Compare Now button below to download your completely complimentary tool to help you learn where you stand compared to your competitors.