How to Perform a Social Media Competitive Analysis

By: Locobuzz Editorial
Last Update: November 1, 2025
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Performing a social media competitive analysis helps brands understand competitors’ strategies, audience behavior, and content performance. With AI-powered monitoring, you can uncover insights that guide smarter campaigns.

Competition on social media is fierce. Brands today are looking for ways to keep their audience engaged and understand what keeps them hooked. If you aren’t aware of what your competitors are up to, you’re already lagging behind.

Social media can be decoded in a way that it doesn’t have to be a guessing game, but rather you can use competitive social insights to drive better decisions and create content that is aligned with what audiences want to view.

Social media monitoring tools can help you understand your competition better and gauge the pulse of the overall market. You can analyse this data and carve a more strategic & data-driven path for your brand.

Here are some steps you can use to perform a social media competitive analysis.

Identifying key competitors

To start out, find 3 to 5 competitors who have the same target audience. You don't have to track every competitor, but focusing on the right ones can be very important. Among those key competitors, try to add industry leaders so you understand who sets the benchmarks. It is also vital to look at emerging players and see what new strategies they use that are worth tracking. Social media monitoring can help you get a good understanding of how your competitors work.

Set up social listening to listen to those competitors

Social listening can be tracked by checking brand names, product mentions, and industry keywords. By analyzing reactions to their posts, you gain valuable insights into what resonates and what doesn't, helping you shape your own content strategy more effectively. There are listening dashboards that can be used to capture every mention of your competitor, getting a better idea of the sentiments people have about the brand online.

Compare engagement metrics

Numbers tell a powerful story. You can get a better understanding of what resonates with your audience. If they have more impressions, you can review why it happens. For Example, if you perform an Instagram competitor analysis. You can measure the competitors' posting frequency and check which posts get the best response. You can also track likes, shares, comments, and retweets by performing a social media content analysis to track what the competitors are doing and why they succeed.

Generate reports and insights

Once you gather all the data, you can turn it into real and actionable insights by creating structured reports. A good report shows more than just numbers. You can understand where your competitors are strong, where they fall short, and where your brand can step in to shine. Comparing your competitors' reports against your own can help you see shortcomings and gaps. You can then take the necessary steps to improve and get better results.

Understanding competitors' strategy

A content analysis tool can help understand the posts that competitors use. You can track how the response changes with reels and static posts. A social media campaign analysis helps understand the ones that drive the most buzz. When you better understand their strategies, then you can create something similar for your own brand.

Analyze sentiment and customer perception

Sentiment analysis is essential to see what complaints and praises surface. You can track if the mentions are positive, negative, or neutral. Having good sentiment can always lead to better engagement, and monitoring customer perception can be vital in learning how you stack up against your competition and comparing whether it improves over time.

Locobuzz has some of the best tools for social media monitoring. It gives brands a complete view of their social media analytics in one platform. It tracks brand and product mentions across multiple channels and languages. It uses powerful AI and machine learning to decode audience sentiment and uncover key trends, influencers, and customer perceptions.

ContextualPulse^TM is powered by AI to help understand the customer’s emotion. It can understand sarcasm, urgency, etc. This helps understand the sentiment of your brand and how it compares to your competition.
SignalSense^TM is also a useful AI-powered capability that can identify sudden shifts in sentiment and alert you regarding any emerging issues that might affect you or the competition. This can help identify problems early and get an upper hand by solving them fast.

By comparing reach, campaign performance, and engagement, Locobuzz helps highlight areas of strength, expose gaps, and show areas to grow. That’s useful, isn’t it? Most importantly, Locobuzz transforms raw data into actionable insights, helping brands adapt quickly, sharpen their content strategies, and maintain a competitive edge.

Tracking your competitors is a smart move.

At the end of the day, social media competitive analysis is about gaining clarity.

When you track a competitor’s performance, listen to customer sentiment, and study content strategy, this data can be used to uncover insights and make smarter decisions. You can use data from social media monitoring to learn and innovate.

By identifying strengths and spotting gaps in the industry, you can learn about successes and failures and understand what to implement. This can help you make smarter marketing decisions to gain loyalty and engagement.

Your competitors’ mistakes & failures can be the source for your brand’s success. So, do what’s working and steer away from what’s not. Don’t just watch your competition, learn from them and outshine them.