Social Media Analysis for E-Commerce Businesses

Social media analysis needs to be a crucial part of your e-commerce strategy because it enables you to perform different tasks that could be of advantageous for your own business. Generating leads, improving your customer service or identifying performance trends are only a few of dozens reasons why you should use it.

This article was originally published on the Prisync blog.

But how is it possible to conduct such an analysis? A Social media analytics software can help you with these by analyzing your competition social media performance. On a long-term perspective, it can also help you to be head of your e-commerce competitors.

The following article offers methods and as well benefits of such an analysis for your business.

Learn more about your competition

There are multiple important reasons why e-commerce companies should analyze the social media presence of their own brand and as well of their competition.

One of the most important reasons is to understand the social media strategy of your competitors. Analyzing their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & etc. accounts gives you a clear overview of their main business objectives. It also helps you to answer questions like what kind of content do they focus on and who is their key audience?

That said, digging deeper into your competitor numbers will also help you to identify the challenges they have. Through creating a clear picture of your competitors, it becomes easier for you to improve your own strategy.

Therefore, a competitor analysis is inevitable if you want to grow your business. Be a constant learner and try to avoid the mistakes the others are making and learn to be ahead of them.

Build your social media competitor analysis and conduct your ongoing analysis of your opposing brands. Dive into the data to strengthen your social media activities or to create reports that will keep you informed automatically about the development in your industry.

Benchmarking Methods

Social media analytics tools look at a broad variety of data that create some interesting insights that will help businesses to target key areas for development.

The methods of actively analyzing your competitors are manifold. Here are four methods you should regularly take an eye on.

Audience Size

By taking a look at your social media audience numbers you develop an understanding of how well-known your competitor or your very own brand is.

Especially audience benchmarking gives you a better overview of the presence of your brand on your specific e-commerce marketplace. Through this, it is easier to understand how successful your own social media efforts are or unsuccessful your competitors are.

Should your competitors have a bigger audience than you, it would be wise to rethink your current strategy. One way of doing this could be growing your brand through the use of ad’s on the specific networks you operate on.

Effective customer service

Take a look at the different channels that are used for customer service by your competitors. Dig deeper into their behavior on the different social networks to find out if they provide dedicated customer service channels or if they use their main page for customer service.

This is a good way of knowing more about the questions your competition receives and how they handle those issues. Not only a solid method to learn more about their strategy, but also a fantastic way to learn more about your own approach.

Finally, take a look at the response time. Try to find out how quick you answer to your social media questions and how quick your competitors are.

Choose the right social network

Don’t underestimate the importance of knowing on which networks your competitors are distributing their content own. This can help you to identify the perfect network for your e-commerce business. For example, the information that your competitor is really successful on Instagram could encourage you also to focus more on this network. Identifying new ways of distributing your content is a great way of attracting new leads for your product.

It also gives you the chance to identify new communication possibilities. Meaning by realizing that your competitors are not active on a certain network gives you the possibility of being more active on this network. A great opportunity to generate new leads for your product.

Compare your interactions

Get an understanding of the interaction rate of your page and the ones of your competitors that will help you to get a better understanding of what content is working well and what is not. It helps you to identify what your key target audience is interested in.

Another advantage it could show you is that a video campaign on Facebook is performing well for you or it could show you that your Twitter strategy is not as successful as you wish it would be. By comparing this number you even get a better understanding of your content strategy. Eventually, it even could change your whole content production process.

Set Goals

Always remember all the data you can gather is only helpful when you use it correctly. Effectively using your competitor's and your own data can help to achieve the goals that you’ve set yourself. But be aware to use the data wisely.

• Create a framework which competitor do you want to analyze.
• Establish and identify the KPIs that you want to analyze.
• Understand how this data can improve your own strategy.

This does of course not mean that this a one time process. It is more a cycle that constantly needs to be watched and adjusted.

Important: Brands are constantly adapting their strategy.

Make sure that you constantly monitor your social media analytics data. A great way to do this is to set up an automatic social media report.

Benchmarking is only one of the advantage that a social media analytics tool like quintly can offer your business. Dozens of use cases are out there for that you can use a social media analytics software to improve your own strategy.

Download the E-Book to get the full picture on how to conquer the competitive landscape in e-commerce .

Recommended Learnings:

How Does Social Commerce Work?

Social Commerce is Here - This is What You Need to Know