Instagram Competitor Analysis for Brands

Posted: March 12, 2021 | Last updated: December 13, 2023

When you hear Instagram Competitor analysis, what do you represent? What steps do you need to take to perform competitive analysis on Instagram?

Competitive analysis or competitive research is research that specializes in the collection and review of data about rival companies.

If you google, you will find dozens of articles that will contain a list of tools and a clear algorithm of actions to conduct Instagram Competitor analysis.

Most of these articles will advise you to:

• Identify your social media competitors
• Gather data
• Analyze competitors’ activity
• Plan your further actions based on analysis

What information about competitor accounts is usually collected?

• Followers number: how many followers do they have? 
• Audience growth: how fast is your competitor growing? How many new subscribers do they have per month? Gauge whether your competitors are growing their audience quicker than you are?
• Post and Stories frequency: How frequently are your competitors are publishing?
• Engagement rate: See how many likes and comments your competitors are getting on their posts.
• Content type: What do they post more often: videos, photos, carousel?
• Hashtags: What hashtags do your competitors use? Do they have their branded hashtags? You can use the same hashtags in your posts if they’re relevant, and reach more people.
• Top posts by engagement and views: Take a look at your competitor’s most popular posts. Try to understand why they are performing well.

That is, the entire analysis comes down to the analysis of competitors’ accounts. Useful data, no doubt. You will be able to collect data about your competitor’s content strategy and compare the average account growth with your growth.

HypeAuditor has conducted a survey among agencies and brands who use influencer marketing. A total of 330 respondents took part in the survey (149 Agencies representatives and 181 Brands representatives).

The aim of the study was to understand the role of competitor analysis in influencer marketing activities.

55.7% of agency representatives and 50.56% of brand representatives conduct a competitors’ Instagram accounts research before launching an Instagram influencer marketing campaign and 87% find it helpful to get a list of Instagram posts with competitors’ mentions;

How to go deeper into Instagram Competitor Analysis?

If we limit ourselves only to analyzing the metrics of a competitor’s account, then we will lose a very significant layer of data that can be very useful.

We’re talking about analyzing mentions of competitors’ Instagram accounts that were made in Instagram influencers posts.

What can we learn from competitors’ mention analysis?

• Influence Marketing: Does your competitor use Influencer Marketing?
• Influencer List: Who’s mentioning your competitor in their posts? Why are they doing this? Is this an organic or paid mention?
• Content: What Content Gains the Most Engagement? Why?
• Hashtags: What are the most commonly used hashtags with your competitor’s mentions?
• Sentiment analysis: how does the audience perceive posts?
• Earned Media Value: what is the value of these posts if they were paid?

For the most part, we will be interested in the same questions that we asked about our competitor’s account. Only in this case, we will get much more information.

In dependence on the social success of the brand, it can be mentioned by thousands of influencers.

What will give us such an additional look?

Analyzing your competitors’ influencer marketing strategies can give you valuable insights to fuel your influencer marketing strategy. It can give you knowledge on how to compete with them better.

Сompetitive analysis is necessary because you’ll build:

• A mechanism to develop effective influencer marketing strategies in your target market.
• An idea of what gives your company an advantage over its rivals.
• Gives you an overview of what your competitor is doing right. This information is important for staying relevant and ensuring your marketing campaigns are outperforming industry standards.
• Tells you where your competitors are doing wrong or miss — which helps you identify areas of opportunities in the marketplace, and test out new, unique marketing strategies they haven’t taken advantage of.
• Provides you with a benchmark against which you can measure your own influencer marketing growth.
• Uncovers market trends
• Helps you to market and sell more effectively

Influencer marketing is a new marketing channel, the data gathered about competitors’ strategies is extremely valuable, as it helps to adjust your strategies and use the mechanics that work best.

To get an idea of what competitors’ mention analysis is, take a look at our HypeAuditor review, which helps to Perform an Effective Competitive Analysis for Data-Driven Influencer Marketing.