Need a little help spying on your competition? Try these free handy tools

Competition in both the business and leisure sense very often inspires fear. But having this mindset can be a barrier to success and growth.

A bit of healthy competition can go a long way. Having other key players in your business landscape validates that there is a market for what you offer.

And it shows there are methods and strategies out there that lead to success which your business can emulate and improve to elevate your business.

Enter competitor analysis. 

While it may be a little difficult to admit, your competitors are better at some business activities than you are. But rather than viewing this as a negative, you can really learn a lot from these businesses.

By observing what makes your competitors successful, you can discover tactics to boost your company’s sales and increase visibility. Not only this, but you can discover the areas your competitors are not so strong in, and leverage on this to beat them at their own game.

But you don’t want to spend hours upon hours obsessively hitting the f5 button on your competitors Twitter page. Fortunately for you, there are a variety of free online tools that make stalking your competition a seamless task.

1. Google Alerts

Nobody has time to sift through pages upon pages of search engines in order to discover when a competitor has been mentioned.

Fortunately for you, Google has provided a handy little tool that sends an email straight to you whenever there are new results online for a competitor you have created an alert for.

Be sure never to miss when your competitor is mentioned on the web- whether it’s an update on their website, a blog post, an article from a media publication, or even just a link.

2. Social Mention

The rise of social media has been both a blessing and a curse for businesses. On one hand, it offers businesses an excellent opportunity to market their company and reach new customers- as well as a place in which customers can voice their positive feedback.

But on the other hand, it is also a platform in which many customers flock to in order to voice their negative opinion about a business. And this can do a lot of damage.

Social Mention is a search engine where users can search user-generated content such as blogs, images, videos, comments and more for mentions of a company.

For example, you can track and examine all the cases of when your competitor is being mentioned on Twitter and Facebook.

Not only this, but the tool can also analyze for “Passion” (the number of times the same person has mentioned your competitor) as well as “Sentiment” (which measures the ratio of positive mentions to negative mentions).

3. BuzzSumo

Tired of your content not getting the same attention as your competition does? With this great online tool, you can really boost your content marketing game.

Using BuzzSumo, you can see what kind of content your competitor is creating that is performing best. It will display useful statistics like how many shares a post gets on social media and who their major influencers are.

You can use these statistics to guide your marketing strategy, creating content that can truly capture the eyes of the consumer- as shown by your competitor.

Keeping your eyes on your competitors’ activity is a must if you are wanting to grow your business and put yourself ahead in the pack. So without further ado, it’s time to unlock the power of competitor analysis with these free online tools.