Instagram is one of the popular social media networks with around 1 billion active users. Due to the number of its monthly active users, many digital marketers utilize this marketing platform to reach a wide range of potential clients. The good thing is that even small businesses can benefit from using Instagram as a marketing channel.
With Instagram’s features, including Stories and IGTV, businesses can create valuable content to advertise their products and services. Moreover, they can post relevant content multiple times to capture their potential customers’ attention and use other features such as shoppable feeds and product tags to help users shop directly from their Instagram feed.
However, business owners can’t simply use Instagram and expect significant business growth. Apart from simply creating an Instagram Business account, you must also ensure you know your way around this marketing channel. So, to stay ahead of the competition, conducting thorough research and performing competitor analysis is crucial.
Fortunately, if you’re wondering how to view private Instagram accounts to perform in-depth research, many tools can help you see private users’ accounts. In addition, you can use the tools mentioned below to help analyze your competitors and stay one step ahead.
1. Unbox Social
Unbox Social is a data-driven social media suite that helps businesses with competition tracking, social media analytics, and influencer marketing. This competitor analysis tool enables you to gain insights into each content you post on Instagram. Notably, its Instagram Story analytics allows you to track your top video views, top posts, and engagement.
Apart from knowing your business, Unbox Social also provides a competition tracking tool that helps track your competitor’s actions and determine what type of content works well within your market. You’ll also get access to insights into the customers’ opinions about your competitors.
While Instagram viewer apps allow you to gain valuable insights into private users’ accounts, competitor analysis tools like Unbox Social can help you see which of your competitor’s content is receiving a positive response. When combined, viewer apps and competitor analysis tools can help you develop an excellent content strategy.
2. Phlanx
Phlanx is a competitor analysis tool that helps you track your Instagram competitors and compare their engagement rates. Although some marketers consider Phlanx as an influencer marketing tool, business owners can use the tool to analyze their competitor’s online presence. It has an engagement calculator feature that allows you to evaluate how active your competitor’s followers are.
Using its engagement calculator tool, you can calculate your competitor’s engagement rate based on the number of followers versus the number of interactions a content receives. Accordingly, with this tool, you can determine whether a particular brand has legitimate followers and engagement.
3. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another competitive analysis tool that allows you to get insights into the performance of your competitors on Instagram. It has competitor reports that provide you with thorough information on the content performance of your competitors on Instagram. With this tool, you can track key metrics like engagement, post volume, and audience growth, then filter down by content type and date range to get a focused analysis. Consequently, that gives you a clear picture of how your competitor’s content resonates with your shared audience.
Moreover, Sprout Social also provides a Competitive Listening template that allows you to see the top hashtags and keywords as well as spot business trends and topics.
4. Hootsuite
Hootsuite has several features that help businesses strengthen their competitor analysis. Notably, it provides an Instagram monitoring feature that enables you to track keywords and your competitor’s Instagram activity. It also allows you to create a custom content feed to keep up-to-date regarding a topic, your competitors, or your industry.
Moreover, it provides a competitor report feature that you can use to get all crucial metrics related to your competitors. With this competitor analysis tool, you can track your competitor’s follower growth and the number of their posts and engagement.
5. Brandwatch
Brandwatch is another excellent competitive analysis tool that provides an easy-to-understand graphic that presents your business’s social share of voice. Social share of voice measures the number of times Instagram users talk about your brand compared to how much they talk about your competitors. Thus, you can determine the kind of people who talk about your competitors and how active they are within your industry.
Moreover, with Brandwatch Audience, you can analyze your competitor’s demographics and the content they share. You can also learn how your business performs against competitors and gain new insights to improve your content marketing strategy.
Conclusion
Performing an Instagram competitive analysis can help you see your competitors’ marketing efforts on the platform. You’ll see what content your competitors are posting and whether you’re missing out on relevant types of content that work well within your niche or industry. Apart from that, it’ll also help you gain insights into your business and target audience.
In particular, a competitor analysis can help you set accurate KPI expectations. It also gives ideas for the ideal times to post, an understanding of your prospects’ pain points, and ways to resonate with them. With the help of Instagram competitor analysis tools, you’ll gain an edge over your competitors.
