Social media has grown from the fad phase to a business tool that can help build brand visibility and a personal connection with your customers and the public. Did you know that it can also be used to help you find out more about your competitors? Your social media company can provide added value to you by diving deep into the social profiles of the top competitors in your industry. Here are 6 ways social can help you uncover your competitors’ marketing strategies:

1) Your social media company can review competitors’ hash tags and see what topics they are trying to position themselves for. Here’s an example: Say you operate a cabin rental firm. Your social media company can track 30 days during the peak summer rental months to see what themes your competiton is focusing on. It will stay alert for trending hash tags and analyze if the competitors are getting any traction using those hash tags.

2) A social media company can research specially themed days. Monday Motivation, Throwback Thursday and lots of other specially themed days on social media can be used in myriad ways to build buzz for a brand. These themes are often expressed with hash tags, but also need some development with images or video. For example, if you run a kids party rental company, you might run a Throwback Thursday to kids’ birthday parties before inflatables, and show kids running in and out of a sprinkler for fun. Then discuss: Let’s liven that party up with wet and wild slides you can rent today. Your social media company can keep an eye on themes your competitors are using for specially themed days and then the agency can use unique twists on these for your campaigns.

3) Not everything goes the way they think it will – social media #fails. Social media competitive analysis doesn’t always uncover strategies worth emulating. Sometimes it can show how competitors miscalculate and post questionable material on their social accounts. It’s something that a top social media company can protect you from, and even if it does occur under their watch, one advantage to having a skilled social media agency working for you is that they can jump on the issue immediately and work to diffuse it. Reviewing subjects that are objectionable to your audience is something that should be done. Tone, phraseology, context, hash tag use, and other indicators can be analyzed for their contribution to a social media #fail and allow you to avoid or make a swift comeback from a fall.

4) How-to helpers. How-tos are big online, and they’re great on social media. The reason they resonate with people is because everyone at some point needs instruction on how to do something. Being helpful on social is something that you should strive for, and your social media company can make that one of the priorities for your campaign. If you sell grills, you could post grilling recipes, grill favorites for summer parties, and more helpful tips. Think about how you can help and your agency can work in the branding aspect.

5) Maybe there’s a way to work your brand into a different niche that will resonate with consumers you haven’t considered selling to. Your social media company can help you explore those possibilities. Here’s a terrific example from the recent Kentucky Derby for Breathe Right Strips; its Breathe Like a Champion campaign. Breathe Right Strips have been known for years for human use, and the Flair brand became famous in 2014 with Derby and Preakness winner California Chrome, their famous equine user. Now Breathe Right is front and center with their equine strips and the marketing campaign has been hugely successful:

6) How you stack up vs. competitors. A great way that social media companies can help you with analyzing what works and what doesn’t is through self-scouting. Major sports leagues like the NFL employ specialists to self-scout. Have your social media company mine your own data from different time periods and compare it to what your competitors were doing during those times. Let your agency tell you how you stacked up and where your campaign can improve. Then take these findings and the data from steps 1-5 above and watch your social media influence grow!