Facebook for competitive analysis
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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Earlier this week at the AF Expo in San Francisco, sponsored by All Facebook, I looked forward to the session on "Competitive Analysis on Facebook" as a chance to glean the latest and greatest for professional researchers who may be looking for an edge via insights from social media channels. Unfortunately, and a propos of the marketing and technology professionals in the audience, the session was much more focused on tools for leveraging corporate Facebook pages than on hard core competitive analysis.

Still, there were some insights that, at the very least, could provide a useful incremental resource for anyone doing company research. The panellists, including Nick O'Neill, founder of SocialTimes.com and Dennis Yu, managing principal of Facebook marketing for BlitzLocal, suggested monitoring competitor sites to see what types of customer feedback were posted by the fans of the brand. Complaints or kudos could act as leading edge indicators of market opportunities.

While they were talking about it in the context of how to create compelling content for your own Facebook page, the suggestion by panellists to keep track of what type of competitor posts generated the highest level of user "actions" – that is, a like, share or comment by fans – is also well taken. Those posts too contain valuable kernels of feedback on how well a competitor is engaging its customers.

One final note from the talk – the sheer number of people who "like" a brand is meaningless. It's how a company leverages those relationships, and whether those people are the brand's target audience, that really matter. Both are useful points to remember when looking at your competitor's Facebook page compared to your organisation's own.

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