Content marketing objectives.
You have so many.
You need to reach your content marketing objectives on your website and on social media.
Do you know what SWOT stands for?
Guest author Prince Kapoor explains how to make and reach your content marketing objectives by performing a SWOT analysis, a method of competitive analysis.
I bet you’re wondering, “What does SWOT stand for?”
What SWOT stands for: “Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats.”
5 Easy Steps to Perform a Competitor Analysis
Prince Kapoor
If you have a business, it is likely that you have many competitors who operate in the same marketplace.
You are competing for the same customers, which means you can use competitor analysis to figure out their strengths and replicate their results.
Technology advances have made it easier than ever to explore the strategies that your competitors are using. All of this information is easily visible, and even yours will be.
Therefore, it makes sense to use this information to your advantage. Below, we will go into what a competitor analysis is and how you can use it to dominate your niche.
Importance of Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis involves collecting and analyzing important information with regards to your competitors. In this day and age, it is a tactic that you must be using to stay ahead of your competition. Otherwise, you risk falling behind and losing your demographic to competitors.
You should note that competitor analysis is completely legal and ethical. In fact, it is highly likely that the majority of your competitors have performed some form of competitor analysis.
5 Easy Steps to Perform Competitor Analysis
1. Identify Your Main Competitors
First, you should find out who your main competitors are.
Ideally, you should be able to pick out 5-10 companies who are offering similar services to you, and the ones competing for a similar demographic. An obvious source for identifying competitors is Google. You can search for the relevant keywords that relate to your niche to find the highest rank businesses. Additionally, tools such as SEMRush and Ahrefs can do a more in-depth job of finding your closest competitors.
2. Perform an Analysis on Content
After you have successfully identified your competitors, you can begin to perform an analysis of their content marketing objectives. A deep look at their content strategies will allow you to figure out which content marketing objectives are successful for your niche. You should see which primary method of content your competitors focus on.
Your competitors may publish blog posts, videos, case studies, infographics, press releases, buyer guides and more.
Once you start to figure out their main content marketing objectives, you can start to analyze individual pieces of content. You can have a look at specific quality, and compare it to yours.
It is also important to look at the frequency of posting, and see how often they are updating content.
When you have this information, you can start to plan your content strategy objectives and how you are going to meet those goals in a more effective manner.
Your analysis will show which types of content strategy work, and therefore you will know where to put most of your resources.
For example, if your competition is blogging three times a week and you are only blogging once every two weeks, then this is an obvious area for improvement.
However, you must make sure that your content adds value rather than only adding filler content.
3. Analyze their specific SEO Structure
Once you have identified their content marketing objectives, you can also analyze SEO structure. This will have a significant impact on how effective any content strategy is.
Therefore, it is not worthwhile to try and improve your content marketing objectives without addressing on-page SEO factors. Even if you make the best content, your competitors may be outranking you because their SEO structure is better.
One key aspect of SEO structure is keyword usage. You should look at the ways in which our competitor is placing keywords. In particular, look at their titles, URL architecture, h1 tags, internal links and image alt text.
The keyword placement in these key areas will give you more information about their SEO strategy. You can get a better idea of which specific keywords your competitors are targeting.
Lastly, you should look at their backlink profile. Using Ahrefs you can easily see what links your competitors have acquired (e.g. Citations, PBN links, guest posts, editorial links, etc) – once you have a clear picture of what link got them to the top, you can try to emulate their link profile.
4. Look at Their Social Media Usage
In recent years, a social media presence has become incredibly important for businesses. You need to have an active profile on multiple social media channels so that potential customers are able to engage with you.
You can directly interact with loyal customers, but you can also share content.
Therefore, you should take a look at your competitors’ social media networks and analyze the ways in which they are promoting themselves.
You should have a look at what they post, how often they post, and which accounts they follow. The nature of their profile pictures and header images should also be examined.
You should take time on their profiles and learn more about which specific methods they are employing.
Additionally, you should note down which specific social media posts are getting the highest amounts of engagement.
It is important to learn the best practices from those who are creating the best content in your niche and becoming the influencers.
By emulating their content marketing objectives, you can make and reach your own content marketing objectives successfully.
5. Note Down Key Areas for Improvement
Once you have performed a full competitor analysis, you will have a much better idea of how other blogs and niches are deploying their marketing strategies.
You should note down the specific information that you get from analyzing each competitor. It will then be easy to brainstorm ways in which you can implement these successful methods into your own blog.
By performing a competitor analysis, you will be able to find key areas for improvement in formulating and achieving your content marketing objectives.
The end result will be you creating better content for your target audience, and improving the presence of your blog by taking advantage of the best SEO methods.
Improvement can’t be done in a week or a month. Rather, you should apply these ideas consistently to see results. You can’t expect to change strategies and expect results instantly. Your competitors may have spent years optimizing their strategies, which means you need to have a long-term mindset.
Closing Thoughts on Content Marketing Objectives
You will now have a much better idea of how to perform a competitor analysis for your blog or niche. It is fairly simple to perform an analysis, however, you must put the time and effort into collecting all of the important information from your competitors.
You can then make notes of areas that you can improve in. It is important to be regularly watching your competitors so that you can stay ahead of the competition.
Readers, please share these suggestions so marketers learn how to make and reach your content marketing objectives and what SWOT stands for.
I look forward to your views in the comments section. Do you have any suggestions for formulating content marketing objectives?
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