If you’re running a brand account or managing creator strategy, Hootsuite just dropped a no-fluff guide that actually walks you through how to do a proper competitive analysis on social media.

You already know what your brand is posting, but do you really know what your competitors are getting away with?

Let’s be real—scrolling through a competitor’s TikTok feed or doom-clicking their Instagram engagement rates can be a mess without a strategy.

This guide gives you a framework to pull back the curtain on what’s working for others, and what’s just noise.

It covers how to find your actual competitors (not just the ones that annoy you on your For You Page), what metrics to track, and how to turn that data into a content strategy that doesn’t copy-paste—it outplays.

Here’s the core idea: Social media isn’t a vacuum.

Your growth depends on what your audience is seeing across the platform, not just what you post.

So if a competitor is racking up saves on carousels or getting replies on every single X post, it’s worth figuring out why.

The Hootsuite playbook lays out how to:

• Identify who your real competitors are (and no, it’s not just who has the same follower count)
  
  

• Use native platform tools like TikTok’s Creative Center and Meta Ad Library to spy the smart way
  
  

• Set up a content tracker that lets you compare apples to apples: formats, tone, frequency, and engagement
  
  

• Pull insights into a strategy doc that actually helps you create content instead of just stalking it
  
  

One underused trick in the guide? Plugging competitors’ links into a URL shortener analytics tool to see what content they’re pushing and how often.

It’s like watching the game film after practice—if you skip it, you’re guessing.

Hootsuite also recommends checking how your competitors handle replies, trends, and creators—especially across TikTok, Instagram Reels, and even Stories.

It’s not just about what they’re saying, it’s how they’re showing up.

If they’re looping creators into collabs or testing short-form video with niche audio, you might want to experiment with your own remix.

In a landscape where trends move faster than you can draft a caption, competitive analysis gives you a calm center. Not to copy. To calibrate.

So yeah, checking on the competition isn’t petty—it’s strategy.