How to Do a Social Media Competitor Check in 30 Minutes

A social media competitor check is half an hour spent looking at three accounts like yours, pulling a few numbers from what is publicly visible, and writing down what they do that works. You do not need a tool, a subscription or a report. You need a timer, a notes app, and the engagement rate calculator open in another tab.

Before you start: pick three, not ten

Choose one competitor who is about your size, one who is clearly ahead of you, and one from outside your town or trade who sells to the same kind of customer. The first tells you what normal looks like, the second tells you what is possible, and the third brings ideas your local rivals have not seen. Three is enough. Ten turns a half-hour job into a weekend.

Minutes 0 to 5: the five numbers

For each competitor, on their main platform, write down:

1. Followers. From the profile.
2. Posts in the last 30 days. Count them. This is their posting rate.
3. Likes and comments on their last five posts. Add them up and divide by five for an average per post.
4. Engagement rate. Average interactions per post, divided by followers, times 100. The calculator does this; the method is in how to calculate engagement rate.
5. Their best post of the month. The one with the most comments, not the most likes. Comments cost the viewer more.

Then do the same five for your own account. That takes the first five minutes and gives you a small table you can look at.

Minutes 5 to 15: read the table

You are looking for three things.

• Posting rate against engagement rate. If the competitor who posts every day has a lower rate than the one who posts twice a week, that is a lesson about what your audience will tolerate. If the daily poster has the higher rate, they have found a format that holds up; go and see what it is.
• Where the comments are. Posts with lots of comments and few likes are usually questions, opinions or local news. Posts with lots of likes and few comments are usually pretty pictures. Each has a place; a feed that is all one kind is a gap you can fill.
• What their best post has in common with yours. Nine times out of ten the top post on a small business account is a person, a before-and-after, or a price. If your top post is the same kind of thing as theirs, you have found what this audience wants.

Minutes 15 to 25: the three columns

Open the notes app and make three columns: copy, avoid, nobody is doing.

• Copy: formats and topics that get comments on more than one competitor's account. Not their captions, which would look odd, but the kind of post. "Staff introductions", "a question on Friday", "the job we did this week".
• Avoid: the posts that sank. Every account has them. Stock photos with a quote, a link with no picture, the fourth promotional post in a row. If it sinks for them it will sink for you.
• Nobody is doing: the obvious thing missing from all three feeds. A price list. Short video. Replying to comments. Anything in this column is yours for the taking until someone else notices.

Three lines in each column is plenty. Stop at nine lines even if you have more.

Minutes 25 to 30: turn it into next week's posts

Pick two things from the copy column and one from the nobody-is-doing column, and write them into next week's schedule as actual posts with a day against each. A competitor check that ends in a document achieves nothing. One that ends in three scheduled posts has already paid for the half hour. If you plan a week at a time, the small-business social media schedule has a template to drop them into.

What not to do

• Do not copy captions or images. Besides being obvious, it tells your customers you have nothing of your own to say.
• Do not compare follower counts and stop there. A rival with five times your followers and a fifth of your engagement rate has a bigger list, not a bigger audience.
• Do not do this every week. Once a month is right. The numbers move slowly, and the point is to act on them, not to keep measuring.
• Do not use what you find to talk about competitors in your posts. It never reads well.

Doing it again next month

Keep the table. Next month, add a row. After three months you have something no report would have given you: a record of whether your own numbers are moving, against three accounts you know. The hard part of that is keeping your own figures in one place when they come from several platforms; how to track social media performance across multiple platforms covers the ways to do it.

WyreIt in brief

WyreIt publishes to Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and Bluesky from one screen, and WyreIt Analytics shows the likes, comments and shares on every post you publish through it, across platforms, in one place. Plans are per account, not per user or per channel, from £19 a month on pricing. There is a 14-day free trial with no card needed. The trial does not include any AI.

Frequently asked questions

Can I see a competitor's analytics?

No. Only the account owner sees reach, impressions, saves and profile visits. What you can see is followers, posting rate, likes and comments, and that is enough for a useful check. Any tool that claims to show a competitor's private figures is estimating.

Do I need a competitor analysis tool?

Not for three competitors once a month. The method above needs a notes app and a calculator. Paid tools earn their keep when you track dozens of accounts or need the history automatically; for most small businesses that is more than the job needs.

How many competitors should I look at?

Three: one your size, one ahead of you, one from outside your area selling to the same kind of customer. More than that and the check stops being something you will actually do.

Which platform should I check?

The one where your customers are, which for most UK local businesses is Facebook or Instagram, with LinkedIn for anyone selling to other businesses. If a competitor is active somewhere you are not, note it in the nobody-is-doing column rather than checking it in detail.