How Are You Monitoring Your Competitors?

by | Sep 1, 2011

Yeah I know you have your eyes on your major competitors. You have your salesmen and distributors feeding you information , but have you used the tools on the internet to see what the social network is saying about you and your competition?

Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part lll said, Never hate your enemies-it affects your judgement. Pretty good advice don’t you think?

You probably keep your eye on your big competitors, but what about similar manufacturers that sell similar products in several markets you’re in? How about your suppliers and distribution partners? It doesn’t take much to get something working from off shore. This is good info and should be integrated into your marketing plans.

Here are some tools that may be useful:

Social Media Monitoring Tools

– Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/

– Klout: http://www.klout.com/ (Growing service for monitoring general online influence by using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube…will be adding more social media at a later date).

– Facebook Insights (Found on the right hand bar of your Facebook Page.)

– WordPress stats http://www.wordpress.com (Provides blog views, post views, etc.)

– Hootsuite Built-in analytics (http://hootsuite.com//)

– Ow.ly click summary (Proposal report to monitor progress.)

– Netvibes: http://www.netvibes.com/  (Tracks trends and sends alerts. New social pack allows for monitoring and analysis side by side.)

www.Compete.com (Tracks unique views on websites; good for checking blogs with their own domains.)

http://www.quantcast.com/ (Much like Compete.)

– Bit.ly shortens links and tracks clicks

http://www.semrush.com (Search your URLs and find detailed keywords, competitors and recommendations for advertising.)

http://grader.com/ (Grades different social media activity.)

What are you using to monitor your competitors?

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