How to Do YouTube Competitor Analysis (5 Steps to Success)
When it comes to YouTube, most brands only look at YouTube analytics and measure the metrics. Just like other platforms, it is necessary to keep a track of your competitors on YouTube too. YouTube competitor analysis is not as widely conducted by brands as compared to Facebook competitor analysis and Instagram competitor analysis.
Well, if your brand has a presence on YouTube then it is necessary to conduct YouTube competitor analysis. Knowing your brand’s YouTube video performance is one thing but tracking your competitors’ performance can play a huge role in deciding your YouTube strategy. (WE SEE THAT GRIN!)
To track Youtube analytics for other channels one has to rely on competitor analysis tools because the native YouTube analysis tool won’t give you data for any other channels!
In this blog, we’ll tell you how to do competitor analysis for YouTube.
Let’s begin.
Before we start with the step by step process of conducting competitors’ monitoring for YouTube, it is necessary to understand that YouTube analytics and YouTube competitor analysis are two different things!
What is YouTube Analytics?
YouTube analytics gives you performance data for your own videos and channel. It gives you insights on how your videos are performing, who is your audience, and other metrics which help measure your channel.
What is YouTube Competitor analysis?
In YouTube competitor analysis, you compare your YouTube content with that of your competitors. The analysis depends on the metrics you track. The analysis tells you where you stand in comparison to your industry competitors on YouTube. YouTube competitor analysis helps you monitor your competitors and tells you where your strategy is lacking.
YouTube Competitor Analysis- Why You Need to Track Competitor Performance
Brands have to hustle on social media platforms to stay relevant. The audience is bombarded with content from all the sides and getting their attention is nothing less than a challenge. YouTube enjoys a humongous audience base which also makes it extremely competitive. This is why you need to keep a check on your competitors on YouTube.
Well, if you are still not clear why you must conduct YouTube competitor analysis for your brand then read the points below to decode the need for a competitor analysis framework.
- Competitor monitoring tells you what’s trending in your niche
Your YouTube competitors can tell you a lot about content creation strategies. With the help of competitors monitoring, you can track the trends on the platform and curate content accordingly. Moreover, your competing brands’ videos can also help you find out what works in your industry. Suppose your rival brand is getting maximum views for how-to videos, then maybe you should start curating videos on similar lines! (YOU JUST NODDED!)
- Competitors monitoring helps you decode their audience base
Every niche has an audience base and it is necessary to know whether you are attracting relevant audiences with your content. Brands may get a lot of engagement on their content but when it does not reflect in their ROI then it is time to recheck the audience. Monitoring your competitors on YouTube will help you check whether you are reaching the right audience.
- Analysing competitor performance will help you find where your videos lack
Video performance on YouTube depends on several aspects. Right from the meta title to the tags, everything impacts the performance of your videos. YouTube analytics for other channels helps you understand where your video is lacking in terms of titles, descriptions, thumbnails, and other such elements. Improving these elements can help you scale up your video performance too.
Now that we’ve covered why you must conduct YouTube competitor analysis, it is time to dive into its step-by-step process.
Guide to Conduct YouTube Competitor Analysis in 5 Steps
1. Identify Your YouTube Competitors
Every brand has social media competitors but who are your competitors is an important question. Conduct thorough market research to see who is your competitor. The similarities between your products and services can also help you decide your immediate competitors. Moreover, having a similar target audience as that of the other brands can also tell you who your competitors are. More importantly see which of these competitors are active on YouTube!
2. Analyse the video content of your YouTube competitors
Once you shortlist your competitors, it is time to see what kind of content they are curating for YouTube. See what is giving them more engagement. Check whether they are hosting giveaways, hosting Q&A sessions or conducting product reviews. This will help you curate better videos too. Compare your video content with your YouTube competitors and you will see where your video strategy needs improvement.
3. Track your YouTube competitors’ metrics
Keeping a check on your competitor’s YouTube metrics like number of subscribers, high-performing videos, likes, dislikes, comments, etc. can help you understand where your brand stands. Measuring their engagement rate can help you rework on your video strategy effectively.
4. Analyse your YouTube competitors’ activity level on the platform
Know how frequently your competitors come up with new videos. This will help you detect whether you are active enough on the platform for your audience. Check when they last posted a video and analyse the frequency of their videos. See how your competing brands are reacting to comments and if they are resolving the queries.
5. Make a note of what your YouTube competitors are not doing
No brand is perfect when it comes to social media marketing. Take cues from where they are going wrong and avoid the same mistakes. Even a small detail like not having CTAs in their videos can be of help to you when creating strategies.
Well, the above-mentioned steps can be extremely time-consuming and painstaking to carry out on a regular basis. Hence, brands must rely on social media competitor analysis tools to measure the performance of their competitors.
Most competitor analysis tools only focus on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. So, make sure you find tools that provide you data for YouTube!
YouTube Competitor Analysis Tool for Competitors’ Monitoring
Tracking YouTube competitors is not really possible with the native YouTube analytics tool. It is best to rely on competitor analysis tools to track your YouTube competitors . Unbox Social is one of the most comprehensive social media competitor analysis tools that can help you with YouTube.
Unbox Social
Unbox Social has a competition tracking solution that can help you track your YouTube competitors . The tool is specially designed to give you in-depth details on your YouTube competitors . Let’s dig deeper into the tool.
Get an overview of your YouTube competitors
The YouTube competitor analysis by Unbox Social gives you an overview of your competitors. You can check your competitors’ subscribers, number of posts, number of views, total interactions, and most engaging posts. This overview will give you
a summary of where each of your competitors stand. The glimpse of the tool below shows the overview window of a competing brand.
Get content insights for your YouTube competitors
The tool gives you in-depth insights on your competitors’ YouTube content. See how the audience has interacted with their content (Likes, Dislikes, Comments, Views). Get information on their top-performing posts.
Get audience insights for your YouTube competitors
The tool gives you deep insights into your competitors’ audience base too. Get the brand score and see where your brand stands in comparison to your industry competitors. Get the content themes for each of your competitors to see what they are talking about on YouTube. The snapshots below show the brand score and content themes for a few brands.
Conduct in-depth competitor monitoring by getting data on their posts
Know how your YouTube competitors’ posts are performing on the platform with the tool’s post-performance data. Get post-wise data on metrics such as likes, dislikes, comments, views, interactions, and video length.
Get advance insights on your YouTube competitors based on keywords and hashtags
This comprehensive tool also helps you find out what your YouTube competitors are posting for a particular keyword and hashtag. This comes handy when you want to find out what content your competitors have rolled out for trending keywords and hashtags in your niche. Additionally, you can also check the engagement rate for that particular post query. The glimpse below shows the data for the keyword ‘Skincare’.
Now that you know where to find data on your YouTube competitors, we’ll give you some tips to scale up your brand presence on Youtube.
- Make sure you post valuable content on your YouTube channel frequently
- Make sure all your videos have something for the audience (ONLY PROMOTING YOUR BRAND WON’T WORK)
- Keep the titles simple and easy to understand (LESS JARGONS PLEASE!)
- Keep your videos crisp and to the point with a dash of creativity
- Make sure your video thumbnails are relevant and interesting (VIDEO TITLE, THUMBNAIL AND VIDEO CONTENT SHOULD SYNC)
Monitoring competitors on YouTube is essential to come up with effective video marketing strategies. The competition tracking reports help you decide whether you are on the right track with your content on the video-sharing platform. Additionally, these insights give you a glimpse of whether your content is connecting with your audience. This data related to competitor performance is useful to get the most out of your content.
Originally published at https://www.unboxsocial.com on June 21, 2020.
