Whether you’re a business owner, influencer, or freelancer, boosting your engagement on social media is of the utmost importance if you’re hoping to grow your business. In this article, we explain how you can use your competitors to build engagement, which will then enable you to grow your number of followers organically. 

We then introduce the various services that we offer, which will help you achieve your social media growth goals more quickly. 

So, how can you use your competitors to build initial engagement? Let’s find out. 

 

Begin with some research 

If you’re planning to use your competitors to boost your engagement on social media, your first job is to begin with some research. 

The following steps will help you identify your competitors in the first instance: 

• Step 1: Decide which social media platform you want to use to build your audience. You might choose a platform that you’re familiar with, or you could opt for an account that you think will help you win clients from the start. 
• Step 2: Use hashtags to direct your search. It can be difficult to find your competitors from the outset, so using hashtags from the get-go is a great way to find content that is relevant to your niche. 
• Step 3: Keep records of the competitors that you find. Create a simple spreadsheet on Google docs and record the details of your competitors. This will help you instigate a targeted social media strategy based on your competitors’ content. 
• Step 4: Begin following accounts. When you have a good idea of the landscape, it’s time to click the follow button so you can interact with your competitors. 

Although it might seem a little strange to base your social media content on that of your competitors, beginning with research and understanding what other people are doing in your niche is an excellent way to get started. 

 

Use your competitors to build engagement

It’s important to note that there is a big difference between personal and professional use of social media. Naturally, your personal social accounts are likely to be filled with content from your friends and family, as well as people who inspire you in your private life. 

On the contrary, your professional social media accounts need to be filled with people who inspire you professionally. It’s for this reason that it’s undoubtedly worth setting up separate accounts for your personal and professional activity. 

Once you’ve created your business accounts, you can start following people who are active and successful in your niche. In other words, it’s an important step toward using your competitors to build your engagement. 

As well as your competitors, follow potential clients, accounts that inspire you for different reasons, and profiles that share industry-related tips and content. 

This will help you curate your social media feed with content that is relevant to your work, which is much more likely to help you land clients as a result. 

 

Engage with their content 

As soon as you have followed your competitors, it’s time to get stuck into their content. The best way to do this is to start engaging with the posts that they share. 

There are lots of ways to engage with posts on social media, and doing so is an excellent strategy as far as boosting your numbers is concerned. 

After all, engagement boosts your visibility on social media and allows you to enhance your professional profile. To begin with, try the following: 

• Like posts that inspire you.  
• Add your comments to certain posts – but make sure they add value to the discussion. Try and ask a question if possible to help kick-start a conversation. 
• Share content that you find particularly inspiring or relevant. 

Although it can be daunting to interact with people you don’t know online; your initial engagements don’t need to be particularly taxing. 

Just keep things positive and polite, and you will almost certainly find that the people you engage with will reciprocate and be more than happy to converse with you online.

Ask yourself: What makes them unique? 

Often, it can be all too easy to follow accounts on social media without giving it a great deal of thought. But to inform your own content strategy and use your competitors to your advantage, to use your competitors to build engagement, you need to think about what makes them unique. 

Here are some important questions to ask as soon as you start following accounts within your niche: 

• Does this person or business have a clear content strategy, or do they post randomly and seemingly without purpose? 
• Are their captions and images engaging and emotive? 
• What is their engagement like? Do their followers actively comment, like, and share their posts? 
• What hashtags do they use, and how do they frame their content? 
• How often do they post?

Actively thinking about the accounts you follow and understanding what makes them unique will help you discern which people and businesses are most likely to help you boost your own engagement. 

Blindly following accounts and seeking to replicate them, even if they’re not successful, can actually harm your chances of success in the long run. 

 

Consider how they interact with their audience 

The most successful accounts on social media engage consistently with their audience. Often, this is unprompted, but in most instances, it will be in response to comments shared on their posts. 

 This provides you with an excellent insight into what successful engagement looks like. After all, there are lots of different ways of communicating with your audience on social media, so it’s important to get it right. 

There are lots of ways you can use your competitors’ engagement to your advantage, so think about the following: 

• How exactly do they interact with their audience? Are their comments formal or informal? What tone do they use? 
• Do they always get back to their audience, or do they often leave comments and questions unanswered on their posts? 
• Which posts are their most engaging? And what type of comments do they typically attract? 
• Can you identify posts that stimulate conversation and discussion? If so, what makes them stand out? 

This is actually one of the best ways of using your competitors to your advantage. You have the perfect window into how they engage with their followers, which can inform you as you plan your own strategy. 

You can then follow best practices to help you as you instigate your strategy, ensuring you have the best possible chance of boosting your own engagement from the very start. 

 

Interact with their commenters

Now that you’ve got a good understanding of your competitors’ social media activity, it’s time to crank your engagement up a notch. 

Instead of just engaging with the author of the posts, an excellent tip is to interact with the people who have already commented on the content. 

The likelihood is that many of these people are customers or at least people who are invested in the brand or business in question. 

 In other words, you have a chance of converting them to your own business activities. 

Of course, it’s really important not to spam commenters or overtly try and convert them to your page. This would be distasteful and may even result in you getting blocked by the account in question. 

Instead, it’s important to add value to their social media account by being generous with your praise and considered with your responses. 

When you engage with people who have shown an interest in like-minded businesses, they’re likely to follow you as a result. 

 

Be generous and positive

Following on from the last point, one of the best ways to use your competitors to your advantage is to be generous and positive with your comments. 

Nobody likes logging into their social media profile to be met with criticism or negative comments. But when you’re generous with your praise and positive with your interactions, you will come across well. 

In turn, this helps you create meaningful relationships online, as your competitors will be willing to engage with you and will reciprocate your praise and generosity. 

You don’t have to go overboard, but showing that you appreciate other people’s work and achievements will stand you in good stead as you look to benefit from your competitors. 

 

Create your strategy 

Now that you’ve identified and engaged with your competitors, it’s time to put together your strategy based on what you’ve learned. For any social media campaign to succeed, you need to post engaging and informative content at regular intervals. 

When you don’t plan your content ahead of time, you will struggle to hit your social media objectives and will struggle to grow your account. 

But now that your initial research is complete, you can use your competitors to formulate a content strategy that will help you boost your numbers on social media. 

Your strategy should stipulate the regularity of your posts, the type of content that you share, and what you hope to achieve from posting. 

It doesn’t have to be anything overly complicated, but you need to make sure your strategy is accurate and easy to implement. 

You can use a tool like Hootsuite to help you schedule your posts, as it’s important not to forget to post regularly to your newly acquired audience. 

 

How Managergram can help you boost your social media engagement 

In addition to using your competitors to help you create a social media strategy, Managergram is perfectly positioned to help you boost your engagement on your chosen platform. 

We understand that organic engagement is difficult to come by and that most people and businesses need a little help along the way. 

 That’s why we have created our bespoke social media marketing campaigns that will help you propel your growth on a number of platforms. 

Our highly sought-after Instagram Growth Plan enables you to boost your popularity on the Gram by acquiring monthly followers, gaining automatic likes and views, and enhancing your engagement in a range of other ways. 

We also provide growth plans for YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. In other words, no matter the social media platform that you’re using to promote your business, we have a growth solution that will help you boost your levels of engagement. 

 

Final thoughts 

Use your competitors to build engagement is an excellent way to boost your own engagement on social media. Doing so provides you with a glimpse into what your social media presence could look like and enables you to get the most out of your social media strategy. 

While everyone is different and hopes to achieve their own goals online, the tips outlined in this article will help you grow your online presence and result in more followers and clients as a result.