Over 2 billion active users. Instagram sure has come a long way since it was created in 2010. With an advertising audience of 1.32 billion, it’s one of the most interesting social media platforms for brands from all over the world and across all industries industries.
In fact, 69% of PR professionals plan to allocate the most of their PR and marketing efforts to Instagram.
If you’re on Instagram – your competitors are probably there as well.
And how to know who’s doing a better job? The answer is simple – through constant Instagram competitor analysis. It helps you understand what your competitors are doing on Instagram, learn from their success and avoid their mistakes.
💡 Read: Competitive Analysis: All You Need to Know
There are two ways of doing Instagram competitor analysis – you can do it manually, by checking your competitors’ Instagram accounts all the time or you can use one of the Instagram competitor analysis tools to help you out. They collect and track your competitors Instagram activities and give you a holistic overview of several most important KPIs you should track.
Here’s our selection of the 9 most popular ones.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a comprehensive solution for Instagram competitor analysis, extending beyond its role as a social media management platform. With a user-friendly interface, it offers in-depth analytics on post performance, follower growth, and engagement metrics, facilitating the understanding of your Instagram strategy. Hootsuite’s distinctive feature lies in its ability to benchmark your performance against competitors, revealing areas for improvement.
The platform seamlessly integrates with various social media channels, providing a holistic view of your online presence. Particularly noteworthy is its detailed hashtag analytics, allowing businesses to refine their hashtag strategies effectively.
Pros:
- Comprehensive social media management – centralized hub for for social media management across multiple platforms
- Content scheduling and automation – users can plan and schedule posts in advance
- Team collaboration features – facilitated teamwork and coordination among social media managers, content creators, and other team members
Cons:
- Limited-real time engagement
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a great tool for social media in general, not just for Instagram. But it’s really good at checking out what your competitors are up to on Instagram. It enables you to compare a bunch of competitors all at once.
It also has social media monitoring features that help you find out what people are saying about your brand and your competitors online. In this context, there is an attitude monitoring feature to determine how people feel about your competition.
While it doesn’t have advanced Instagram analysis tools, Sprout Social is a solid choice for handling all your social media marketing needs.
Read Social Listening for Instagram: What Is It And How To Do It
Pros:
- Efficient social media monitoring – the platform excels in monitoring social media conversations related to your brand and competitors
- User-friendly Interface: Sprout Social is known for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced users.
- End-to-end social media management: While not solely focused on Instagram, Sprout Social provides a comprehensive solution for overall social media marketing and management needs.
Cons:
- Overwhelming features for smaller businesses
Determ
Determ is an AI-powered media monitoring platform that trackes over 100 million online sources and delivers all mentions of your desired platform to a single dashboard. With its advanced filtering options it enables you to focus on specific social media channels, like Instagram, pull out data and analyze performance. Additionally, it provides a range of preset and custom reports that do the heavy lifting for you – the data is visually represented in a range of customizable charts and each chart can be additionally interpreted with the help of an AI assistant Synthia. Ultimately – Synthia gives an overview of the tone of voice of your selected mentions, sentiment and gives a set of tips for your marketing strategy.
Apart from sentiment analysis and basic and advanced reports, Determ offers a Competitive Analysis report, where you can set your brand against your competitors and see right away how you’re standing on Instagram.
Read 6 Ways to Use AI in Competitive Analysis
Features
- Real-time tracking – Determ delivers all mentions to your dashboard in real-time
- A huge range of reporting options, including customizable options – there are several preset reports available (basic, advanced, competitive analysis, sentiment analysis, demographics) and the possibility to
- AI-empowered charts – AI assstant Synthia is integrated in reports, so you can click on an unusual spike in the chart, for example, and get a summary of the mentions on that day, that reveal what happened
- A separate competitive analysis report – a preset report that allows you to benchmark your strategy against your competitors in just a couple of clicks
- Strong filtering options – Determ allows you to filter your feed based on the social media network, language, influence score, tags, location, influencers, interactions, engagement, etc.
- A comprehensive set of alerting options enabling you to stay in control of your brand reputation – you can opt for Smart or Spike Alerts. The first ones are triggered whenever your desired keyword is mentioned and the latter when there is unusual spike in the number of mentions of your keyword. In addition, you can set up Net Sentiment Spike Alert, that lets you know when there is a sudden change in the sentiment around your mentions.
- User-friendly interface
- Excellent customer support
If you’d like to test Determ for Instagram competitor analysis, book a demo with one of our experts, we’d be happy to help you boost your strategy!
Phlanx
Phlanx is known for its services that connect brands and businesses with influencers for marketing campaigns. The platform provides tools to identify suitable influencers based on criteria such as niche, audience demographics, and engagement rates. Brands can collaborate with influencers to promote their products or services to a targeted audience.
Users on Phlanx often have access to metrics and analytics that help measure the effectiveness of influencer collaborations. This includes tracking engagement, reach, and other key performance indicators to assess the success of theirs and their competitors’ marketing campaigns.
Pros:
- Influencer identification – helps businesses identify and connect with influencers that align with their target audience and marketing objectives.
- Performance analytics – metrics and analytics to measure the success of (among others) Instagram influencer marketing campaigns.
- Cost-effective marketing – especially for businesses looking to reach a specific niche audience.
Cons:
- Budget considerations
Vaizle
Vaizle is a social media analytics and competitive intelligence platform. It is designed to help businesses and marketers analyze and optimize their social media performance. Vaizle provides insights into key metrics, competitor activities, and industry trends across various social media platforms. Users can track engagement, monitor brand mentions, and gain a comprehensive understanding of their social media presence.
Additionally, Vaizle offers tools for competitor benchmarking, allowing businesses to compare their performance with industry rivals on Instagram.
Read The Importance of Instagram Customer Care
Pros:
- Content performance analysis – the platform offers tools to analyze the performance of individual social media posts
- Audience insights – Vaizle may provide demographic and behavioral insights about the social media audience, helping businesses refine their targeting strategies.
- Customizable dashboards – users may have the ability to create customized dashboards tailored to their specific social media goals and KPIs
Cons:
- Limited historical data
Sociality.io
Sociality.io is a social media management platform that streamlines the management of multiple social media accounts. With advanced content scheduling capabilities, users can strategically plan and schedule posts across various platforms. The platform offers robust analytics and reporting features, providing valuable insights into key performance metrics and audience engagement.
Pros:
- Multi-platform management – Sociality.io allows users to manage multiple social media accounts from a centralized platform, streamlining the process of posting and monitoring content across various channels.
- Content scheduling – the platform offers advanced scheduling features, enabling users to plan and schedule social media posts in advance for consistent and strategic content delivery.
- Analytics and reporting – Sociality.io provides robust analytics and reporting tools, offering insights into key performance metrics, audience engagement, and the overall effectiveness of social media strategies.
Cons:
- Limited integration
Social Blade
Social Blade is an online platform known for providing comprehensive analytics and statistics related to social media channels, particularly YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter. Users can access a wealth of information, including real-time data on subscriber counts, view counts, and engagement metrics for individual creators or channels. Social Blade offers a convenient way for content creators, marketers, and enthusiasts to track the growth and performance of social media accounts.
Pros:
- Transparency – Social Blade promotes transparency by making social media metrics and performance data publicly accessible.
- Comprehensive analytics – Social Blade provides in-depth analytics and statistics for various social media platforms, offering users insights into subscriber counts, view counts, and engagement metrics.
- Competitor analysis – Social Blade allows users to compare and analyze the performance of different social media channels and creators, facilitating competitor benchmarking and strategic decision-making.
Cons:
- No customized analytics
Keyhole
Keyhole is a social media analytics and hashtag tracking platform . It empowers businesses, marketers, and influencers to gain valuable insights into their online presence. With a focus on real-time data, Keyhole provides comprehensive analytics, tracking metrics such as hashtag performance, audience engagement, and social media reach across various platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Users can monitor brand mentions, track relevant keywords, and assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns through intuitive visualizations and detailed reports. Keyhole’s analytics also extend to competitor benchmarking, allowing users to compare their social media performance against industry rivals.
Pros:
- Comprehensive hashtag tracking – the platform specializes in hashtag tracking. It allows users to monitor and analyze the performance of specific hashtags across various social media platforms.
- Demographic insights – Keyhole may provide demographic information about the audience engaging with specific hashtags or topics, assisting in targeted marketing efforts.
- Competitor benchmarking – users can leverage Keyhole to compare their social media metrics with competitors, gaining valuable insights for strategic planning and improvement
Cons:
- Limited customization
Sked Social
Sked Social enables users to schedule posts in advance, ensuring a consistent and well-timed online presence. With support for popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, the platform offers a centralized hub for managing multiple accounts. Sked Social distinguishes itself with features like visual planning, allowing users to preview and arrange their Instagram feed before publishing.
Additionally, the platform supports collaborative workflows, making it convenient for teams to coordinate on content creation and scheduling. Sked Social aims to simplify the social media management process. It provides users with tools to optimize engagement, track performance, and enhance their overall digital marketing strategies.
Pros:
- Multi-platform scheduling – Sked Social supports scheduling and management for popular social media platforms. These include Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, providing users with a centralized solution for cross-channel planning.
- Visual planning – allowing users to preview and organize their Instagram feed before posts are published.
- Collaborative workflows – facilitates team collaboration by providing features that allow multiple users to work together on content creation, scheduling, and social media management.
Cons:
- Limited platform support
Conclusion
Mastering Instagram competitor analysis is integral to a successful social media strategy. Leveraging dedicated tools can significantly enhance this process. The nine Instagram competitor analysis tools highlighted in this blog offer unique features ranging from comprehensive analytics to real-time monitoring and collaborative workflows. They are all great in their own way, but the choice is ultimately yours. Depending on your business needs, these Instagram competitor analysis tools can boost any strategy you have.
