The number of employee conversations that are likely to have been facilitated by the organization;
The number of conversations by external parties that are likely to have been facilitated by the organization;
The extent to which online conversations are encouraged;
The extent to which online conversations are observed;
The quality of online customer service;
The quality of online complaint handling;
The number of facilitated conversations by influential people. Influential people have a large network and are often seen as an authority in a certain area. This enables them to influence a large group of people;
The extent to which the organization appears to implement the content from the conversations into products and business processes.
Connecting Dots & Analyzing Data
After the nine axes are filled in, the points are connected to each other. The spider web that is created shows how active organizations are in the different areas, in which areas they excel and where they score less high. After the points are connected, the Social Media Competition Model could look like this, for example:
SMC model: own organization
Graph 2: SMC Model, including the organization itself
And as follows, when two competitors are added:
SMC model: incl. competitors
Graph 3: The SMC model, with two competitors added
Drawing conclusions
The completed model shows which scores a company must meet to position itself better than its direct competition. It shows where opportunities lie and in which areas a company can easily or less easily rise above the competition. It is not necessary to achieve the highest score on every axis. A high score often also represents a large (time) investment.
If the red line in the graph above represents your organization, you can draw the following conclusions:
1. Reach is relatively low
The organization scores well to reasonably well on the first three axes . It is noticeable that the reach is low compared to the competition. If there is a conscious focus on a smaller target group, little needs to change in this area. If this is not the case, the organization probably wants to increase the reach. A temporary advertising campaign with good targeting or a targeted social media action are possibilities to realize this. Paying attention to social media offline is also a possibility here. When the reach is increased, it is likely that the engagement will also increase (although this is not always self-evident).
2. Number of internal conversations remarkably high
On the axis ' internal conversations: number ', the organization scores remarkably well. Due to this distinctive score, an organization may be inclined not to invest further in this component. This can be a shame, because it is precisely a core competence that can be deepened. In this example, it can be seen that many employees talk about the organization on social media. Apparently, many employees are active on social media. When these conversations are further stimulated and facilitated, for example, the online branding and employer branding can be improved. In addition, these conversations increase the reach; there is a good chance that each employee has approximately 300 online friends or followers.
It is clear that all the organisations included score poorly in the area of conversation management . It is interesting to analyse why this is scored low. For example, is there a lack of knowledge or is this component considered unimportant? After this analysis it will become clear whether it is effective to invest in this component; you can easily distinguish yourself from the competition here. In this example, this investment is certainly worth it, because it will have a positive effect on axes 5 to 9. It is even likely that the scores on other axes will also increase. In addition, good conversation management contributes to customer satisfaction: the response speed and sri lanka mobile phone number list quality of online question and complaint handling is improved.
Discover opportunities & quick wins
In this example, we have used the model to show that you gather a lot of information by comparing your own organization to the most important competitors. In this fictitious example, we have not used a standard score for the sake of clarity. Based on customer research, the expectations of the target group within a specific sector can be plotted in the graph as standard scores. This provides additional insight into the extent to which you and your competitors meet the expectations level in the market with regard to the various social media activities.
After the Social Media Competition model has been completed and it has been determined which axes are important for the organization, it can be determined within which axes the greatest opportunities lie. Often, excelling on one axis can have a positive influence on other axes. To increase the result, different steps are required on each axis. Because social media marketing is very broad, the SMC model provides a good picture of the most effective approach of the social media marketing strategy. It shows where quick wins can be achieved, where the competition excels and which steps must be taken to achieve the set objectives.
It is a component that – along with setting objectives and defining a target audience – should be completed prior to any social media strategy. We hope this model helps you with your competitive analysis. Let us know what you think!