Tools to Help You Spy on Your Competition

Earlier this month over on our blog, we published a Guide to Competitor Research. To further help you with your digital marketing strategy, we offer a review of three tools designed to help you keep tabs on your competition.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck main dashboard

They say “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” With TweetDeck, you can easily monitor what people are saying about your competition. Also, see how your competition is interacting with their followers and using social media to provide customer support.

TweetDeck is a Twitter management and monitoring tool that enables you to track Twitter traffic based on keywords, brands, products, and hashtags. See all the Tweets that mention your brand and that of a competitor. See your competition’s Tweets to their customers and be alerted when negative phrases are used for your brand or any other brand.

TweetDeck is free to use and you can connect it to any number of accounts. It’s a web-based competitor analysis, brand awareness, product comparison, competitor research tool. 

Spyfu

Spyfu domain dashboard

Before you design a pay-per-click campaign wouldn’t you like to know how your competition is doing it? Of course you would. That’s why SpyFu exists: to get the gritty details on what your competitor’s are up to.

SpyFu offers a wide selection of keyword search and management tools in an attractive price range. It also tracks backlinks, offers ongoing site monitoring, and provides unlimited search results. It’s not for the Search Engine Optimization novice, you’ll want to have a solid understanding of keywords, paid advertising, and search metrics.

With unlimited search volumes (on their paid subscription plan) you’ll be able to sift through reams of keyword research and also learn how your competitors are bidding on phrases. What better way to ensure you can compete and beat the other guys?

Yelp

Yelp for Business dashboard

One of the most ignored aspects of digital marketing is reputation management. Along with Google Reviews, Yelp is the most important reviews platform for your business. And for every other business too. How do people feel about your competitors? What are they saying, good or bad? How are your competitors using Yelp to manage their brand and provide customers with important information.

Many business owners mistakenly think Yelp is a passive platform. Just set it and forget it. Not so. The most successful businesses actively utilize Yelp to cultivate a reservoir of goodwill with their customers. But on Yelp the best strategy is reactive and proactive. Yelpy Business tools help you keep a step ahead of the competition.