Compare competitors

See how your Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and YouTube channels stack up against competitors: posting habits, engagement and audience growth.

Before you start

• Connect the Facebook Page, Instagram Business account or YouTube channel you want to compare.
• Know the names of the competitor accounts you want to track. You can track Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and YouTube channels. For YouTube, the channel link or @handle works best.

Open the feature

Choose Analytics in the left sidebar, then Competitor Analysis. Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and YouTube channels are compared on the same page.

Steps

1. Click Add Competitor(s). The Add Competitors window opens.
2. Under Choose Social Network:, pick Facebook Pages, Instagram Business or YouTube.
3. Under Search Competitor:, type a name in Search for a competitor and select the accounts you want. For YouTube, paste the channel link, @handle or channel ID, or type the channel's name.
4. Click Add.
5. At the top of the page, use Compare to pick your own accounts and with to pick the competitors. Both lists hold Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts together.
6. Open the date picker and choose a range, such as Last 7 Days or Last 30 Days.
7. Review Overview for followers, engagement and posts side by side. YouTube channels appear in the same table, with subscribers as followers and videos as posts.
8. To export, click Export, set the cover, then click Select metrics to choose which trend charts, the Overview table and insight cards the report includes. See Create an analytics report. To email the comparison regularly or send a view-only link, use Scheduled Report or Shared Analytics at the top right. Both keep the accounts and competitors you pick. See Schedule analytics report email and Share an analytics report by link.
9. Scroll to Competitors Post Performance to see their posts. Use the filters to switch between top and low-performing posts.
10. To keep this comparison, select Save this view next to the page title. The view saves your accounts, the competitors and the dates. See Save and manage analytics views.

Review trends and remove competitors

Review the trends and insights for the selected competitors and reporting period. To stop tracking a competitor, use its remove action and review the confirmation. Check the list afterward; removing a tracked competitor does not delete its social account on the network.

Review YouTube channels

When Compare and with include YouTube channels, a YouTube channels section follows the Facebook and Instagram sections. A new competitor shows Syncing until its first numbers arrive.

1. Review Channels. Click channel cards to focus the numbers below on them; click Show all channels to undo.
2. Review Key metrics (Total subscribers, Total views, Total videos, Engagement rate) and By channel. Each number shows its change against the previous period of the same length.
3. Review Subscribers vs engagement rate, Insights and Top videos.

Turn the comparison into a post

Click Design with this next to Export to open the post composer's designer with this comparison. Its Data tab lists followers, engagements and posts by account, engagement trends for up to five of the most engaged accounts, and your top hashtags. Your own accounts are marked (you). Add one as a chart, or pick up to 8 and click Make a report for a set of slides. Each chart is a copy of the numbers at that moment, with the dates in its caption; it doesn't update later. See Design an image from scratch.

• Design with this waits until the comparison for the accounts and dates you picked has loaded.
• It isn't available in the demo workspace, in Demo View or on a shared analytics link, and only appears where the designer is turned on for your workspace.
• YouTube channels aren't included in Design with this yet.
• Competitor names in the charts come from the networks. Check them before you post.

Expected result

The Overview table lists your accounts and the competitors you chose, with Followers, Net Followers, Page Posts, Engagement, Avg per Post and Top Hashtags for the dates you picked. YouTube channels are listed after the Facebook and Instagram accounts, with Top Hashtags shown as Not tracked. Competitors Post Performance shows Facebook and Instagram posts from the same dates.

In YouTube channels, Key metrics show the channels' combined totals at the end of the dates you picked, and Top videos lists the most-viewed videos published in those dates. Exports, scheduled reports and shared links include the YouTube channels when you compare your channel with at least one competitor channel.

Example

To check your bakery's Instagram against two local rivals, click Add Competitor(s), choose Instagram Business, search for each rival and click Add. Under Compare, pick your Instagram account. Under with, pick both rivals. Choose Last 30 Days and compare Avg per Post in Overview.

Limits and permissions

• Competitor Analysis depends on your plan. The number of competitors you can add per network and in total also depends on your plan. Manage Competitors shows how many you've used.
• Your team role must allow managing Engage to open this page. If it doesn't open, ask your admin.
• Instagram doesn't share other accounts' shares, so Instagram competitors show shares as n/a.
• Net Followers only counts from the day you added the competitor. Pick a start date after that day.
• Trends, Engagement breakdown, Share of engagement, Best time to post and What content works may not be available on your account yet.
• To try the page with sample data, turn on Demo View in the page menu. You can't change accounts or filters while it's on. It shows sample Facebook, Instagram and YouTube data.
• YouTube competitors count toward the same plan limit as Facebook and Instagram competitors.
• To add YouTube competitors you need a YouTube channel connected to Social Champ. Competitor channels don't need to connect anything.
• For each YouTube competitor, Social Champ reads its new videos once a day and refreshes the numbers on its newest ones. How many videos are read depends on your plan.
• YouTube numbers can be shown for up to 2 years at a time.
• How many YouTube channel searches and lookups you can run in an hour also depends on your plan.
• Engagement rate on YouTube is likes plus comments divided by views, for the videos published in the dates you picked.
• Your own channel's views and video totals start being recorded once this feature is on, so earlier dates show no change for them.
• Insights are worked out automatically from the numbers on the page.

Troubleshooting

• You can't add more competitors: you've reached your plan's limit. Click Manage competitors and remove one with Remove Competitor, or upgrade your plan.
• Your account isn't in the Compare list: Compare lists Facebook Pages, Instagram Business accounts and YouTube channels. Other networks can't be compared. See Connect a social account.
• The date picker is greyed out: pick at least one of your accounts under Compare and one competitor on the same network under with.
• Net Followers looks too low: move the start date to after the day you added the competitor.
• YouTube search asks you to connect a channel: connect your YouTube channel, then search again. See Connect a social account.
• YouTube search says it's unavailable or you've searched a lot: paste the channel link or @handle instead of typing a name. Links and handles don't count toward the search limit.
• YouTube says you've looked up a lot of channels, or lookups are paused for today: wait an hour, or until the next day, then try again. Channels you already track keep updating.
• A YouTube number shows a dash: the channel has no reading for those dates yet. A number marked * was read after the dates you picked, because the channel was added after them.

Inspect the comparison sections

Keep both Compare and with populated before choosing dates. Overview compares followers, net followers, page posts, engagement, average per post and top hashtags. Inspect the rows before downloading the offered table/chart data.

When enabled, Trends lets you switch the plotted metric. Engagement breakdown, Share of engagement, Best time to post and What content works answer different questions: engagement mix, relative engagement, timing and content patterns. Check the section's own metric and sample before deciding that a competitor's larger audience explains higher engagement.

In Competitors Post Performance, open its filter to select the own/competitor profiles to include, use Select all where appropriate, and compare top versus low-performing posts. Clear a restrictive selection before concluding there are no competitor posts. Removing a competitor changes future tracking availability; it is not a way to recover historical follower data from before tracking began.

Table and insight controls

Sort Overview with its column headers. Drag a row using its handle to rearrange it. Select individual rows or Select all, then review Delete Selected carefully: removal stops tracking the selected competitors; it is not merely clearing a comparison filter. Manage competitors also provides search and per-profile removal.

Where the insights are available, select the profile in the best-time heatmap and inspect the content-format, engagement-breakdown and share-of-engagement cards independently. Use each card's download action for that section. Instagram shares marked unavailable are not zero shares. Empty post or hashtag cells can mean no matching content in the selected period.