New media operations content competitor analysis skills!

In ancient times, when marching and fighting, the emphasis was on "food and fodder must be sent before troops move out." The business world is like a battlefield. When we start a project, we must also find our own "food and fodder. " Competitors are our "food and fodder."

There is a saying in ancient times, "Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will win every battle." We don't know whether we can win every battle, but we still have to know our enemy. So, how to find competitors and how to analyze competitors are the topics we are going to discuss today.

1. Find your competitors

Since it is a competitor, there will inevitably be a lot of overlap with our own products in terms of users, pain points and markets. What we need to do is to find competitors from the overlapping areas and find competitiveness from the different areas.

I am engaged in new media, and I regard the platform account I opened as a product. When the company enters the local tourism new media, how do I find competitors?

First, determine the direction of your competition.

You can extract keywords here first. Before making your own products, you must have conducted a positioning analysis, and there are detailed divisions regarding the population and region, etc. What we have to do is to extract keywords from them, such as travel, local, etc.

Then, based on keywords, competitors can be divided into: local travel guide accounts, travel agency accounts, free travel accounts, travel product accounts, government official travel accounts, etc.

Secondly, choose competing products from authoritative channels.

After determining the general direction and type, you need to obtain the names of competing products from authoritative channels. Generally speaking, as far as new media is concerned, Xinbang, Qingbo Index, Xigua Assistant, etc. are all commonly used authoritative channels. Also, search in the platform client of your choice, such as the official account client, Toutiao client, etc.

Now, I will focus on how to conduct competitive analysis when developing a new media account. It can also be regarded as a review of my previous projects!

2. Competitive product analysis content

Many people don’t know what competitive product analysis is at first. I have encountered such a problem before and searched for a lot of information, but because the products are different, the content is actually very different.

Later, I thought about my own product and what it focused on, and then determined the content based on the listed concerns. I divide them into performance, features, interactions, and data.

1. Performance

For new media, product performance includes two parts: update frequency and topic selection .

Update frequency: number of updates per day, update time, and update cycle within a period of time. For example, "** Culture and Tourism" updates 3 articles each time, and the update time is fixed at around 17:00. It is updated about 5 times a week, which basically achieves daily updates.

Topic selection : For travel-related accounts, in addition to general travel guides, what other topic selection directions are there? For example, in some competing products, we see travel that is approached from the perspective of people; in some competing products, we see travel that is approached from the perspective of business. These are all different angles of topic selection. Some competitors recommend tourist spots based on the solar terms of the four seasons, but some summarize based on real-time hot spots. These are points that you can record and iterate on.

2. Features

Features are used to distinguish competing products. The more obvious a product's features are, the greater its competitive advantage . I divide the characteristics into five aspects: language style, push ceremony, character name , article structure, and presentation form .

Language style: Each new media account has its own writing style, some are humorous, some are serious, some quote classics, some are fresh and literary...

What impressed me most was Mr. Han Li’s writing style. He used stories to explain operations, and I could always appreciate the local customs and practical knowledge between the lines. This kind of writing style is not something that ordinary people can learn. It has become a very distinctive feature that allows people to know who it belongs to at first sight.

Push ceremony: We often say that the push of new media requires a sense of ceremony, including the processing of the header image, the grasp of time, and every detail is carefully polished! Just like the 60-second voice of "Logical Thinking" at 6 a.m. in the past, it is as punctual as the news broadcast every night.

Personal title: A long time ago, when new media was just emerging, everyone called themselves "xiaobian", and later they called themselves "xiaowei", but there was not much distinction.

At that time, the concept of personalization had not yet emerged, but gradually, market competition began to force new media to be personalized, and various nicknames followed. For the account we are working on now, the female editor is called "Meishao Nu", which evolved from the cartoons we watched when we were young and has something to do with the region; the male editor is called "Xiao Shao Ye", which gives people a playful feeling.

Article structure: If you want your article to stand out, you must have an outline and a general writing direction beforehand, whether it is the SCQA structure based on the pyramid principle or the overall score structure from small to large. Or the three questions of "what, why, and how" all have a backbone connecting them and supporting the entire article.

Another important thing is the title of the competitor's product, what model it is, and whether there are any traces to follow. These must be analyzed carefully, which is very effective for the evolution of your own product.

Presentation form: The presentation form can also be called varied genres. Some new media accounts are mainly text and pictures, some are mainly comics, some are mainly audio, and some combine text and pictures with audio and video. From the varied forms, analyze the one that best suits your product, or adopt a variety of combinations to form a unique style.

3. Interaction

Interaction refers to the interactive form and frequency of new media accounts, including online and offline activities. The simplest one is the message ranking and other activities.

Take a look at how competitors’ activities are carried out, what advantages they have, and what the participation rate is? The best thing is to personally participate in the other party's interaction and mix into their community, experience it from a user's perspective, and see how you can improve your side.

4. Data

There is a lot of data involved. In addition to fan estimates and reading volume records, we also need to calculate the other party's initial open rate and secondary dissemination rate.

The most important thing is that we should treat competitors' products as our own products and make daily estimates. For example, when the other party's push comes out, you can guess the reading data and interaction status three days later based on the situation, and record them one by one. In this way, after a week or a month, you can compare whether it is consistent with your guess. The purpose of doing this is to enable oneself to grasp the market dynamics in advance.

3. Competitive product analysis model

After saying so much, we know what to analyze and have a rough idea of ​​how to analyze it. So is there any method that can be applied? For newbies, is there any model that can be used as a reference?

I have 3 methods to share with you:

1. SWOT analysis model

This is a method I learned in college, it’s very practical!

SWOT analysis stands for analyzing product strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can draw a four-quadrant diagram and compare your own strengths with those of your competitors based on the analysis content. Find breakthroughs from advantages and opportunities and avoid head-on collisions with your competitors’ strengths.

For example, some public accounts are good at comics, but your company does not have such talents. In this case, no matter how impressive the data of your competitors are, don't be envious and just do your best.

2. Is there an evaluation model?

This is a method I learned online. It is to list the features of the products for comparison and make a simple judgment on whether they have them or not. This is like the price lists that many websites make, with different prices corresponding to different functions.

When applied to new media, it can be replaced by the various specific contents mentioned above. The key to using this method is to be meticulous and not miss anything.

3. Scoring Model

Scoring is done on a scale of 1-10, that is, various contents of new media competitors are rated as excellent, good, average, and poor, making the comparison more vivid.

For example, you can score the topics of the same competitor at different times based on data interaction, and then you can draw conclusions about what kind of topics are more popular and stable. For example, if you score the push time of various competitors based on data, you can analyze the best time for such new media accounts to publish articles...

Have you noticed? Yes, the biggest basis of this method is data, and you make judgments based on the data.

(Due to the company's confidentiality mechanism, all model diagrams are network diagrams)

These are the three competitive product analysis models that I often use and think are relatively simple.

But I think that in addition to the theory and methodology of competitive product analysis, the most important thing is patience and persistence. After all, competitive product analysis is a very boring task and a long-term battle. A large number of people cannot continue on this road.

At that time, I was in my previous company and I persisted with a colleague. The effect was very significant. The number of readers of the platform account increased from a few hundred in the beginning to more than 100,000 later. This process seemed to take only 3 months, but the effort put in was unimaginable to outsiders.

I hope my experience in competitor analysis can help you. As I said before, persistence is the greatest weapon in competitor analysis.

Author: The World is a Mystery

Source: The World is a Mystery