So, how is your competition doing?

If you don’t know, how you going to compete in the current marketplace? Maybe you can gain some clues from your successful competition.

You don’t have competition? Don’t be foolish. Everyone has competition. Even if you are the only person in Texas who photographs purple butterflies, or are the inventor of a new gadget or unique software for photographers,  you still have competition.

Everyone is competing for other people or businesses time and/or money. Your job is to convince the world that your product or service is more of a priority and of greater value than your competition.

Keeping track of your competition will allow you to gain the knowledge needed to stay a step ahead or catch up from behind. You can learn what actions are being taken by your competitors, what others are saying about them,  and you can educate yourself through their successes and losses. The better informed you are,  the more advantages you can create.

Below is a list of things you can do to keep track of your competition:

1. Google them. (see where they show up)
2. Set Google Alerts for your competitors’ names and products.
3. Subscribe to a key word Twitter search feed.
4. Use compete.com to view their traffic.
5. Check out who is linking to them in Google. (ie links://www.newmediaphotographer.com )
6. Track their online ad spending at spyfu.com/
7. Use technorati.com/ to see who considers them an expert.
8. Follow their bookmarks on delicious.com/  What interests them and who is bookmarking them?
9. Search forums with boardtracker.com.
10. Craigslist, Monster or  oodle.com/ for job posting or new hires. Knowing what they are looking for or who they have hired can be informative.
11. Use the way back machine at archive.org to review their past, find information or spot patterns. 
12. Search for articles, white papers, podcasts or videos where your competitor might have shared too much information. (such as a great lighting technique.)
13. Call them for pricing.
14. Check their alexa.com ranking
15. Take a moment to view their Web site source code.
16. Review their blog and Web sites for the latest images and styles they are employing.
17 Follow their community social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook.
18 Use spydermate.com and Web site grader to crawl your competitor’s Web site.
19 Use codemonitor to inform you when your competitor has made changes to their Web site.
20 Subscribe to their newsletter.
21. Watch your own stats to see if they are spying on you!

There are a lot of tools on the Web. A little creativity, along with the available tools, is all that is needed to learn more about your competition.

Rosh

Tags: compete.com, google, Google Alert, Internet Archive, search, Texas, Twitter, Website

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under business, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.