How to Use Your Competitor’s Content for Your Benefit

One of the most common questions I get asked by new clients is how to leverage the content of the competition.

That is, clients are either curious what they can learn from what their competitors are putting out, or they want a strategy for using their competitor's content in their favor.

After discussing this with so many clients, I've decided to sit down and create a resource that everyone can learn from.

There are two primary ways in which you can directly benefit from your competition's content:

1. You can learn what works in your industry by doing a competitive analysis.
2. You can create better alternatives to their existing content to beat them in search and in social.

There's no reason to feel intimidated if your competitors are publishing amazing content. That's actually a good thing. The better and more successful their content is, the more you can learn.

After all, you want to learn from the best, not from the mediocre. Otherwise, you're stuck trying to figure everything out on your own.

Competitive Analysis

The purpose of performing a competitive analysis of your competition is to learn what works and what doesn't.

You might think you know what content strategy will work best with your buyer persona, but it helps to have some concrete evidence to back it up.

You will be tempted to skip this part because it can be tedious and time-consuming. However, by front-loading the work now, you will save yourself a lot of time (and money) in the future.

A full competitive analysis will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your competitor's content strategy and give you a foundation for yours. This allows you to hit the ground running and gives you confidence that you aren't wasting your efforts, because you have a clear idea of what works and what doesn't.

Blog Topics

Instead of trying to come up with a bunch of topics that you hope your persona will want to read about, you can start by getting ideas from topics that have already been successful in your niche.

To do this, go to your competitor's website and look for their most popular content. Many companies will make this easy for you by showing a list of their most popular posts. However, that won't always be the case, and even if it is, this list typically only shows around five to ten articles.

You're looking for topics that earn real engagement: links, comments, and social shares.

You can imagine how time-consuming this can get. Content research tools speed it up. BuzzSumo, for example, lets you enter a competitor's website and see which of their articles have been shared the most. It's a paid tool with a free trial, so check its pricing page for current plans. If you already use an SEO platform such as Semrush or Ahrefs, its reports on a domain's top pages show which competitor articles bring in the most search traffic.

Once you've done this analysis for your top competitors, you should have a long list of topics with a track record in your market.

Blog Frequency

Another component of your content strategy to consider is how often you publish new content. Some brands only publish once a week or less, while others publish several articles a day.

Ultimately, you will have to test this out to see what works best for your audience. However, the easiest way to figure out where to start is to look at what your competitors are doing.

If all of your competitors are publishing content Monday through Friday, there's a chance that they've trained the market to expect that kind of frequency. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to do the same, but you should strongly consider matching their frequency until you've got a better idea of what your particular audience likes.

If most of your competitors are only publishing content every 7 to 10 days, there are a couple of ways that you can look at this. You can make it easier on yourself and simply meet the pace they've set, or you could decide to differentiate by publishing more often. A major factor in your decision will be the resources required to create content.

Typically, there are three ways to address this:

• Hire or develop a content marketer within your organization
• Use an outsourced content writing platform, or hire and manage a freelance writer
• Work with an agency that manages the process, collaborating with your team to keep content publishing consistently

You might be wondering what frequency is best. For most companies building a content program, we generally recommend publishing about three articles a week, but the right number depends on your resources and your audience.

The most important thing, regardless of who your persona is, is that you are consistent with the frequency you choose. Your subscribers will become used to your schedule and will expect new posts. You don't want to let them down.

Post Length

The length of your posts is another part of your content strategy that you can calibrate by studying your competitors. Treat length as the result of covering a topic well, not as a target. Google says it has no preferred word count and specifically warns against writing to a particular length because you think Google prefers it.

There are several things to consider when deciding how long your posts should be:

• What does your buyer persona want and need?
• How much detail does the topic actually require?
• What do you have the resources to consistently produce?

This is something that you'll likely benchmark and adapt over time based on reader engagement, but looking at what your competition is doing is a reasonable place to start.

If your competitor consistently publishes content around the same length, this makes it easier for you.

All you need is the word count from five or ten posts, and then you take the average. You can get the word count by pasting each post into a word processor or by using a bulk word count tool.

If your competitor is posting content of varying lengths, you want to figure out which of those pieces are performing best. To do this, take the same approach that you did to find blog topics, only this time look at the length of the most popular articles.

In some cases, these numbers can be all over the place, and I suggest starting with the average word count of the most popular articles in this scenario. Most of the time, though, you will see an obvious trend.

Blog Authorship

Each brand has a unique approach to the authorship of their content.

You might see content authored exclusively by the company owner, by several employees, by freelance writers, by guest authors, or some combination. Each approach has its benefits.

Having yourself or members of your team create all of your content establishes credibility for your brand and team.

On the other hand, some companies only publish content from outside influencers in their market who use their product or service. This not only lends variety to the content, it adds an element of social proof.

Keep in mind, there isn’t a secret formula for authorship. A mix of voices can give your content more visibility and credibility.

When thinking about how authorship plays into your competition, look for the gaps.

Review their content mix and identify where they’re missing credibility. Are all their posts coming from “CompanyName”? Are they syndicating any content from industry partners? If they aren’t, it presents an opportunity for your content to fill the gap in the marketplace by providing what your personas are most likely looking for but aren’t seeing: different voices, helpful answers, and inspiration.

Guest Blogging

Publishing guest posts on other blogs and contributing to major publications is a powerful tactic that you should be using in your content strategy.

Figuring out where your competitor has submitted guest posts helps in two ways:

1. You can engage within that same outlet, putting your brand in front of that same audience and hopefully winning them over with superior content.
2. You can save valuable time figuring out where to guest post.

I often hear from prospects that they know guest blogging is important, but they’re not sure which places will be most effective for them. Some of your competitors may have already figured this out. Why not use their time and research to your advantage?

That doesn't mean you should limit yourself only to the places where your competition has guest blogged, but it makes sense to start somewhere that has already shown a willingness to work with a brand like yours.

Many brands will have a "featured in" section on their website that shows you where they've contributed, but not all will, and that section typically doesn't include every place they have submitted content to either.

To get a full rundown of where they are guest blogging, the easiest approach is a backlink research tool. SEO platforms such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz report the sites that link to a domain. Look for links from major publications, then visit those pages to confirm the article and the link are still there. These are paid tools, so if you already subscribe to one, start there.

It's not as important that you find every single source of guest content that your competitor has submitted. You're looking for the places where they have received the most engagement, because this gives you a clear idea of where you will likely get the most engagement.

Social Media Presence and Content

If you don't know which social media platforms your buyer persona prefers, a good place to look for them is where your competition is most active.

Another thing to consider is the type of content that they publish on social media.

Do they ask a lot of questions and spark debates? Do they joke around or do they keep it serious? Do they share content outside of the content they've created?

Make note of their behavior and keep track of what people engage with most. This will help you know which approach to take when you are first getting started or give you ideas to change up your current strategy.

Building Upon Your Competitor's Content

Once you've done a full content analysis on your competition, you have a database of valuable information that you can use to create your own strategy. You also have the information you need to create content that is similar, but better.

Using this information, there are two common approaches that you might take to use your competitor's content for your own benefit:

1. You add to the conversation that they've started.
2. You create content on the same topic in such a way that their original content is obsolete.

Below, I’ll address the “why” and “how” of these tactics.

Adding to the Conversation

The first strategy you can use is to add to the conversation your competitor has already started.

You can do this by either making a post that agrees with and expands upon the topic with your unique perspective, or you can take the opposite approach and share a contradicting argument.

The controversial approach, creating content that refutes or debates a topic that your competitor has written about, will in many cases receive the greatest engagement, both positive and negative (tread lightly).

Healthy debates and taking sides, however, can inspire loyalty from your followers and may even influence some of your competition's customers.

The Skyscraper Technique

This is where your competitive analysis really pays off.

There's a strategy that successful bloggers have used for years to one-up the competition, although this strategy never had a real name and most people kept it to themselves.

The version of this strategy that I'm going to discuss is called the Skyscraper Technique, a term coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko.

The difference here is that you would normally use the Skyscraper Technique to target a keyword, but I'm going to show you how to use the same strategy to target your competitor's content.

The first step is identifying a piece of content they've created that has performed well and is also relevant to your buyer persona.

Then you want to search the web for the best content created on that topic.

Once you've got your topic and several high-quality resources that have already received a lot of engagement, you're going to make a better version.

You accomplish this by creating a post that is:

• More up-to-date
• More thorough, answering the follow-up questions the other pieces skip
• Better designed and easier to use, with clear examples

Cite the sources you build on, and link to the ones your readers will genuinely benefit from. Giving fair credit is part of earning trust.

The goal isn't the longest article on the subject. It's the one that answers the reader's question best. Don't pad a post to beat a competitor's word count; add detail only where it helps the reader.

As long as you explain the topic more clearly and keep your information as current as possible, you've created something more useful for your buyer persona than what's already out there.

Do you see how all of that research from your competitive analysis comes in handy?

You know what it takes to create content that is better than theirs because you know what is working for them.

Key Takeaways

There you have it. No need to be intimidated by your competitor’s content. Instead, see it as a tool for your success. We’ve reviewed some definitive ways to create opportunities through your competitor’s content. In summary:

• Begin with a comprehensive competitive analysis and focus on the following:
  • The topics your competitors are writing about that are receiving the most engagement
  • How often they’re posting that content
  • The length or comprehensiveness of their articles
  • Where they are syndicating their content outside of their own website
  • Their reach and influence on specific social networks
• Continue by building upon your competitor’s content using the following two methods:
  • Create value by adding to their conversation. Take a deeper dive into a topic they’ve started, or assume a completely different stance on the subject to generate passionate interest.
  • The Skyscraper Technique: one-up the successful content of your competitors by starting with a post of theirs as inspiration and expanding it into a better, more useful post on your site.

These strategies can help you create content that earns more search traffic, social shares, and links than what your competitors are publishing now.