Growing your brand’s LinkedIn presence and reach often feels like an uphill battle. Meanwhile, Audience on LinkedIn, competitors are thriving with more followers, engagement, and prospects.
It’s tempting to want to steal their formula for LinkedIn success. But while directly plucking their audience is unethical, you can model what works through competitive analysis.
Table of Contents
Why Steal When You Can Ethically Win Them Over?
First, let’s level-set on what I mean by “stealing” competitors’ audience. This is NOT:
- Aggressively poaching their customers
- Spreading misinformation about competitors
- Directly replicating or reusing competitors’ content
- Mass messaging their followers and connections
These unethical practices will likely damage your brand and relationships rather than grow your audience. Not worth it!
Instead, we’ll focus on legitimately winning over competitors’ audiences by learning from what engages them and offering even more compelling value. When done right, it’s a win-win for everyone.
Research What Competitors Are Doing Right
The first step is analyzing what your competitors are doing right that attract their audience on LinkedIn.
Review Their Most Popular Content
Study the topics, formats, and tone resonating based on engagement and shares. Look for gaps or opportunities to put your unique spin.
Follow Their Company Page
This will surface a goldmine of intel on their content cadence, employee spotlights, job openings, product updates, and other news their audience cares about.
Monitor Discussions On Their Posts
Spot the pain points, unanswered questions, misunderstandings, and needs to be highlighted by engaged followers. Find openings to provide solutions.
Check Out Their Most Endorsed Skills
This reveals the valued areas of expertise their audience connects with. Ensure you showcase these skills prominently.
Analyze Their Overall Brand Voice
Get a feel for their positioning, personality, messaging, and differentiators that attract their tribe. Determine how you can stand out.
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Target Competitors’ Followers With Value
Once you’ve determined competitors’ ingredients for LinkedIn’s success, it’s time to ethically attract the same audience by offering even greater value.
Create Better Content
Filling competitor content gaps and continuously improving quality keeps their audience coming to you instead.
Show Off Complementary Expertise
Explore related topics and adjacent skills you excel in that competitors may overlook or lack.
Highlight Your Differentiation
Consistently convey how your offering, approach, or community is unique. Their audience craves variety.
Monitor Competitor Followers’ Activity
Notice discussions, shares, and comments where their followers are highly engaged. Find opportunities to jump in and provide help subtly.
Use Targeted Paid Ads
Serve relevant ads to competitors’ followers highlighting your differentiation and irresistible content or offers.
Cross-Promote Content Off LinkedIn
Share your content in channels, partnerships, email lists, and websites frequented by competitors’ audiences.
Make Your Brand Stand Out
Develop positioning, voice, and content that feels distinctly fresh and compelling compared to competitors.
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Also Read – Job Scams on LinkedIn: How to Spot and Avoid Them
Cultivate Competitors’ Employees and Connections
In addition to followers, competitors’ 1st-degree connections and employees are prime targets for expanding your network and amplifying your reach.
Connect with Their Employees
Send customized invites highlighting common interests, groups, or experiences. Avoid canned messages.
Share Their Top Content
Resharing competitors’ most popular posts expands your visibility to their networks who engaged with the content originally.
Also Read – LinkedIn About Me Examples: Crafting Compelling Profile Summaries
Congratulate Employees on Work Anniversaries
A friendly celebratory note strengthens relationships with competitors’ team members.
Follow Competitors’ Company Pages
This surfaces 1st-degree connections in common you can now reach out to. Check People Also Viewed sections.
Monitor Connection Updates
Watch for new jobs, promotions, or events where you can restart conversations by congratulating or offering help.
Participate in Groups Together
Comment on discussions where both you and competitors’ employees are active members.
Building authentic relationships with competitors’ talent and partners establishes your reputation while expanding your audience reach.
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Measure the Effectiveness of Winning Competitors’ Audience
It’s important to track metrics to determine if efforts to engage competitors’ audiences are working. Monitor:
Follower Overlap
What % of your followers also follow competitors? Growing indicates you’re successfully reaching their audience.
Content Engagement From Competitors’ Followers
Calculate % of Likes, comments clicks on your content from competitor followers specifically.
Employee Connection Growth
Watch the velocity of new connections from competitors’ team members to gauge relationship traction.
Visitors From Competitors’ Companies
Analyze website or content visitors from competitors’ IP addresses and domains marking audience crossover.
Mentions or Tags By Competitors’ Audience
Being spotlighted organically by competitors’ followers signifies you’re on their radar.
Lead & Customer Acquisition From Competitors
Assess leads and customers poached from competitors over time as a metric of audience shift.
Social Listening
Set up alerts on competitors’ branded keywords to monitor if their audience discusses you more frequently.
Here is the concluding section of the article:
Also Read – LinkedIn Bots Are On the Rise: Here’s What You Need to Know
Sustain Momentum Ethically
The key to continually engaging competitors’ LinkedIn audience is playing the long game with consistent value delivery and relationship focus.
Keep Improving Your Content
Regularly assess performance to double down on topics and formats resonating with competitors’ followers specifically.
Build Loyalty and Trust
Avoid overly self-promotional content. Thought leadership establishes credibility with competitors’ audiences.
Innovate and Disrupt
Continuously evaluate industry trends and explore creative ways to disrupt the space better than competitors.
Monitor Competitors Closely
Stay on the pulse of competitors’ activity so you can quickly counter poor content or news fueling audience disengagement.
Diversify Your Reach
While competitors’ audiences are attractive, ensure you’re also nurturing various channels to reduce over-dependency on one source of followers.
With an ethical, value-centric approach, you can win over competitors’ audiences on LinkedIn through innovation and relationships—no shady tactics are required.
What competitive analysis or audience expansion goals are you focused on currently? I’d be happy to brainstorm ideas tailored to your niche and business. Just let me know!
