Monitoring your competitors' blogs is a crucial aspect of competitive intelligence. In this guide, we'll walk you through the steps of monitoring competitor blogs and online publications with our Blog Monitoring feature.
Why Monitor Competitor Blogs?
Understanding what your competitors are writing about can provide valuable insights into their strategies and industry trends. By tracking their blog posts, you can:
- Stay updated on their content marketing strategy and messaging.
- Identify new product features, updates, or shifts in their focus.
- Gather competitive intelligence to improve your content and marketing efforts.
Best Practices to Follow
Before diving into the step-by-step guide, here are some best practices to consider:
Prioritize Relevant Blogs and Key Competitors
Start by monitoring blogs that are directly related to your industry, product, or target audience. Begin with a select group of primary competitors and their blogs. This focused approach allows you to gain in-depth knowledge about their content strategies and messaging.
Analyze Content Trends
Regularly review competitor blog posts and analyze trends. Look for changes in content themes, posting frequency, and engagement metrics. These changes can provide valuable insights into their content strategy and priorities.
Cross-Reference Blog Content with Other Data Sources
To gain a comprehensive understanding of your competitors' strategies, cross-reference the insights gained from blog monitoring with data from other sources. This can include social media activity, website changes, and product updates. By connecting the dots between different data points, you can uncover deeper insights into your competitors' overall approach and identify patterns that might be missed by monitoring blogs in isolation.
What Blogs should you Monitor ?
When deciding which competitor blogs to monitor, consider tracking:
- Product Updates: Monitor for changes in product features, updates, or new releases.
- Industry Insights: Stay informed about your competitors' opinions on industry trends.
- Marketing Strategy: Track their content marketing strategy, such as the frequency of posts and the topics they cover.
- Thought Leadership: Identify thought leadership pieces and influential articles that gain traction in the industry.
How the Blog Monitoring Feature Works
This feature uses RSS technology to monitor competitor blogs. It allows our platform to retrieve the latest articles, and aggregate it in your dashboard panel.
While RSS is an older technology, quite a number of blog platforms such as Wordpress or Medium continue to provide it.
Step by step guide
Step 1: Add a Competitor's Blog
Log in to your PeerPanda account, create a new competitor or navigate to an existing competitor you want to monitor.
Under the competitor's profile, select the "Blogs" tab and click on "Add a New Blog".
Step 2: Configure Blog Monitoring
- Enter the URL of the competitor's blog. Make sure it's the direct link to the blog.
- Provide an optional descriptive name for the blog, such as "Competitor's Insights Blog."
- Choose the monitoring frequency (daily or weekly).
- Save your settings.
Step 3: Review Blog Posts
All the blog posts from the monitored competitor will be accessible within the Blog Monitoring section. You'll receive notifications in your Activity Center whenever a new post is published.
Troubleshooting
If PeerPanda cannot find an RSS feed for the blog, you can try to provide the RSS URL directly, if available. Some blogs may not offer RSS feeds.
If there's no RSS feed available, consider using the more general Auto-Screenshot feature to monitor changes on the blog's web pages.