Watching Competitors: What Helps and What Is Just Anxiety
Copying what others do produces a market of clones. There are, however, three things worth observing.
Watching competitors is useful as long as it helps you understand the market, and harmful once it starts deciding what you do. The difference is subtle and shows in the outcome: watch too closely and you end up resembling them, and resembling them is the surest way to become interchangeable.
The three things worth observing
- Which problems they claim to solve: tells you who they address and where they don't reach.
- What they never cover: often that's where the space is.
- How they explain price: tells you how the offer sits in the market.
What isn't worth watching
Follower counts, posting frequency, graphics. They're the most visible and least informative things: you don't know what they cost, you don't know whether they work, and imitating them means entering a race whose rules you don't know.
Imitation always arrives late
By the time something is visible enough to be copied, whoever did it first has already taken the advantage. Whoever follows arrives with the same message in a market that has already heard it.
The correct use
One review every three months, with questions decided beforehand. Not a daily check, which produces only the feeling of being behind and no decisions.
Watch competitors to find where they aren't. Copying them means turning up with the same message to a market that has heard it already.
Sources and Further Reading
Official documentation and guidelines cited or useful for going deeper.