You & Your Competitors

Do you check up constantly on your competitors to how well they are doing?
Do you compare their progress against yours regularly?
or Do you just ignore them & let them be?
Whats your thought & opinions on researching your competitors?
Please post them below..
Thanks!

 

If you asked me this question a year ago, I would have told you that I was still competing against two other forums.

These days, my community is the biggest in the niche and we show no signs of slowing down. Their progress was slow compared to ours because we've been around for a while and managed to bring in and keep a lot of users, which our competitors failed to do.

When you're competing against others, its always nice to see what they're doing right or wrong that has made them successful. So, what my competitors weren't doing, I was doing. Like getting interviews from people, writing more content, etc. The point is if you have better content, you will one day surpass your competitors.

And truthfully when you have competitors, it gives you more motivation to succeed and surpass them, and myself included, I should consider other forums to be my competitors but I don't see it like that.

And if you ignore your competitors, that's nice, because it gives you more time to focus on your community and not focusing on them.

 

I always check on my competitors.

Anyone would be crazy not to try to absorb, learn, and improve upon anything the competition is doing.

Look at it this way, Microsoft used to ignore their competitors because they were virtually the only big name in the computer world at one time. But guess what, Google crept up on them. And now as a result, Microsoft is trying to do everything they can do keep Google from overtaking them, but because they waited so long, it won't happen.

 

You cannot run a forum and ignore your competitors. Learn from their success and their mistakes, see what attracts you to their forum and what makes them strong, so that you can provide your members with a good service and community too. I am active in all important forums in my niche and it's great, since in the end I love this topic and it allows me to discuss it with like minded people. Far from being a 'monitoring' job, it's a way for us to connect and grow.

 

To tell you the truth, Microsoft's bing doesn't stand a chance against Google. You would think with all those ad dollars that they spent on promoting the search engine, it would be bigger than it is, but its not. Sorry, but I think Google will be the #1 search engine for a long time.

@dojo You're right. And its also sometimes good to affiliate with your competitors - that way, you get a link on their site, you get a link on theirs, and you provide the community with better content than your competitor, then its all up wards from there. I remember when my competitors were beating us, they always got mad when we came up with similar threads, so thus, they linked us on various forum topics - from there, I knew it was game over, because why mention us if you're trying to compete against us and you don't provide the community with quality content? I can honestly it was one of my marketing techniques to do that because I already knew off the bat they would mention us and link us.

 

Yeah even though I hate to admit this, you're right about sometimes making the competitor and affiliate. Especially if you're new to the game, you might have to "piggyback" off of the competition's traffic to make a viable name for yourself.

The thing is though, your competitor most of the time isn't stupid. So they more than likely are aware of your overall idea. Which is why many of them mandate that you have a set amount of traffic before they tie themselves to you.

 

I used to compete with all the forum which i am using. We are growing on our own and making us better than all. Still jealous people didnt join in our forum.

 

Yeah I can understand that feeling totally.

When you know you have something going that is something great and no others will be able to compete with, yet it's still a slow growing process.

The best you can do is advertise. And when you do, make a point to stress the features that make you stand out.

 

All my competitors are dead in the water. And that's good because their communities sucked compared to mine. They leeched off our user-base when we down for the count, but we re-grouped and surpassed all their stats in a few months.

Those who tried to "piggyback" off my community got a rude awakening because we blocked their sites from being advertised, because they spammed our members via the PM system, and plus, we know get their traffic in less than two hours, so there's no room for them.

 

I'm a member of one of the forums I am competing with because they allow signature links, so I check there often, and I make posts on that forum too. I also check in on my other competitors to see what's new, but I don't do that very often.

 

The best way to snatch up their users would be posting advice and helpful comments. The more active you are, the more people will see your signature and possibly join.

 

Yeah that's the plan, I started off spamming there because the forums died, but it got sold. and the new owners are trying to revive it with better quality posts. The forums had a bunch of threads advertising like clothes shops, and a bunch of other threads. It's really the only forum in my niche that allows signature links so I can't get banned there.