Lindsey Komson

Photo by fauxels

In my last blog post, I detailed how to conduct a content analysis and showcased my example for the nonprofit organization, Project Sunshine.

Considering the big picture of creating a content strategy, the next step to take would be conducting a competitive analysis. This is crucial to a content strategy because in order to drive a company to success, you need to understand what’s already being done and where your company can provide unique value to its target audience.

What is a competitive analysis?

As defined by Asana, a competitive analysis “involves identifying your competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own.”

There are many topics to include in a competitive analysis, including but not limited to:

• Descriptions of competitors’ offerings
• Market share, sales, and revenue
• Marketing & social media analysis
• Customer ratings

How do I select the competitors to use in my analysis?

I believe the best way to do this is to select competitors from three different tiers:

• Direct competitor: a company offering the same products and/or services to the same target market
• Indirect competitor: a company offering a different product that could substitute your product and satisfy your customer’s needs and goals
• Aspirational competitor: a company that is thriving in their industry and that you aspire to mirror the success of

Once you select the competitors for each tier, you’re ready to begin collecting the information you need.

Competitive analysis: Project Sunshine

To put this new concept into practice, I conducted a competitive analysis for Project Sunshine, the nonprofit I began researching last week.

First, I selected the competitors:

• Ronald McDonald House Charities is a direct competitor because they seek to bring joy and comfort to children and families with medical needs.
• Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is an indirect competitor because the market they serve somewhat overlaps with Project Sunshine’s target market, but the organization shares the same goal – raising funds and making patients feel comfortable and happy.
• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is an aspirational competitor because they’re ranked 4^th in Forbes’ “America’s Top 100 Charities” list and they have similar goals to Project Sunshine. They brought in over $3M in total revenue just last year, and that’s a number Project Sunshine would definitely like to reach one day.

Then, I listed out all the information I was looking for from each charity.

• Content types
• Content topics
• Content quality & frequency
• Content distribution channels
• Current SEO strategy
• Audience engagement metrics
• Content performance metrics
• Brand voice and messaging

Once I collected that information, I created a SWOT analysis for each company. A SWOT analysis is an exercise in identifying a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This way, I could assess where each company currently stands and how that compares to what Project Sunshine is currently doing. We will come back to this in a future step towards creating a content strategy, but a SWOT analysis is a great tool for developing new ideas for a business.

The last step was compiling all this information into a comprehensive report: You can read my competitive analysis for Project Sunshine here: