The Good, The Bad, and The Strategy

To compete, you have to compare.

Comparison has its negative connotations nowadays. I typically find a lot of posts on social media reminding viewers not to compare themselves with other people. And while I do believe that comparison can be a bad thing, competition in the free world requires businesses and nonprofits to see how they are doing compared to other organizations.

In creating a content strategy, one seeks to make content more effective and beneficial to both the business and viewer. But you won’t be able to do this unless you know where your competitors and their content fall flat.

So it is towards comparison to which we turn. Not for the purpose of making ourselves feel bad, but with the intention of making us do better.

A competitive analysis should be conducted to determine the good, the bad, and the strategy of your competitors. From this, gaps can emerge. You’ll start to see what to do and what not to do with your content. And then, you can improve.

Everyone Competes in Some Way

This week, I created a competitive analysis for Habitat for Humanity. I know what you’re thinking:

“A competitive analysis for a nonprofit?!?” To which the answer is, yes.

We tend to think of businesses competing against each other for money.

Coke v.s. Pepsi.

Walmart v.s. Amazon.

Spotify v.s. Apple Music.

Google v.s… (well, they’re technically a monopoly, so… the government?)

But nonprofits are also in a competition; specifically for resources. There’s only so many people who are willing to donate money or volunteer their time to a certain cause. Indeed, charities are noble causes, but all charities rely on the same finite amount of resources.

And even if a charity like Habitat for Humanity is the most known in the affordable housing space, that doesn’t mean that they cease to compete, either. In The Content Strategy Toolkit, Meghan Casey writes. “ The truth is that even if your company is truly the only one in its class, you are still competing – with companies who do similar things or for a spot at the customer’s go-to source of information on topic x.” In short, everyone competes in some way, shape, or form.

Any organization, business or nonprofit, can benefit from a creative analysis, because in this economy, there’s always some sort of competition going on. According to an article by Christine White for Hubspot, “Competitive analysis gives you a clearer picture of the market landscape to make informed decisions for your growth.” Once you know what your competitors are doing, you can improve what you’re doing to better compete.

Figuring Out What Your Competitors Are Up To

In creating a competitive analysis Habitat for Humanity, I researched three different types of competitors. White summarizes two of these pretty nicely in her article, and I’ve included her definitions to each:

Direct Competitor: The Fuller Center for Housing. According to White, “These brands offer the same product/service as you to the same target audience”
Indirect Competitor: Mercy Housing. “These businesses solve the same problem but with a different solution,” writes White.
Aspirational Competitor: New Story. According to an article by Branding Compass, “An aspirational competitor is someone that you may not be directly competing with now but hope to be someday as your business grows.”

Since this competitive analysis focuses on strategy, I examined different content-related things such as SEO, website and social media content, language, and audience engagement.

A screenshot of keywords for the charity New Story, compiled through Moz. Keywords are crucial to an organization’s SEO strategy. As part of compiling this report, I looked into the keywords for all three competitors.

Although there is a lot of quantitative data that can be used to complete an analysis such as this (specifically in the realm of SEO strategy), much of the analysis is qualitative. I spent a lot of time reading and watching different forms of content – even going through social media posts just to read user comments.

Alas, some of it can be subjective. It can also be biased.

In writing the analysis, something I kept in-mind is that any conclusion needs to be supported by evidence. According to an Asana blog post, “To avoid bias, you should rely on all the data available to back up your decisions.” Throughout my report, I included screenshots of different things from each competitor to back my statements. For example, I wrote about how New Story is good at audience interactions, and included screenshots of them responding to comments on their social media platforms to support this claim.

*An example of New Story interacting with comments on TikTok.*

After finding all of the information I needed on each competitor and compiling it altogether, I then created a SWOT analysis for each organization. This allowed me to see where the gaps are – and where Habitat for Humanity can improve to fill them.

All Together Now

After finding all this information, I compiled all of my findings into a formal report. It includes all of the information regarding each of Habitat’s three competitors, and also some recommendations on how Habitat can improve its content strategy.

Check out the full report here.