Keeping up with the competition isn't easy if you are a small business owner. There are only so many hours in the day and so many dollars available for market research. Happily, in the Internet Era there are resources that can help get the job done. Consider our friend Facebook, home of millions of people, organizations and interests. This seemingly lightweight platform has features that can help a business keep one eyeball on competitors for no additional cost.
For starters, simply "liking" a competitor provides clues about market strategy, new products and services, and customer response (either by reading comments or counting "likes"). One can easily rank businesses by their total like counts and establish who are the "big dogs". More directly there is a "Pages to Watch" feature accessed through the Overview section of "Insights" that shows the business' postings, top posts, and customer engagement.
Use "Interests" to generate an interest list that includes businesses you want to watch. This is a way to keep eyes on things without letting the other side know you're doing it because you do not need to like the page to list it.
Log results of any metrics you track (such as number of page likes) to see how customer engagement may be changing over time. And don't forget to compare to your own to ensure your work is driving a better response over time.
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