The Most Powerful Way to Research Your Instagram Competitors
Social media has evolved significantly in recent years.

It is turning from a platform for interaction with friends to a profitable marketplace for businesses offering almost any kind of product or service.

Instagram is now a leader in that ecosystem. It has a 10% higher engagement rate than Facebook and as much as an 84% higher engagement rate than Twitter.

In recent times, there have been a number of updates that illustrate how Instagram is leading the charge for businesses. Implementation of a ‘Shop now’ button for fast shopping, along with the ability to add links to stories has seen the Instagram advertiser count grow to over 2 million.

Besides, according to Instagram internal data, it has over 800 million active monthly users, more than 300 million accounts that use Instagram stories every day, and an intriguing 80% of users who follow brands.

With so many businesses coming to the platform, it’s important to keep an eye on your Instagram competitors to stay relevant and be able to compete. Researching your competitors can help you improve your marketing game, and gain new followers and clients.

Knowing the strategy of your Instagram competitors is essential for successful Instagram marketing. Your competitors target the same people as you do, so monitoring their approach gives you an opportunity to learn their tricks and avoid mistakes. What’s more, many of your potential new customers are following your competitors’ accounts.

In order to effectively monitor your competitors, first, you need to find them. And without the help of a robust Instagram research platform, this process can be extremely time-consuming. The rest of this article will identify a number of ways you can find your Instagram competitors with the help of a tool called Combin.

Offer: Want to find your Instagram competitors, engage with their followers, and explode your following? Get started with Combin for free here.

How to find global Instagram competitors

  • Download and install Combin. It’s available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
  • Login with your Instagram account. It supports two-factor authentication and doesn’t store or share any private information.
  • Open the search tab and click the Add New Search button.
  • Perform a search using a few hashtags related to your business.
Refresh the search to load more results if needed.
  • Monitor the most popular results. Authors of posts that look similar to what you publish and promote are your global competitors.

How to find local Instagram competitors

  • Open the search tab and click the Add New Search button.
  • Type in the hashtag of interest.
  • Pick a place, city, region or country.
Refresh the search to load more results if needed.
  • Sort the search results by popularity. Authors of posts that look similar to what you publish and promote are your local competitors.

Once you have compiled a list of Instagram competitors, you can start engaging with their content, their influencers, as well as with accounts that follow and comment on them.

How to find Instagram influencers from your competitors

Many Instagram businesses use branded hashtags. Such hashtags are mentioned by brands’ followers during various campaigns, by influencers for promotion, and by brands themselves for their own publications. Follow the instructions below to find posts of brands’ influencers.

  • Look through your competitor’s feed and pay attention to the hashtags they use. Find a branded hashtag and copy it.
  • Launch Combin, create a new search and paste the branded hashtag into the field.
  • Specify the number of search results per page and click Find.
  • If needed, refresh the results after the…