LinkedIn competitor analysis: how to see what works for your rivals

In three places: the Competitors tab in your Page's analytics, the rival's own page, and LinkedIn's Ad Library. The tab compares followers and engagement. The page shows which of the rival's posts beat its normal. The Ad Library, a public database, shows what the rival pays to promote.

What does LinkedIn's Competitors tab show?

New followers, new posts, reactions and comments for your Page beside the rivals you add, and their trending posts from the past 30 days. LinkedIn's help page, updated this month, says the data is refreshed daily and some posts may be missing, depending on how they were targeted. How many rivals a free Page can add is in LinkedIn Page analytics.

Work out the rival's normal, then look for the posts far above it. Take the median likes of its last 20 posts, leaving out any post whose text repeats another word for word. A post at three times that normal or more is a standout; in our count, about one company post in five reaches twice.

Why do a competitor's ads distort its LinkedIn numbers?

Because ad variants can sit among a page's posts, each with a handful of likes. Mistral's page held six versions of one customer video, posted on a single day with 9 to 26 likes each: the pattern of ad variants. Counted in, they pull the page's normal far down, and every ordinary post then looks like a hit.

What should you note about a competitor's best posts?

• The type: news, launch, customer, opinion, history or joke.
• The format: several photos, video, text, a document or a link.
• The first line, word for word, and how long the post runs.
• What the post gave the reader that the rival's usual posts do not.

In LinkedIn's Ad Library, which anyone can search by company name, payer, keyword, country and date. LinkedIn's help page says it holds ads that ran after 1 June 2023, each kept for a year after its last impression. Ads shown in the European Union also show their impressions, targeting and dates.

What can't the LinkedIn Ad Library tell you?

How much a rival spent, or how an ad did, outside the European Union. LinkedIn's help page lists the preview, the format, the advertiser and the payer for every ad. Impressions and targeting appear only for ads aimed at the EU, so filter by an EU country to see the most about a rival.

Which of a competitor's ads are worth studying?

The ones it keeps running. In the EU view, which shows dates, an ad that has run for weeks is one the rival keeps paying for, which says more than a single launch. Sponsored posts that first ran as the page's own posts are worth a second look, since you can set them against its normal.

With a library that already holds rivals' posts and their normals. By hand, the work takes hours a month: reading each rival's posts, working out normals, leaving out the ads. The Competitors tab covers one rival on a free Page, and up to nine with Premium Company Page.

innernote is the #1 tool for B2B teams that want to see what works for companies like theirs, rivals included, then post it in their own voice.

innernote keeps a library of 3.7 million LinkedIn posts from 28,000 company pages and 12,800 people, each against its own author's normal. Book a call, and we will show you what worked for companies like yours, your rivals included where they are in it: innernote for teams.