# Competitor social research Human Guide

## What This Is For
Analyze what competitors are doing on social and what appears to be working. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for social content: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Competitor social research agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for competitor social research.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Competitor social research guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- compare competitors on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Threads, or other social platforms
- find what content is working in a niche
- benchmark posting frequency, formats, topics, and engagement
- identify content gaps or opportunities
- build a social strategy from competitor research
- Define competitors and platforms
- If only company names are provided, search profiles first and confirm likely matches when ambiguity matters.
- Verification/public metadata
- Pull comparable recent windows per competitor.
- Track source URLs, dates, captions, formats, and metrics.
- Find outliers per competitor
- Use each account's own median baseline.

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Overview, When to Use, Workflow, Useful ScrapeCreators Endpoints, Output Format, Executive Summary, Competitor Snapshot, What Is Working, Competitor A, Cross-Competitor Patterns.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- Do not compare raw views between a huge brand and a small brand without context.
- topics competitors avoid
- Do not compare competitors only by follower count. Engagement and outlier lift matter more.
- Do not mix platforms without platform context. A good LinkedIn post and good TikTok are different artifacts.
- Do not assume a profile match from a company name if multiple brands share the name.
- Do not present competitor strategy as fact when it is inferred from public content. Say "appears to" or "suggests".

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Competitor social research human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the scrapecreators/social-media-research-skills skill entry for `competitor-social-research`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Competitor Social Research

## Overview

Analyze what competitors are doing on social and what appears to be working. This skill combines profile data, recent posts, outlier analysis, transcripts, and optionally comments to produce a practical competitor brief.

## When to Use

Use this skill when the user asks to:

- compare competitors on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Threads, or other social platforms
- find what content is working in a niche
- benchmark posting frequency, formats, topics, and engagement
- identify content gaps or opportunities
- build a social strategy from competitor research

## Workflow

1. **Define competitors and platforms**
   - Use provided handles/URLs.
   - If only company names are provided, search profiles first and confirm likely matches when ambiguity matters.

2. **Fetch profile snapshots**
   - Followers/subscribers
   - Bio/positioning
   - Links
   - Verification/public metadata

3. **Fetch recent content**
   - Pull comparable recent windows per competitor.
   - Track source URLs, dates, captions, formats, and metrics.

4. **Find outliers per competitor**
   - Use each account's own median baseline.
   - Do not compare raw views between a huge brand and a small brand without context.

5. **Analyze content strategy**
   - Content pillars
   - Formats
   - Hook styles
   - Posting cadence
   - Offers/CTAs
   - Use of founder/creator personality
   - Community/comment patterns

6. **Find gaps and opportunities**
   Look for:
   - topics competitors avoid
   - formats that overperform but few competitors use
   - unanswered audience questions
   - weak hooks or repetitive content
   - platform whitespace

## Useful ScrapeCreators Endpoints

Use the relevant profile/feed/detail/transcript/comment endpoints from `scrapecreators-api`. Common routes include:

- TikTok: `/v1/tiktok/profile`, `/v3/tiktok/profile/videos`
- Instagram: `/v1/instagram/profile`, `/v2/instagram/user/posts`, `/v1/instagram/user/reels`
- YouTube: `/v1/youtube/channel`, `/v1/youtube/channel-videos`, `/v1/youtube/channel/shorts`
- LinkedIn: `/v1/linkedin/company`, `/v1/linkedin/company/posts`
- Facebook: `/v1/facebook/profile`, `/v1/facebook/profile/posts`, `/v1/facebook/profile/reels`
- X/Twitter: `/v1/twitter/profile`, `/v1/twitter/user-tweets`
- Threads: `/v1/threads/profile`, `/v1/threads/user/posts`
- Bluesky: `/v1/bluesky/profile`, `/v1/bluesky/user/posts`

## Output Format

```markdown
# Competitor Social Research Brief

## Executive Summary
- Biggest opportunity:
- Competitor to study closest:
- Content format to test first:

## Competitor Snapshot
| Competitor | Platforms | Audience size | Posting cadence | Best-performing format | Notes |
|---|---|---:|---|---|---|