How to Monitor Competitors on LinkedIn in 60 Minutes a Week
A weekly routine for watching competitor pages, posts, people, hiring, ads and mentions on LinkedIn, with the click path for each, a copy-paste tracking sheet and the outbound move each change calls for.
To monitor competitors on LinkedIn, pick three to five of them, then check six things once a week in a fixed order: their company page, their posts and who engages with them, their people, their open jobs, their ads and who mentions them. Every one of those is visible to a logged-in member for free. Log changes rather than metrics, and turn each change into one outbound action the same week. The routine below takes about an hour and needs no paid tool.
What you need
- A LinkedIn account with a complete profile. If you run a company page as an admin, the Competitors panel in Page analytics is open to you; if not, skip Step 1 and start at Step 2.
- A sheet with two tabs: "Changes" and "People". Column layouts are below.
- A list of three to five direct competitors, each with its company page URL and the two or three people there who post most, usually the founder, the head of sales or marketing and one loud account executive. Eight to fifteen profiles in total is plenty. Past that, the hour is gone before you reach the ads.
- Sixty minutes in the same slot every week. Monday morning works because weekend posts have finished collecting reactions.
- Optional: Sales Navigator, for alerts on saved leads and accounts. The routine does not need it.
Before you start, decide what you are monitoring for. A marketing team wants benchmarks: follower growth, posting cadence, engagement per post. A sales team wants changes and people: a new product line, a hiring push into your region, a commenter asking the competitor a question you can answer better. This guide is the sales version. Where a step is only useful for marketing, it says so and you can skip it.
What should you monitor about competitors on LinkedIn?
Six things, each with a different place to look and a different reason to care.
| What to watch | Where it lives | Why a sales team cares |
|---|---|---|
| Company page | The page itself and, for admins, Analytics > Competitors | Positioning changes, new product lines, growth or decline in posting |
| Posts and engagers | The page's Posts tab and each key person's Activity | People commenting on your category this week; questions the competitor left unanswered |
| People | The page's People tab, the key people's profiles | Sales hires into a region or segment, leadership changes, who is leaving |
| Hiring | The page's Jobs tab and LinkedIn Jobs search filtered by company | Where they are investing; which segment they are about to sell into |
| Ads | The page's Ads tab, or the Ad Library | The offer and message they are paying to push; which countries |
| Mentions | LinkedIn search, Posts filter, competitor name in quotes | Buyers comparing tools in public, unhappy customers, "alternative to" threads |
Two things LinkedIn will not give you, so do not spend the hour looking. First, a company page's follower list is not public, so nobody, and no tool, can read all of who follows a competitor. Second, the official API only returns reactions on posts from pages you administer, which is why every third-party tool reads the interface instead. The guide to tracking competitor post engagers links LinkedIn's own documentation on both points.
Step 1: Compare pages in Competitor analytics (admins only)
If you administer your company page, open it in admin view, click Analytics, then Competitors. LinkedIn lets you add up to nine other pages and compares follower metrics and organic content metrics over a selectable time range that defaults to the last 30 days, per Social Media Examiner's walkthrough of the dashboard. The same walkthrough notes that neither the desktop nor the mobile view shows a competitor's engagement rate, so divide total engagements by total posts yourself if you want the figure.
For a sales team this step takes five minutes and answers one question: did any competitor's posting volume or engagement jump this month? A jump usually means a launch, a funding round or a new content person, and each of those shows up in later steps as people to talk to. Note the jump in the Changes tab and move on. The follower race itself is a marketing metric; leave it to marketing.
If you are not a page admin, the public page still shows follower count and the Posts tab sorted by recency. Write the follower count down once a month. That is enough.
Step 2: Read the posts and log who engages
This is the step that produces leads, so it gets the biggest share of the hour, about twenty minutes.
- Open each competitor page and click Posts. Then open each key person's profile, click Activity, then Posts. Skip hiring announcements, anniversaries and reposts of industry news.
- Keep posts about the problem you both solve, a launch, pricing, a comparison with another tool, or a customer result. These are the posts your buyers react to.
- Click the reaction count under each kept post. LinkedIn opens the full list of people who reacted, with headlines. Scroll to the end; the list loads in batches.
- Read the comments. A question or an objection in a comment is worth more than any reaction. A commenter who names a problem the competitor did not answer is the best row you will log all week.
- Add each person who fits your ideal customer profile to the People tab: name, headline, company, profile URL, post URL, action (reaction, comment, question), date, competitor, score, status. Leave out the competitor's own employees, agencies pitching them and your direct peers.
- Dedupe by profile URL. Someone who engaged with two competitors in a month goes to the top.
LinkedIn search saves time when a key person posts a lot. In the search bar, type the topic in quotes, switch to the Posts filter, open "From member" and pick the person, then sort by Latest. Quotes keep the results on the phrase; OR widens them.
"cold outreach" OR "outbound" OR "reply rate" -> Posts -> From member: <competitor founder> -> Sort: Latest
If you watch more than three competitors or any of them regularly passes about 50 reactions a post, the clicking stops fitting in twenty minutes. Intentsly's LinkedIn signals do this step continuously: you name the competitor pages and people, it captures everyone who likes, comments or shares each new post, scores them against your ideal customer profile and shows you the short list with a verified email, so the hour goes to the conversations rather than the scrolling. Everything else in this guide still works without it.
Step 3: Check the people
Ten minutes. Open each competitor page, click People. LinkedIn lists employees with filters for location and what they do. You are looking for three kinds of change:
- A new sales hire in a region or vertical you sell into. That is a competitor about to call your accounts; your accounts should hear from you first.
- A leadership change in sales or marketing. Messaging usually changes within a quarter, and so does the channel they push.
- People leaving. A former employee of a competitor who joins one of your target accounts knows the category and often knows the gaps. Note them under People with action "job change".
Turn on notifications for the key people so their new posts reach you between sessions: open the profile, click the bell icon next to the Follow or Connect button, and choose all posts. If you pay for Sales Navigator, save the key people as leads; LinkedIn's own Sales Navigator release notes describe lead and account alerts that notify you when a saved lead has a job or role change, with content-engagement alerts on the Advanced plans. The free bell does most of the same job for a handful of profiles.
Browse in private mode if you would rather the competitor's staff not see your name in their viewer list every Monday: Settings, Visibility, Profile viewing options, then private mode. The trade is that you also lose your own viewer list while it is on.
Step 4: Read their job posts
Five minutes. On each company page, click Jobs. Alternatively, open LinkedIn Jobs, leave the keyword empty, and type the competitor's name into the Company filter. Sort by Most recent.
Read titles and locations, not descriptions. Five account executive roles in Germany means a push into Germany. A "Head of Partnerships" posting means a channel programme is coming. A sudden "Customer Success Manager, Enterprise" posting usually follows a large signing, which tells you which segment they just won.
Log each new role in the Changes tab with the date. Do not log every repost of the same job; LinkedIn renews them. Compare against last week's list instead.
| Job post pattern | What it usually means | Your move this week |
|---|---|---|
| Several sales roles in one country or vertical | Territory push | Contact your open opportunities there before they do |
| Partnerships or channel role | Reseller programme coming | Talk to the agencies and consultants in that space now |
| Enterprise customer success role | A large win in that segment | Ask your enterprise prospects what changed in their evaluation |
| Product marketing or content role | Messaging refresh within a quarter | Re-check your comparison page in six weeks |
| Many engineering roles, no sales | Building rather than selling this quarter | Lower priority for your week |
Step 5: Look at the ads they pay for
Five minutes, and only for competitors that run ads. On a competitor page, click Posts, then the Ads tab. Or go to the Ad Library and search by advertiser name, keyword, country and date. According to Lunio's guide to the Ad Library, the library holds ads created on or after 1 June 2023, keeps them for a year after the last impression, shows preview, format, advertiser and payer for every ad, and adds impressions, targeting and run dates only for ads targeted at the EU. New ads appear within about 24 to 48 hours of first running.
What you want from this is the offer. An ad is the message a competitor has decided is worth money this month: a free tool, a benchmark report, a discount, a specific integration. Copy the headline into the Changes tab. If the offer competes with yours, the people who engage with the organic version of the same message (Step 2) are your list. If it names a segment you do not serve, you have just saved a week of worrying.
Step 6: Search for who mentions them
Ten minutes, and the most under-used step. Type the competitor's name in quotes into LinkedIn search, choose the Posts filter, sort by Latest. Then run the same search with the words buyers use when comparing:
"<Competitor>" alternative
"<Competitor>" vs
"<Competitor>" pricing
"switched from <Competitor>"
"anyone using <Competitor>"
Each result is one of four things: the competitor's own promotion (skip), a partner or agency pitching with them (skip, but note the partner), a customer praising them (note the company; they are a fit for your category and a future renewal conversation), or a buyer asking in public (log the person under People with action "question", score 5). The buyer asking in public is the warmest person you will find on LinkedIn this week, and most sales teams never search for them.
Repeat the searches with your own company name. Someone comparing you with a competitor in a post is a conversation you want to be in before the comments decide it.
A worked example (hypothetical)
Northline Payroll is a made-up payroll software company selling to accounting firms in the UK and the Netherlands. It watches three competitors: two UK payroll vendors and one Dutch one. The sales lead runs the routine every Monday at nine.
Week one, Step 1 shows the Dutch competitor doubled its posts in September. Step 2 finds that four of those posts are about a new accountant partner programme, and 31 people reacted across them, nine of them partners or owners at Dutch accounting firms. Step 3 shows the Dutch competitor hired a "Partner Manager, Benelux" in August. Step 4 shows two open roles for the same team. Step 5 shows an ad in the Netherlands offering a free partner onboarding call. Step 6 finds one Dutch accountant asking in a post whether anyone has compared the competitor's partner terms with others.
Those six findings are one story: the competitor is building a Dutch accountant channel. Northline's moves that week are set: message the nine firm owners about partner programmes without naming the competitor's post; reply to the accountant who asked in public with a short comparison; brief the Dutch rep before the new Partner Manager reaches her accounts. The Changes tab holds one line: "Competitor C: Benelux partner channel, started August, ads live in NL." Everything else lives in People, scored and dated.
Where this goes wrong
Logging metrics instead of changes. A sheet full of follower counts and engagement rates is a marketing report. Nobody in sales acts on "they gained 400 followers". Write down what changed and what it means, one line per change, and keep the people in their own tab with a score. If a line does not end in an action, delete it.
Mentioning the competitor in the message. "I saw you commented on X's post" tells the person you were watching the competitor and puts that competitor's name first in your message. Lead with the topic of the post, which you know because you read it. The LinkedIn outreach message guide covers the structure; the rule here is simply that the competitor never appears in the copy.
Watching too many, too rarely, or with a bot in your own session. Ten competitors checked monthly produces stale names and a three-hour Monday. Three to five checked weekly produces a list you can message while the topic is warm. And never let a browser extension scroll the reaction lists for you from your own LinkedIn account; LinkedIn's user agreement bars that kind of automation and the account at risk is yours. Reading by hand is normal use. Tools that read public pages without your login keep your account out of it.
What to do with the list
The People tab is the output. Each Monday, after the hour:
- Score every new row. Commented with a question or objection: 5. Commented: 3. Reacted only: 1. Add 3 for a title that buys your product, add 3 for engaging with two competitors in 30 days. Remove competitor employees and peers.
- Message everyone at 6 or above within three days, while the topic is still on their mind. Below 3, leave them; a single like is not an invitation. The middle band waits for a second appearance.
- Write about the topic rather than the post. For a commenter who asked a question, a connection note that works as an example: "Your question under the thread on partner terms is one I hear from most firm owners this quarter. I wrote up what we found. Happy to send it if useful."
- Keep the daily volume low and the profile real. A few well-aimed notes a day from a complete profile beat a batch from a thin one.
- Move the Changes lines that affect open deals to your pipeline review. A territory push or a new offer belongs in the next deal call, not in a sheet nobody opens.
If the hand-run routine starts producing more scored names than one person can message, that is the point at which software earns its place. We ran this on ourselves at launch: we pointed Intentsly's signals and AI SDR at founders complaining about cold outreach on LinkedIn, let the system hold the replies, and booked 14 qualified demos in 14 days with zero manual outreach, at a reply rate 4x our previous cold campaigns. The write-up is in our case study. The honest limits: it sends on LinkedIn only, with up to 2 LinkedIn accounts per plan and a cap of 30 messages and 30 connection requests per account per day, and we recommend 15.
| Route | Wrong choice when |
|---|---|
| This routine by hand | You watch more than five competitors, or one post a week passes about 50 reactions |
| Page Competitor analytics only | You need names; it shows page totals and never a person |
| Sales Navigator alerts | You want to know who engaged with the competitor; its alerts cover your saved leads and accounts, not a competitor's audience |
| Marketing benchmark tools | You are in sales; they report follower growth and cadence, not buyers |
| Intentsly | You want email sequences, Reddit or X monitoring, more than two sender accounts, or more than 30 connection requests a day per account |
For the terms used above, what a buying signal is defines the difference between a fit signal and a timing signal, and the guides index has the step-by-step pages for the outbound side. The fastest way to see whether your competitors' audience contains your buyers is to try the AI with your competitors' pages: it shows matching people with no account, and the 7-day free trial lets you run the outreach from there.
FAQ
How many competitors can you add to LinkedIn competitor analytics?
Up to nine other company pages, which with your own makes ten in the comparison. The panel is in the admin view under Analytics, then Competitors, and it reports follower metrics and organic content metrics (total engagements and total posts) over a time range that defaults to the last 30 days. It does not show engagement rate or the names of anyone who engaged.
Can competitors see that you viewed their LinkedIn page or profile?
Viewing a company page is anonymous. Viewing a person's profile is not: your name appears in their "Who viewed your profile" list unless you switch on private mode under Settings, Visibility, Profile viewing options. In private mode you also stop seeing who viewed your own profile, so many sales teams switch it on for the monitoring hour and off afterwards.
Can you see who follows a competitor's LinkedIn page?
Not in full. A company page's follower list is not public, so no visitor and no tool can read all of it. What you can see completely is who reacts to and comments on the page's posts, and those people are the useful part of the audience anyway: they are paying attention this week, while a follower may have clicked once in 2021.
Can you see a competitor's LinkedIn ads?
Yes. Open the competitor's page, click Posts, then the Ads tab, or search the Ad Library by advertiser name. Every ad shows its creative, format, advertiser and payer. Impressions, targeting and run dates appear only for ads aimed at the EU. Ads appear a day or two after they start running and remain in the library for a year after they stop.
Is it allowed to monitor competitors on LinkedIn?
Reading public pages, posts, reaction lists, job posts and ads by hand is normal use of the site. What LinkedIn's user agreement bars is scraping and unapproved automation, and a tool that acts inside your own LinkedIn session is the kind that puts your account at risk. Keep the hand-run routine in your session and keep automation to tools that read public data without your login.
How often should you monitor competitors on LinkedIn?
Weekly, in the same slot, for three to five competitors. Daily produces noise and burns the hour on refreshes. Monthly leaves a commenter's question three weeks cold before you see it, which is too late to message them on it. Turn on post notifications for the key people so that launches and comparison posts reach you between sessions.
