Looking at what your competitors are doing well is one of the highest-leverage uses of an hour. You see what is currently working in your category, you steal the structure of their best posts, and you avoid wasting time on tactics that have already been tried and discarded. This guide covers Manva's Instagram competitor research tool — built on Instagram's public Business Discovery API.
What you can see (and what you cannot)
Manva's competitor research uses the official Instagram Business Discovery API. That means we only show what is publicly visible on any business account. We can see:
- Follower count
- Posts (image, caption, hashtags, like count, comment count)
- Posting frequency over time
- Engagement rate trend
- Top-performing posts
- Hashtag patterns
We cannot see:
- Reach or impressions (those are private to the account owner)
- Story or DM activity
- Audience demographics
- Anything behind login walls
This is the same data you can manually scroll through on a competitor's public profile — Manva just structures it so you can analyse it quickly.
Step 1: Add a competitor
From the dashboard: Tools → Competitor research → Add competitor.
Enter the competitor's Instagram handle (without @). Manva validates that the account is public and a Business profile, then adds them to your tracked list. You can track up to 5 competitors on most plans.
Pick competitors carefully. The most useful ones are usually:
- 1 direct competitor selling exactly what you sell
- 1 aspirational brand 5–10× your size in the same niche
- 1 lateral competitor selling adjacent products to the same audience
- 1 international brand with strong content if you sell premium
Tracking 5 random "biggest brands in the world" rarely produces actionable insight.
Step 2: Open the competitor dashboard
Each tracked competitor gets their own dashboard with:
- Headline metrics — followers, average engagement rate, posts in the last 30 days
- Posting cadence — a calendar showing which days they post and how often
- Top posts — their highest-engagement posts in the last 90 days, ranked
- Caption analysis — average caption length, languages used, common CTAs
- Hashtag analysis — which hashtags they use most, ranked by frequency
You can also export any competitor's data as CSV for deeper analysis.
Step 3: Find the patterns worth copying
Look at their top 10 posts and ask:
- What format dominates? Reels? Carousels? Single images? If their best content is all Reels and you only post static, that is your single biggest opportunity.
- What topics show up repeatedly? "Behind the scenes", "founder story", "customer review", "product education" — patterns reveal what their audience values.
- What is the caption length? Short and punchy (under 50 words)? Long-form storytelling (200+ words)? Match the format that works for your shared audience.
- What CTAs do they use? "Tap link in bio", "DM us for orders", "Comment below", "Save for later" — note which one shows up in their best posts.
Step 4: Map their posting cadence
The cadence calendar shows when they post. Look for:
- Days of the week they prioritise. Many brands have a clear "post-on-Monday-Wednesday-Friday" pattern.
- Time-of-day clustering. If they post in clusters (e.g. always 7–9pm), they have likely tested it.
- Festival and event spikes. Around Diwali, what did they post and how often?
- Quiet weeks. What are they doing during slow seasons?
Match or beat their cadence in your own scheduling — consistency at their level is the bar to meet.
Step 5: Hashtag intelligence
The hashtag tab ranks every hashtag they have used by frequency. Useful patterns:
- Their always-on tags — tags on 80%+ of posts. These are their brand-defining hashtags.
- Their niche tags — tags on 5–15 posts. Often the highest-ROI niche tags worth borrowing.
- Their festival tags — only show up around festivals. Add to your festival bundles.
- Their geographic tags — city or state tags they use. Same audience pool you are competing for.
You can copy any hashtag bundle directly into your own hashtag library with one click.
What to do with the data
Competitor research is only useful if it changes what you do next. After 30 minutes on a competitor:
- Pick one format they are doing well that you do not — try it next week
- Pick two captions in their style and adapt the structure for your products
- Pick 5 hashtags from their niche set and test them
- Pick one CTA pattern and use it for the next 3 posts
Re-evaluate after 2 weeks. Keep what works, drop what does not.
What to avoid
Copying directly. Stealing exact captions, exact image styles or exact post structures looks lazy and gets noticed. Borrow patterns, not pixels.
Obsessive tracking. Checking every competitor every day produces anxiety, not insight. Once a week is plenty.
Over-indexing on follower count. A competitor with 500k followers and 0.2% engagement is doing worse per-post than you with 5k followers at 5% engagement. Look at engagement rate, not just size.
Ignoring smaller competitors. A regional competitor in your exact city often offers more transferable lessons than a national giant.
Frequently asked questions
Can they see that I am tracking them? No. Manva only reads public data — there is no notification on their end.
What if a competitor goes private? Their data stops updating. Manva keeps the historical data you have already collected.
Can I track competitors on Facebook, X or LinkedIn? Currently only Instagram. Other platforms are on the roadmap.
Is this against Instagram's terms? No — we use the official Business Discovery API. Reading public data this way is the intended use case.
Competitor research is not about copying — it is about reducing the cost of trying things. If a competitor has already proven that "carousels with founder stories" work in your niche, you can skip the experimental phase and go straight to making your own. That is the value Manva's tool delivers in an hour.