Instagram Competitor Analysis in 5 Easy Steps [+Duolingo Case Study]

Want to be a world-class player in your Instagram niche? I guess so! To get there, you need more than just good content – you need smart insights. And that’s where Instagram competitor analysis comes in. It shows you what your rivals are doing, what works, and where the untapped opportunities are. Let’s do it then!

• 5 steps to perform an effective Instagram competitor analysis:
  
  
  • Spot your key competitors
  • See what kind of content gets them the most traction
  • Comprendre how your rivals talk and present themselves
  • Apprendre who (and when) they’re talking to
  • Comparer their performance with yours

What is Instagram competitor analysis?

An Instagram competitor analysis is the process of tracking and evaluating what other brands or profiles in your niche are doing on Instagram. And how well they are doing.

It helps you understand their content strategy, audience engagement, and overall Instagram performance. 

Analyzing competitors on Instagram aims to find what works, spot gaps & untapped opportunities, and use those insights to improve your visibility and impact on the platform.

Why do you need an Instagram competitor analysis?

Nothing in marketing is an art for art’s sake – especially when we’re talking about analyzing things.

So, if you wonder why the heck you must “waste” your time on performing a competitor analysis on Instagram, here are some important reasons:

• To spot what type of content performs best in your niche. 
  That includes both Instagram formats (Reels, Stories, carousels) and content types (funny videos, tutorials, storytelling)
• To have a reference point. 
  How could you judge your Performances sur Instagram without comparing it to others? How would you know you’re heading in the right direction (or not)?
• To understand your audience better. 
  By watching who interacts with your competitors and what they respond to, you’ll learn more about the people you’re trying to reach – and how to actually reach them.
• To find content gaps and fresh opportunities. 
  Instagram competitor analysis can provide insights into topics or formats your rivals overlook, giving you space to stand out.
• To save your time and money. 
  Data-driven actions always have a higher chance of working than random guesswork. It’s not wasting – it’s investing!

How to analyze your competitors on Instagram? 5 Steps

Now, let’s move to the practice.

I’ll show you how to do the Instagram competitor analysis in this quick step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Identify Instagram competitors

Use Instagram search strategically

Gone are the days when social media search was just about looking up usernames. 

Today, Instagram’s search bar is a powerful tool that lets you discover competing accounts:

• By keywords.
  Type the words that are closely related to your product, service, or content (e.g., “language learning app”). Instagram will suggest to you related profiles, top posts, and hashtags.
• By hashtags.
  Search popular industry-specific hashtags (i.e., #languagelearningapp). Visit the “Tags” section, click the relevant hashtag, and explore the “Accounts” and “Not personalised” tabs.
• By location.
  If you’re a local brand, searching by city or regional tags will help you identify nearby competitors who target the same audience.

Unfortunately, this method has two major problems: it’s time-consuming et it doesn’t always show the most relevant competitors. 

Instead, it prioritizes profiles and posts that perform well in the algorithm’s “eyes,” which may not reflect your actual competitive landscape.

Ask the AI assistant

Using a dedicated AI tool is a more advanced (and accurate) technique for an Instagram competitor analysis. And I don’t mean ChatGPT, Gemini, or other stuff like that. 

Don’t get me wrong – these popular AI chatbots can help you identify Instagram competitors, but their accuracy is even less than Instagram search. 

Instead, I suggest using alimenté par l'IA outils d'analyse de la concurrence comme Brand24.

Pourquoi ?

Because Brand24 is a écoute sociale outil qui tracks and analyzes real mentions.

Not estimations, not hallucinations but real-life mentions from multiple online sources, including:

• Social media platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bluesky, Telegram, or Twitch
• News sites, blogs, podcasts, video platforms, and websites
• Examiner les plates-formes et les bulletins d'information.

One of the core AI-boosted Brand24 features is its AI Brand Assistant. 

It works like ChatGPT, but is equipped with unique, internal data, making the results much more personalized (and thus accurate).

Better, I’ll show you an example.

Let’s suppose you’re looking for a Duolingo Instagram competitor.

I typed a very basic prompt: “Identify the top 5 Duolingo Instagram competitors”.

After a few seconds, the AI Brand Assistant presented a curated (and very accurate!) list of language apps with short summaries and direct links to their Instagram posts.

Quick conclusion: Instead of spending hours manually scrolling through hashtags or search results, I got a ready-to-use list of actual competitors – relevant, verified, and active on Instagram.

That’s the power of using an AI tool made specifically for surveillance des médias sociaux.

It doesn’t guess – it shows you who’s really competing for your audience’s attention.

Step 2: Examine their content performance

Okay, you identified your Instagram competitors. Now, it’s time to explore their content strategy.

No matter what people tell you, content is the undisputed king of Instagram. 

It makes people follow and engage with some Instagram profiles while ignoring the others. It is the medium that spreads brand messaging, drives notoriété de la marque & loyalty, and boosts sales.

To make this step easier, I suggest you do it in the form of a question-answer scheme. 

Here are the questions you should ask when doing an Instagram competitive analysis:

• What type of content do they post most often?
• Which posts generate the most engagement?
• What content themes or topics drive their Instagram presence?
• What tone of voice do they use?
• Do they work with influencers?
• Are there any engagement spikes or viral posts?
• Do their Instagram marketing strategies include user-generated content?
• How do they visually differentiate their brand?

Once you answer these questions for 2–5 competitors, you’ll start to notice patterns of your competitors’ performance.

And, more importantly, gaps you can fill with your own content.

Let’s do a quick case study and answer two of the abovementioned questions. Our sample brand again will be Duolingo.

Which posts generate the most engagement?

The quickest way to discover which posts generate the most buzz is by using an analytics tool like Brand24.

After setting up the project for your competitor’s brand, you must apply three simple filters:

• Date range: up to you! For our case study, I selected May 23rd to June 22nd, 2025.
• Source : Instagram only
• Auteur : Duolingo (to see only posts published by its official Instagram profile)
• Trier par : Popular first (to list the posts by engagement rate)

The results show that Duolingo’s top 5 posts were reels in collaboration with Stray Kids – one of the most famous K-pop groups in the world.

I quickly switched the view to the Analysis tab. 

It turns out that these five posts reached about 64 million (!) Instagram users, generated 1.3 million likes and 13,000 comments. 

Wow, these are enormous numbers when it comes to Visibilité sur Instagram!

Quick conclusion: Duolingo enters into collaborations with mega influencers to boost its visibilité de la marque. Besides, it strengthens Duolingo’s image as a fun, trend-savvy, and culturally relevant brand.

Lire la suite : Duolingo Social Media Strategy: How Effective Is It?

What content themes or topics drive their Instagram presence?

Now, let’s explore which topics are the primary contributors to discussions around Duolingo. 

This time, we will not use the Author filter (so, we’ll let Brand24 analyze all the conversations about Duolingo that happen on Instagram).

Le Analyse des thèmes de l'IA – a feature that clusters discussions – shows that the top 3 contexts when people discuss the Duolingo brand are:

1. English learning resources – not surprising at all
2. Memes and humour – that’s interesting! It proves how effective is the Duolingo’s tone of voice.
3. Engagement des utilisateurs – good reception of challenges and streaks is a valuable insight for product development.

Quick conclusion: Duolingo’s Instagram is all about learning, jokes, and streaks. That’s what gets people talking and sharing.

Step 3: Check brand positioning and messaging

Every brand wants to be something in your mind: a trusted expert, a cool friend, or a chaotic language owl with a streak obsession. That’s an element of social media strategy called brand positioning. 

And Instagram is where it comes to life.

Check how your competitors describe themselves in the bio. What words do they use? What’s their tone – friendly, playful, formal, inspiring?

Then scroll through their content. Are they focusing on education? Entertainment? Motivation? Selling? Is their messaging consistent?

You can also skip the manual job and ask the Assistant de marque AI.

For example, I prompted it: “What’s the Duolingo brand positioning and messaging style on Instagram?”.

I received a lot of detailed insights, including the description of Duolingo’s tone of voice, engagement metrics data, and a summary of content topics the brand covers.

After such an analysis, ask yourself: what is your vibe? And how can you say something a little different, a little sharper, a little more “you”?

In the end, remember not to copy-paste! People hate copycats.

Find your own style!

Step 4: Learn about their audience

Now, let’s focus on the target audience.

Knowing who interacts with your competitors can help you tailor your content to similar groups or discover untapped segments worth targeting.

It can also reveal when you should post.

This time, I’ll show you how to gain valuable insights about your competitor’s target audience on the example of Babbel – another language learning app and Duolingo’s direct competitor.

Top activity time

Let’s begin analyzing the competitor’s audience by checking when they are most active on Instagram.

Using Brand24’s “Hot Hours” feature, I selected Instagram as the source and filtered mentions related to Babbel.

From three available matrices (mentions, reach, and interactions), I decided to check interactions, as they best reflect real audience engagement.

The results show that Babbel’s audience is most active on Thursdays from 2 PM to 3 PM et Tuesdays from 5 PM to 7 PM (CET). 

Lire la suite : Best Time to Post on Instagram?

Quick conclusion: these are the ideal time slots for publishing content if you want to match their audience behavior – or beat them to it.

Emotions

The second step is to analyze the emotions behind the interactions. 

Understanding how people feel when they mention your competitor helps you create content that resonates with or inspires you by your competitor’s performance.

Using Brand24’s alimenté par l'IA analyse des sentiments, I filtered Instagram mentions of Babbel by emotional tone. 

The results revealed that most interactions were neutral or positive, often related to progress updates, course reviews, and user achievements.

But one thing caught my attention: can you see the spike of Babel’s positive Instagram mentions on June 19th?

After a quick check, I discovered that it was caused by a quite popular Instagram post claiming that Babbel does better than Duolingo regarding conversation-focused learning.

Lire la suite : How to Do Instagram Sentiment Analysis?

Quick conclusion: if I were Duolingo’s social media manager, I would contact the author of this post and try to convince her to publish a follow-up showing where Duolingo outperforms Babbel.

Analyse géographique

As there’s no way to directly access your competitor’s audience demographic data, a great idea is to identify where their mentions come from.

Using Brand24’s geolocation feature, I filtered Instagram mentions of Babbel to see which countries and cities are most active.

The top results? 

The United States, Senegal, and Germany are the top countries where Babbel has strong brand recognition and user engagement.

Quick conclusion: if you’re targeting similar markets, consider localizing your content, partnering with local influencers, or adjusting campaigns to regional trends.

Step 5: Benchmark with competitors

Last but not least, you should directly benchmark with your competitor’s Instagram performance.

This method gives you a clear picture of what works for them, what works for you, and where you can do better. 

In other words, it helps you make smarter content decisions based on real insights, not guesses.

For the basic needs, you can simply visit your rival’s Instagram account and do a manual comparison.

For example, you can see the follower count, analyze the bio, scroll through the profile, and check which content formats it uses, graphic design, and so on.

For more advanced Instagram competitor analysis, I recommend using the Brand24 Compare Projects feature.

It’s a simple table presenting your and your competitors’ social media performance.

Below, you can see the comparison between Duolingo and Babbel.

This benchmarking shows Duolingo’s devastating advantage, especially in terms of mentions, reach, Équivalent de la valeur publicitaire (EVP), and the volume of user-generated content.

Cependant, Babbel does really well regarding the sentiment of Instagram mentions!

Additionally, you can extend your Instagram competitive analysis by benchmarking the engagement rates. 

For this purpose, you can use a free Instagram competitor analysis tool, such as HypeAuditor’s engagement rate calculator.

Ultimately, you can compile all the data into an Rapport d'analyse Instagram to have everything in one place.

Conclusion

Most successful Instagram strategies are founded on real insights, not gut feelings. Competitor analysis helps you see what others in your niche are doing – and how well they’re doing it. 

It shows you which content types, formats, and tones get attention. It helps you spot audience preferences and trending topics.

You also learn when your competitors post, who they collaborate with, and how they position themselves. 

Tools like Brand24 speed up and improve the process by providing real, AI-supported data, not just guesses. With the right approach, competitor analysis becomes a powerful shortcut to better decisions. 

Remember that your goal isn’t to copy others – it’s to learn from them, get inspired, and do it better!

Réflexions finales :

• Instagram competitive analysis sets a reference point that allows you to evaluate your brand’s visibility and presence on the platform.
• Numbers are important, but context is what makes them actionable.
• Your brand voice matters more when everyone else sounds the same.
• Understanding your and your competitors’ target audiences helps in adjusting your messaging.

Démarrer un essai gratuit de 14 jours de Brand24 and analyze your Instagram competitors like a pro!