Do you feel like you have a good idea of what your competitors are doing?  If you don’t, it is now easier than ever to peer into the walls of their offices.  Of all of the marketing benefits of Web 2.0 and social media, one area that you may be overlooking is the ability to supplement your competitive analysis. 

As easy as it is to use these tools for your own reputation management, they are just as easy to use to monitor your competitors’ reputation management as well as their engagement with potential clients. 

The visibility you can gain with Twitter and LinkedIn alone can be priceless.  If you happen to be lucky enough to be connected to your competitor’s sales people on LinkedIn, just sit back and watch who they are connecting with on a daily basis.  Since these connections aren’t very likely, you can still monitor this type of activity through your customers you are connected with.  Maintain a watchful eye on who they connect with and you will be able to see if your competitors are trying to penetrate that account.

If you’re competitors keep their LinkedIn profiles open, you can also search their list of contacts for potential leads.

Twitter can be just as easy to monitor.  Simply find people who work for a competing company and ‘follow’ them.  You can also set up a search in Twitter’s search engine to find people talking about other companies as well as an RSS feed that can make it easier for you to monitor this type of communication.

Other networks exist that allow similar visibility, but I feel that these two channels are the most used and easiest to monitor.

The flip side of this visibility is that your competition has the same opportunity to see what you and your sales people are up to as well.  But my opinion on that is if you have a great product and are confident in your company’s products, services and customer service then that is what will win out in the end.  Do what you do and do it well and you will have nothing to worry about.