I’m competitive. It really bothers me to lose. I obsess about it. It drives me. It probably hasn’t helped my health, relationships, or finances. I could tell you stories…

But let’s save all that for another day.

For today, let’s focus on keeping up with the competition. You can’t compete if you don’t know the score, so I watch my competitors carefully. I stalk them electronically. Of course, I limit my stalking to their business activities. I’m really not interested in their bizarre fetishes or weird out-of-office activities.

How do I stalk?

1. I watch what they’re doing with search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. At the moment, I’m using SpyFu, but there are a multitude of tools that enable you to keep an eye on competitors. They do what I’ve just described and more. Search Engine Book offers a recent review of many of the available tools. They all excel at different aspects of gathering data, and it makes sense to use one tool for some time and then switch to another. You can find out who’s linking to your competitors, what keywords they’re targeting, how much they’re spending on ads, and what search terms they buy. Good stuff.

2. I like to know what my competitors are doing with their websites. Are they offering a new service? Launching a new feature on their site? Adding or deleting attorneys or staff? I can find all of that information without visiting the site by setting up alerts using  ChangeDetection.com. When something changes on the site, I get an e-mail. I can have the e-mails sent daily, weekly, or monthly, and there isn’t a charge for using the service.

3. I keep an eye out for news and mentions of my competitors. I want to know if they issue a press release, get a good review on Google Places, or are referenced on Twitter. I can do all of that for free with Google Alerts. I have alerts set up for variations on my competitor’s names and firm names. The alerts are sent via e-mail (or RSS feed), and I can route them to a folder for review when we have time.

Keeping up with what your competition is doing can be easy and automated. It’s worth knowing right away what’s happening in your marketplace. It isn’t always worth responding to or adapting to the change, but you won’t have the choice to decide if you’re out of the loop when things are happening.