How to Run a Content Gap Analysis Against Competitors
Finding the Topics and Formats Your Market Rewards and You Ignore
Short answer
To run a content gap analysis, list what each competitor published over a fixed period, tag every item by topic and format, mark which ones outperformed that account's own median, then compare against your own tagged output. The gaps worth acting on are topics or formats that work repeatedly for others and are missing from your calendar.
1. What are the two kinds of content gap?
A topic gap is subject matter your market engages with and you never address. A format gap is a delivery form that works for others and you do not use. They produce completely different work.
| Question | Topic gap | Format gap |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Subject matter your market engages with and you never address | A delivery form that works for others and you do not use |
| Why it exists | The topic sits slightly outside how you think about your own product | Nobody on the team has produced that format before |
| A typical example | Buying-process content when you publish only product content | Carousels and short video when you publish only link posts |
| Cost to close | Research and new material, so weeks | Repackaging material you already have, so days |
| Evidence you need first | The same topic outperforming for two or more competitors | The same format outperforming across several topics |
| Risk of closing it badly | Becoming a less distinct version of a competitor | Producing the format poorly, then concluding the format does not work |
Format gaps usually produce the faster wins, because the subject matter already exists in your material and only the packaging changes. Topic gaps are often the more valuable of the two, and they take a quarter rather than a fortnight.
2. How do I run a content gap analysis?
Fix a quarter and three to five competitors, list every item with five fields, cap the topic vocabulary at twelve tags, tag your own output identically, mark the outperformers, then build a grid and read the empty cells.
A first run takes most of a day for five accounts. Later runs take an afternoon, because the tag vocabulary already exists.
- Fix the period and the competitor set. Take the last quarter and three to five competitors, the same set you track for everything else. Fewer than three makes a pattern indistinguishable from one company preference, and more than five produces a grid nobody reads.
- List every item with five fields. For each thing each competitor published, record the date, the channel, the format, a topic tag of two or three words, and the engagement it earned. One row per item and no summaries, because summaries cannot be counted.
- Cap the topic vocabulary at twelve tags. Eight to twelve tags across the whole set is enough. A long tail of unique tags makes the comparison impossible, so when two tags are hard to tell apart, merge them and move on rather than refining the taxonomy.
- Tag your own output the same way. Same period, same fields, same vocabulary. This is the step teams skip, and skipping it leaves you holding a competitor content inventory rather than a gap analysis.Do your own column first. It is faster, and it lets you set the tag vocabulary against material you already understand.
- Mark every item that beat its own account median. Compute the median engagement for each account, then flag anything at roughly twice that level. Ranking on absolute engagement across accounts of different sizes sorts by audience size instead of by content quality.
- Build the grid and read the empty cells. Topics down the side, accounts across the top, and the count of outperforming items in each cell. A cell that is empty in your column and full in several competitor columns is a candidate gap. Repeat the grid for formats.
4. What should I not conclude from a content gap analysis?
Not that you must cover everything competitors cover. Some of your absences are deliberate positioning, and filling them makes you a less distinct version of a rival rather than a clearer version of yourself.
The test is ownership. Close a gap when the topic genuinely relates to something you do well and the evidence shows the market rewards it. A gap analysis produces candidates, and the filter is still whether the topic belongs to you.
Also resist concluding anything about channels you did not measure. A competitor who looks quiet across the quarter may be publishing heavily somewhere your list does not cover, and a gap analysis built on two channels describes those two channels only.
5. How do I turn the analysis into a plan?
Deliver three to five items, not a backlog. Two topic gaps and two format gaps, each with a note on why you believe it works, is a quarter of content direction that a small team can actually execute.
Schedule them into the calendar immediately, with named owners and dates. A gap analysis that ends in a document rather than in dated calendar entries has the same practical effect as not running it at all.
Write the reason next to each item in one sentence, naming the evidence: which accounts, which quarter, how far above their median. When the item comes up for review in eight weeks, that sentence is what stops it being dropped for the loudest new idea.
Leave the rest of the grid alone. The temptation after a first analysis is to act on nine findings, and the predictable outcome is that none of them get produced properly enough to tell whether they worked.
6. How often should I run a content gap analysis?
Quarterly. Content patterns move slowly, and running it monthly produces churn in the calendar without new information. Add an extra pass after a competitor launch or a visible strategy shift.
The exception is worth taking seriously, because publishing changes within weeks of a launch. A competitor who has just shipped something usually spends a month explaining it, and that month is when new topics enter the category vocabulary.
Keep the same set and the same tags between runs. Comparability across quarters is where the compounding value sits: the second run tells you what changed, and only the fourth or fifth tells you what is durable.
Oppira keeps competitor posts, formats and engagement collected continuously for the competitors you track, which means the quarterly analysis becomes a review of data you already have instead of a week of manual collection.
Key Takeaways
Topic gaps and format gaps are different findings
One tells you what to write about, the other tells you how to publish. Merging them produces the useless conclusion that you need more content.
Tag your own output too
Without your own inventory in the same vocabulary, you have a competitor content list rather than a gap analysis.
Cap the topic vocabulary at twelve tags
A long tail of unique tags makes the grid unreadable, so merge any two tags you cannot reliably tell apart.
Filter gaps by performance
A topic everyone publishes and nobody gets engagement on is a shared mistake, not an opportunity.
Rank against each account's own median
Absolute engagement across accounts of different sizes sorts by audience size rather than by content quality.
Deliver three to five items, not a backlog
Two topic gaps and two format gaps with owners and dates is a quarter of direction that will actually get executed.
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