The essence of innovation and the foundation of many startups is to imitate and improve existing ideas.

The essence of innovation and many startups are based on imitating and improving existing ideas. Most of the new ideas evolve on the basis of old ideas, just as we humans have evolved to this day through long-term evolution.

The business community has a timeless principle that is to know your customers. At this point, we often make mistakes. We tend to narrow down and assume that people should use our products or services.

Of course, the task of collecting receipts from scratch is too daunting and often daunting. Thankfully, as long as we do a little research, we'll find that a lot of the data you need is already there.

You just have to figure out how to find them. Usually they are not too far away from your competitors. The following is the Twoodo company founder Denis Duvauchelle Summary of actual combat experience.

1. Borrow their Twitter followers

Unless you open up a new market, you'll probably find that at least 10 successful companies are doing what you're doing now.

But it doesn't matter. This means that there are 10 employees in the company who are interested in the service you are about to offer.

That's why we can borrow to open social platforms. For example, on Twitter, you only need to click on your competitor's "fan" list, and you'll get a lot of people to meet.

Whether you're looking for the most influential user or want to get a full picture of your competitor's fans, you can find the data you want. The sooner we contact influential users, the better, because they can help you advertise your brand.

Similarly, on Google +, you can access a brand's page and click to see its fans. You can easily add these fans as friends, and once you've added them to your friends, you'll be able to send them email notifications via Google + and tell them about your dynamic information.

I do not recommend that you use spam messages to harass them, nor do you recommend that you blindly preach your service. However, I suggest you start a conversation with them and find out why they are happy or disappointed with your competitors so that you can get important information. You may be surprised that many users are happy to share their experiences.

2. Investigate their functional requests

Do you want to make sure that the new applications you develop don't repeat the same mistakes that your competitors have? Check their "Feature requests" list and the FAQ page to find out what's wrong with the user.

You just need to pull up your favorite search engine and enter the [competitor name] feature request.

Avoiding the mistakes that competitors have made in the past can make you better service, while providing users with the functionality that the competitor has not yet provided can make you lead and surpass your competitors. This is perfectly legal and fully in line with the interests of the user.

3, fight for those who hate them.

You just need to type "I hate xxx" on the Topsy data service, and you'll be able to see who hates the company and why. This approach also lets you discover what people hate, love, or want, and combine that information to develop their own services.

Hold on to your competitor's Twitter followers and offer them better service! Be careful, don't be their next attack target!

4. Use their geographical limitations

In North America, where English and Spanish dominate, this does not pose much threat to them. But when you walk into Europe, Africa, and Asia, you will find that the almost complete imitation of a competitor's service in a local language can also bring you great business opportunities.

The following is an early example:

While Facebook is still confined to the United States and is only allowed to visit people over the age of 13, Tuenti in Spain and became a Spanish social network.

Spain has a population of about 50 million, which is enough to bring rich income to tuenti developers. This shows that if you have no other advantages, you can even look for opportunities from the language side.

5, use their business scope limitations

Want to play mergers and acquisitions? Here's another question you can find satisfying answers in the FAQ page and the feature request.

Start a company or develop certain features that meet the needs of your larger competitors. Then you can confidently negotiate with them to seek cooperation or mergers.

A well-known case is ebay's acquisition of PayPal and Ibazar (European Network Mall), which equals a sudden acquisition of a payment system and a continent of consumers (they can be converted to ebay users at any time).

If you decide to go this way, you have to move fast so that your favorite company has developed its own solution.

6. Borrow their demographic data

There are a plethora of data on visitors and users. They are by no means limited to Web sites-many startups even analyze the people who walk into the store through street cameras.

While many of these data are hidden or protected by law, there are always some clues on the web that will give you insight into your target market. For example, if your target audience is an American woman, then you should go to the Pinterest site to see. Because 80% of the site's users are women, 20% are male.

If you continue to use search engines, you will find that there are other data that can help you understand potential users. If you're a gaming company, you'll find that people who play "Candy Smash Legend" (Candy Crush) play from six o'clock to nine every day, and Sunday will be all day. Funny, huh?

This information is helpful for your marketing work and online customer service work. Here are some ways to get to know your competitor's users:

• Choose a social networking platform (for example, Google +);

• Visit your competitor's page;

• Click the number in the "pull them into the circle" at the bottom right;

• View a list of fans, contact information, geographic location, email, hobbies, and extensive consumer information.

Recently, I found some interesting information on Facebook. I joined an interest group (Arduino Control Panel) and clicked "Add to Buddy" next to all the members.

As a result, many people turned me into a good friend immediately after confirming that I was a legitimate citizen. Once I get in touch with most people in the group, I can find a lot of data, such as age, gender, geographic location, and industry.

If you try to figure out who your ideal user is, that information is invaluable to you.

7, hijacked their search engine rankings

If you search with keywords on Google's search engine, you may see a lot of competitors on the home page of your search results. If they are on the home page, they may use a paid link strategy. Think about how powerful you will be if your site uses the same strategy: not only will your site appear first in the search results, but your top 10 positions will be occupied by you.

You only need a few steps, a little bit of effort can be achieved. You can first look at the paid link strategies used by these competitors.

You can view websites, blogs, forums, or online magazines where your competitor implements a paid link strategy. Once you get the list, you'll be busy. You need to do the same. You need to comment on the same post, apply for guest posts on the same blog and post on the same forum, and so on.

That way, you'll soon be in the top 10 Google search results. Obviously, this can even be unaffected by the changes in Google's algorithm.

This long-term optimization search engine method is very effective, hurry up and act.

Is doctrine bad?

People usually take doctrine for their competitors ' better practices. If someone wants to take away your ideas for their own use, you can hardly sue him because it costs too much and the process is too complicated. The implementation of patent law varies across the world. On the Internet, it's hard to keep your secret of success.

Even giants such as Samsung and Apple have struggled to avoid patent disputes. Taxi software developer Uber is said to have often cleverly dug away drivers from rivals. They would call a taxi and then cancel it, so they could get the driver's phone number and then offer them a more lucrative job opportunity.

Is that wrong? I do not know. Market morality is a grey area.