How to analyze a competitor’s Instagram Reels
What Meta has actually said drives reach, which repeated numbers are invented, and how to rank competitor posts so you learn something.
For creators tired of guessing
Claude for social media research. Paste a Reel, TikTok or Short and Silma watches every frame, tells you why it worked, and keeps it.
Works with Instagram, TikTok & YouTube
How it works
When your views drop, you see whether the whole niche dropped too. A benchmark, not a mood board.
How competitor tracking works →Silma watches the video and tells you why it worked: hook, structure, pacing. The recipe, not a vibe.
Find the winners in Discover →The hook decides everything, and you normally find out after posting. Silma reads the draft first.
How Pre-Check scores a draft →Two versions side by side: what you changed, and what it did.
This week’s outliers · Week 43, 2026
From the accounts Silma tracks. New every Monday.
65M views · 380× their usual
@MrBeastGaming pulled 65M views with pure reward math: name a prize, frame it as a competition, and viewers calculate their odds before they even hit play. Put a specific, tangible stake in your first three seconds.
4M views · 121× their usual
@Dama_Xe hit 120x her baseline by telling viewers they're already making a mistake. Name the wrong behavior in the hook, and the correction becomes the reason to watch. The knowledge gap does the work.
207K views · 75× their usual
@lucchu79 rode a trending audio and dropped the artist name early, letting the algorithm and the fanbase do the distribution. Attach to a named cultural moment and let existing search intent pull the video.
“The hard part is the first second… most people are gone before second two, so the hook decides everything, and you only find out what hooks work after posting. There’s no way to know upfront… everything else is just labor.”
Pricing
Lite
$9 /mo
200 credits / month
For one person posting steadily who wants a second opinion before publishing.
Starter
$29 /mo
600 credits / month
Adds competitor tracking, so you learn from other people’s results too.
Pro
$79 /mo
1,500 credits / month
For people posting daily, or running content for more than one account.
Tracked accounts
One-tap save
Paste a link, or save straight from the share sheet. Your best references stop dying in a camera roll.
Brand profile
Silma learns who buys from you and what makes you different. Every idea is judged against that customer, not a generic trend.
YOUR BRAND PROFILE
example profile
The time math
Research is where the week goes. Scrolling, screenshotting, benchmarking, post-mortems. Silma does that part daily, so your hours go into the next post instead of explaining the last one.
Get your content ideaRESEARCH HOURS / WEEK
illustrative. replace with your own numbers
A database shows you what got views. Silma tells you why: hook, structure, pacing, and how it did against that account’s own baseline. One gives you something to copy. The other gives you something to say.
Yes. The same analysis works whether the account is your face or your brand: which hooks hold your audience, where retention drops, and whether a flop was your video or the whole niche cooling off.
Short-form video across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Watchlists and baselines are tracked per platform, per account.
That’s the point. Benchmarks, outlier flags and version comparisons export ready to share, so the “is social working” conversation starts from evidence.
It’s a pre-flight check, not a crystal ball. The score means every post ships with a written reason, and you can compare what you predicted with what happened.
Writing
Every statistic carries a date and a primary source. All posts →
What Meta has actually said drives reach, which repeated numbers are invented, and how to rank competitor posts so you learn something.
We traced the numbers everyone repeats. Most have no source. What Instagram has actually said, and the metric it shipped in 2025.
TIKTOK
TikTok publishes far less than Instagram, so the advice industry filled the gap. The short list it has published, including the line that contradicts most of it.
Why I built this
Earlier this year, my part-time job at university was growing a Kick streamer’s Instagram. I posted every single day. Some clips hit 200k. Most died in an hour. And for months, I couldn’t honestly tell you why. So I built the system I wish I’d had. No more delusion.
Want it done for you?