Yes, Saudi creators should study competitors’ Reels, but the right way is specific: look at the outliers, not the averages, and take the pattern, not the post. Find the Reels that massively beat an account’s own normal view count, work out why they broke through, and adapt that structure to your own topic and voice. Copying entire videos is what makes creators look derivative and perform badly. Learning the underlying patterns is what actually moves your account.
Why study competitors at all
Because the audience has already voted. Every niche has thousands of published experiments telling you what people responded to and what they ignored. Ignoring that and inventing everything from your own head is slower and riskier. Studying it is not unoriginal, it is how professionals in every field learn: by examining what worked before adding their own take.
The mistake is not studying competitors. The mistake is copying them, which gives you their format with none of their context and usually flops.
Outliers, not averages
Here is the core technique. For each account you study, do not look at their typical video. Look at the one that got far more views than they usually get. A Reel doing five or ten times an account’s own median is a signal that something in that specific video worked, beyond the account’s baseline reach.
Averages teach you to blend in. Outliers teach you what the audience actually rewarded. That is the difference between research that makes you generic and research that makes you sharp. It is the same logic as knowing what to post every week.
How to do it right, step by step
- Build a list of 20 to 30 accounts in and around your niche.
- Sort by outlier, not by follower count. A small account with a video that beat its own average teaches you more than a huge account posting steadily.
- Deconstruct the hook. The first two seconds decide most of the outcome. Write down exactly what it said or showed.
- Map the structure. Setup, payoff, pacing, how it ended. Note the editing style.
- Adapt to you. Rebuild the pattern with your topic, your opinion, your voice. Never lift the video wholesale.
- Track your own outliers too, so you learn from your wins, not just theirs.
When you cannot review that much video
The honest catch is that doing this across dozens of accounts every week is a real time cost, easily more than a busy creator can add on top of filming and editing. The DIY version: pick ten accounts, check them weekly, and keep one running document of outliers and why they worked. Small and consistent beats thorough and abandoned.
If reviewing 20 to 30 accounts and a hundred-plus Reels a week is not realistic for you, that is exactly the job Dopameme runs as a weekly intelligence report, turning the outliers into your content plan. However you do it, the method is the same: study outliers, learn patterns, adapt with your own voice.
Bottom line
Studying competitors’ Reels is smart when you do it correctly. Chase the outliers that beat an account’s baseline, understand why they worked, and rebuild the pattern in your own voice instead of copying the video. Done this way, competitor research is not imitation. It is the fastest way to learn what your audience will reward.