SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique that helps you evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a business, project, or situation. It can help you identify the internal and external factors that affect your performance and potential, and guide you towards making better decisions and actions12
A SWOT analysis consists of four categories:
- Strengths: These are the positive attributes and advantages that you have over your competitors or challenges. They can be tangible or intangible, such as skills, resources, reputation, quality, etc.
- Weaknesses: These are the negative attributes and disadvantages that you have compared to your competitors or challenges. They can be tangible or intangible, such as gaps, limitations, costs, risks, etc.
- Opportunities: These are the favorable situations or trends in your external environment that you can take advantage of to improve your situation or achieve your goals. They can be related to market, technology, social, political, or environmental factors, etc.
- Threats: These are the unfavorable situations or trends in your external environment that can harm your situation or prevent you from achieving your goals. They can be related to market, technology, social, political, or environmental factors, etc.
To conduct a SWOT analysis, you can use a table or a matrix to list and organize the relevant factors for each category. Then, you can analyze the results and generate strategies or actions that leverage your strengths, address your weaknesses, exploit your opportunities, and mitigate your threats34
I hope this answer helps you understand what a SWOT analysis is and how to use it for business. If you want to see some examples of SWOT analysis for different companies, you can check out this article from Business News Daily3 😊