Defining Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is utilising social media platforms to keep customers updated about products and services whilst attracting new customers through the discovery of the business social media profile.
examples of social media platforms include: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and snapchat
Why carry out a social media audit?
Carrying out an efficient and effective social media audit will allow a business to identify where changes need to be made to social media profiles to ensure that they are being utilised in the best possible way. Ensuring a good amount of social media coverage is vital to staying competitive in such a technologically orientated age.
carrying out a social media audit will allow a business to see if the results from their social media activities are helping to reach their goals and objectives.
How can businesses in the gaming industry utilise social media and how can they use a marketing audit to see if their efforts have been successful
5 W’s
One method of carrying out a social media audit is to use the 5 W’s analysis method (Quesenberry, 2015)
This method involves looking at the following:
Where – Which social media platform are you analysing and utilising.
What – What type of content is being produced on the social media accounts for example photos or articles.
When – This concerns the frequency of the posting of the posting across the platforms.
Why – This is determined by the reason behind the content being posted. Is it to give a promotional code or to show off an upcoming game being released.
This model helps a business to analyse their social media presence from the perspective of the business, consumers and competitors. By using this template, the business can use key performance indicators to measure whether or not they are reaching their aims and objectives of using the social media platforms.
https://hbr.org/2015/11/conducting-a-social-media-audit
Basic Method
Another method, proposed by Lee (2017) is a basic method that requires the business to make a checklist of all of their social media accounts, the following and the recent activity. Once this checklist is created the business needs to evaluate why they have accounts on these specific platforms, what they hope to gain from it, is there a good level of engagement for this platform and how consistent is your message/image across these platforms.
By maintaining the same ‘image’ across all platforms it will be easier for new customers to find the brand on each platform and will ensure customers have a more memorable experience on the profile.
If these steps are followed then the business will be able to maintain efficient social media profiles that are pushing the message they want to be portrayed and the image they want the brand to be associated with.
This is advantageous since it doesn’t require a team of skilled employees to do this and it can be completed for free by one individual.
https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-audit
Analytics
Lastly, the business should link up all current social media accounts with analytics website and in-app analytics. Analytic allows the user to find out the level of engagement each post is having and the rate at which their profile is accessed by unique users.
By using analytics to see engagement on posts the business will be able to find which types of posts are accessed more. This will be helpful since the business can then look at re-working posts to ensure they are maximising engagements. If a post with prices has less engagements than one with more of a lookbook feel then the business could disguise a post as a lookbook so the users don’t feel as if they are being marketed too.
Utilising analytics to find out how many unique users click the profile will give valuable information. If there is a large amount of people clicking on the profile and not staying then perhaps a remodel could be useful since people may see the current profile colour scheme or layout to be boring or confusing.
If there is a lack of people clicking on the profile then maybe the profile picture or profile name needs to be changed to encourage more people to look at the profile
https://business.twitter.com/en/analytics/tweet-activity-dashboard.html
Conclusion
In conclusion, social media is a necessity in the modern day of marketing. Once social media profiles have been created it is important to have frequent audits to ensure that the social media is being utilised since the opportunity for sales and customer loyalty generation by social media is so large.
References
Jackson, D. (2017). [online] Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-audit/https://hbr.org/2015/11/conducting-a-social-media-audit [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].
Lee, K. (2017). The 15-Minute Social Media Audit Everyone Can Do. [online] bufferapp.com. Available at: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-audit [Accessed 25 Nov. 2017].
Business.twitter.com. (2017). Tweet activity dashboard. [online] Available at: https://business.twitter.com/en/analytics/tweet-activity-dashboard.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].
Carver, B. and Carver, B. (2017). 5 Reasons to Invest in Dedicated Social Media Analytics Tools. [online] Social Media Today. Available at: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/bobcarvertc/2015-10-09/5-reasons-invest-dedicated-social-media-analytics-tools [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].