Nowadays, most industries have been using social media platforms in order to improve their marketing strategies. However, it is not always clear on what is doing great and what could be improved. Therefore, the question remains on: How to do a social media audit?
“Maintaining a social media presence can be a full-time job” according to Lee (2016). The author is reminding us that creating a social media profile is good, but a bad management can destroy your profiles quickly. Therefore, it is crucial to initiate a social media audit by doing a regular examination of the social channels you are interested in (Cisnero, 2017).
Namechk, 2017
The first step for undertaking an organized audit is to create a template (Jackson, 2017). The template will allow you to track and compare the evolution of the audit. The author reminds us that digital marketing has a part of imagination and creativeness, so instead of doing an ordinary template you could use your creative skills to make it look more attractive.
Furthermore, once the template or spreadsheet are created, you would need to go on track for your social presence. By entering the name of your company on Google, you will see which social media profiles appear (Cisnero, 2017). It will allow you to detect imposters and the incorrect profiles. On the other hand, Lee (2016) mentions the use of other spots than the common Big Four (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google). You could locate your social media profiles on Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube etc. Moreover, you have the possibility of using alternative tools like Namechk or Knowem (Jackson, 2017).
Once you found the required profiles, update your template/spreadsheet with the collected information such as social media network, the URL, the description, the number of followers and the date of the latest activity (Lee, 2016).
Namechk, 2017
Then the most important step is to evaluate your social profiles by evaluating the collected data and its performance (Jackson, 2017). It will show you the detailed performance of each of the profiles collected. It is advised to create a mission statement for each profile, allowing you to decide whether your contribution is useful and helpful for the overall objective (Cisnero, 2017).
Lee, 2016
Once you know which social media profiles you are going to keep, you should make sure they meet your brand strategy (Cisnero, 2017). Lee (2016) states that by opening the customize settings on each profile, you have less chance to miss a spot. Then, once your profiles are correctly filled out, you should focus on differentiation. Indeed, the use of similar images, logos and other content is good to relate to each profile, but it would be better to use specific aspects of the platform in order to attract more consumers. Bigcommerce (2017) suggests that having a unique characteristic of the social media is more attractive for consumers, for example you could put “longer videos to YouTube and shorter ones on Facebook”.
Furthermore, identifying the best performing social media posts will improve the strategy of the company (Jackson, 2017). It will allow you to review the information contained in the audit in order to determine which are the top performing posts. The authors suggests the use of Sprout Social for popular platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, and alternative options for smaller platforms such as Snapchat.
Jackson, 2017
In the meantime, you might as well detect your brand’s influencers, and find out where they locate their social accounts (Lee, 2016). Then you might as well have a look at your customer service by looking at their comments (Bigcommerce, 2017). It will allow you to get a step closer to your consumers, by taking into consideration what issues they may have, and what solution you could find in order to satisfy their need.
Finally, once you have done your social media audit, you should create an internal process by setting future goals. Cisnero (2017) suggests to “use the information you’ve discovered through your social media marketing audit to build a more robust social media strategy”. Once you have completed all those steps, make sure to save your social media audit for future references (Bigcommerce, 2017).
Okay, this might seem a bit complex, but I promise that once you will give it a try, you will realise how interesting and exciting it is to find more opportunities to make your brand or company unique!
References:
BigCommerce (2017) What is a social media audit? Optimize your media for ecommerce success [online] Available at: https://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-a-social-media-audit-how-to-do-it/ [Accessed on 27 November 2017]
Cisnero K. (2017) A social media audit template and guide for marketers [online] Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-audit-template/ [Accessed on 27 November 2017]
Jackson D. (2017) How to perform a social media audit: Our free template included [online] Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-audit/ [Accessed on 27 November 2017]
Lee K. (2016) The 15 minutes social media audit everyone can do [online] Available at: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-audit [Accessed on 27 November 2017]
Namechk (2017) Namech_k [online] Available at: https://namechk.com/ [Accessed on 27 November 2017]
Quesenberry K.A. (2015) Conducting a social media audit [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/11/conducting-a-social-media-audit [Accessed on 27 November 2017]