The Harvard Business Review found that 25 percent of the content one can find on the internet when customers search for a brand name is generated by other consumers. They also found that consumers have a higher sense of trust about this type of content from their fellow consumer than they do other information that can be found online about brands.
For this reason, it makes social media information crucial to branding and how a business is perceived.
What Is A Social Media Audit?
It is one thing to create content for your social media channels, ensure your posts are timed to your audience and gather analytical data from traffic on the sites and the metrics of your followers. It is far another thing to do a social media audit. This is the time when you look at the larger picture and assess if all of this social media work is paying off for your company.
In an audit of social media, you will ensure that all of your social media is up to date and contains your branding consistently as well as the brand's voice. You will also need to determine what content on your social media is doing well with customers, find out what social media channels your customers prefer and are using and check to see how key competitors stack up in their use of social media.
How To Complete A Social Media Audit
You need to make a database or spreadsheet of every social media account your company uses. Update information that has changed or is dated. Ensure that all parts of your branding are consistently portrayed in each social media, including the brand's voice.
Then, you need to use tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics to get demographic information on your users.
You also need to find out what types of content you are creating that is generating the best customer engagement. This includes determining how engaged customers are with your influencers and how well they are creating conversions.
Find out what you are doing on social media and compare it to what your customer base is doing on social media. You may find that you are using social media in a manner that they are not. Thus, you are losing opportunities. Also, compare what your top competitors are doing on social media in terms of which channels they are using, what types of content, the frequency of their content sharing, influencers and how they are used, as well as check their customer engagement.
Frequency
You can perform your larger audit either quarterly or semi-annually. You need to do a monthly check of your metrics as well as analytics and respond to changes.
Red Flags
A huge red flag in your audit of social media is if you find that customers have complaints on some social media channel that you are ignoring.
Another red flag is when you are not providing customers an opportunity to engage with your brand and your social media channel. An example of generating engagement is the YouTuber Cole and Marmalade who posts cat videos. He regularly posts a single picture with a question that elicits thousands of his followers to respond. Also, his videos also ask viewers to respond and/or come up with more ideas to what they saw in the video.
Analysis Of Results
Sometimes, it is easiest to place your audit of social media - detailing how your company, your customers and your competitors are using social media - into a spreadsheet. This helps make a clearer direct comparison to help fuel action plans for changes on how to make social media outreach more effective and engaging for your customers.
When to Make Major Changes In Response To Social Media Audits
One suggestion on when to make some major changes in your social media campaigns is when you find your customers use a different type of social media than your company. Also, changes are warranted when you are failing to provide something that is more successful within a particular social media channel that competitors are providing with good effect. An example would be videos or photos within a certain social media channel, where you just provide texts.
Also, you need to examine your influencers and see if they are still engaging with your customers and drawing more converts.
Netbase – Highly Respected Social Media Audit Firm
One social media analytics company that is gaining many high-powered companies as converts is Netbase. Coca Cola, Cuisinart, Lloyd's Bank, GoDaddy, Taco Bell, IMAX and many others are enthusiastically using Netbase because the company listens to their unique needs and is constantly adapting and improving their social analytics offerings in response to their clients' requests.
Netbase offers customer experience and social media analytics. They use AI interfaces that provide clients with actionable insights and recommendations, based upon customer data. In fact, they utilize all of the customer data, including social media, survey and customer support data to help drive companies to create an atmosphere of thorough customer success.
