Having an online presence isn’t enough in the digital world. It’s important to make sure your social media presence is making an impact.
Evaluating how successful your social media usage has been will make you more effective in the future. Here are three points to consider when conducting a social media audit of your business:
1. Internal Review
Evaluate what you did in the social media engagement space for the preceding year (for example) to assist in improving your social media marketing. Here are some questions to ask:
- What tools and resources worked? What didn’t work? Why?
- What content was positive and well received?
- What did the audience not like?
- What are people saying online about our business?
- What can we do better?
All these things are relevant to knowing how your business is tracking with social media activities and what needs to be updated or removed. It is important also to understand why something has failed even more so than why something succeeded.
2. Reputation
Does your organisation’s offline reputation match up with its online reputation? One of the common mistakes that businesses make is that they don’t align their online and offline presence. They make them two separate identities when in actual fact they need to be identical and consistent.
The message must be the same, the branding needs to be the same and profiles need to be the same and complete. This must be consistent on each social media platform that is utilised. Where there is inconsistency, it simply confuses your identity and your brand. Take the opportunity to audit these facets of your business and rectify the issues for the future.
3. Integration
Is your business using and integrating its platforms? By this I mean, are you sharing your Twitter feeds on your other social media sites? If your business has a blog, are you asking readers to follow you on Twitter or ‘like’ your page?
Of course you don’t want to be in their face but there is nothing wrong with making people aware of what social media platforms your business is using. Also remember that if your business does any guest writing not to forget to have a byline asking people to check you out on your particular social media platforms.
Although SMEs obviously don’t have the same time and resources as large organisations, this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be analysing their data. Try using some measurement tools for 2013. Today is as good a day as any to review your social media platforms so that you are able to adjust or change your planning, strategy or objectives.
