HAVE YOU DONE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT FOR 2016!!

Audit, the word deserves more appreciation than it gets, and takes us through a journey of piles of documents lying on a table and being scrutinised minutely for any error or wrong entries, misleading data or unchecked information. Done annually, an audit helps you know the accurate position of your company in terms of Finance, HR, Operations and whether they are going in hand with the set benchmarks and SOPs or not. An Audit is mainly performed by an external agency which is unbiased and checks the correctness and accuracy of data in and out.

This is what is known as Organizational Audit, then what is Social Media Audit?

You are reading this blog itself means that you have a strong social media presence and want to take it further.

A social media audit simply means that everything, from your FB Company page, to your Linkedin Profile, Twitter handle, You Tube channel and Instagram, are in place, you do a thorough analysis of what you did last year, check what competitors have done, it also means that your blogs are adding value to your customer and your social bookmarking are giving you good backlinks from authentic sources.

Make use of Google Analytics and make sure that you are targeting the right people, who are your customers, based on demographic, behavior and interest levels. Analytics will give you deep inside into where the traffic is coming from, and if you want to generate new traffic, as part of your new geo-marketing strategy, you need to maneuver your digital marketing strategy too.

Let us have a closer look on each social media platform:

Facebook: Check whether the profiles on FB page is updated or not, and don’t just rely on FB likes, it is Share>Comment>Likes on Facebook, so next time when you plan your strategy for Facebook, make sure that you strive to get more shares for your posts. Include any awards or certifications that your company is felicitated within the year 2015 in your company profile page, shout loud about it, introduce new members who join your company and so on and so forth. Be very cautious about the entire Facebook presence and do not be too casual, however, you can adopt a relaxed approach.

Linkedin: Check all the information you have shared on Linkedin so far, update it and add more relevant information, try and add more people to your network and be proactive on ‘pulse’. Check what went wrong last year and remove any misleading information.

Twitter: Same goes with Twitter, check the number of followers you have last year, study their tweets and profiles, see whom you have followed and do a quick scan of your tweets last year, which were liked, which were tweeted back etc and which were only customer complaints. Check the hashtags you used last year and whether they helped you position your brand or not, else do a thorough research and change them. Twitter is a good CRM tool, use it professionally to make most of it.

You Tube: Change the VDO you have been using so far (if only you were using!) with a fresh one, be it a real shoot or a 2D Animation, get it done from a professional agency and consider it as an investment. It can be a product detail VDO or an explainer one. Remember, 2016 is the year of VDO marketing, so be more visible in terms of presenting your company in the form of VDOs.

Instagram also calls for the same approach, Check your Instagram channel and the posts, check whether they need any change or alteration.

Social Bookmarking: It is an important platform to get good back links, but check whether the sites you are using as Bookmarking platform are relevant to your business or not, do they have traffic from people who are your customers, and are they authentic and credible.  Stop bookmarking on sites that are not relevant to your business, only target the one which has the potential of seen by your customers.

Blogs!!! You need to be very  professional when it comes to blogs, specially if you are in a B2C business. Your blogs should speak of your brand but they should not sound too self-bragging, follow a humble approach and strive to add value to your blogs, one which your customers connects to. Your blogs should be completely original, backed with data, should have good peppy images or VDOs and should not be repetitive. Get it written from a professional blogger, in case, you do not have someone in your team to write for you.

Slideshare: There are numerous sites where you must have uploaded your company presentations, do a quick scan of PPT, see whether it requires any updates, or change the template, add some freshness to the PPT.

There are several other platforms too, like Quora, Pinterest etc, follow the same thumb rule, check your existing profiles, update them and eliminate the irrelevant.

Don’t forget to check what your competitors have done last year, what were the platforms they used, platforms they were active, any niche targeting they did and from where and how they are attracting their customers. It will give you meaningful insights and will help you plan 2016.

Also look for unofficial accounts, either those set up by well-meaning employees and users or those created by rogues and spammers.

So, when are you planning to begin your audit, do it fast, do it now, it will help ascertain that everything is in place for 2016 and that there are no inconsistencies between profiles, tweets and posts. Do it yourself, ask your team or hire a professional agency.

A professionally done audit also includes a check of your website and its SEO status. Ask experts at Contentzoop to do all these for you, while you relax and enjoy your cuppa of coffee!!!!

Check out our next blog, we will share with you some templates to do Audit.