Having a social media strategy in place is increasingly important for businesses nowadays, as the internet continues to play an important role in helping companies grow and stay ahead of the competition. Having a plan on how a company will use social media platforms increases their chances of success, but in order to make sure that a strategy is going according to plan, a social media audit needs to take place after implementing it.
Understanding What A Social Media Audit Is
A social media audit refers to the process of reviewing the plan and assessing the areas that are going as planned, things that are failing, and finding out what can be improved upon across all social media channels.
While the process itself can sound very complex and might seem intimidating at first sight, due to the number of analytics tools available on the internet, it can be a fairly simple venture. By making the audit a routine procedure (quarterly or monthly), the process becomes increasingly easier as one gets accustomed to it.
Aspects Of An Audit
There are certain things that one would have to pay attention to when it comes to the process of a social media audit – however, it all depends on the needs of the company itself. A basic checklist should include engagement metrics, referral traffic, audience demographics, publishing metrics, and channel-specific metrics. In addition, each type of metric should include a percentage change from the past audit – this will help understand seasonal changes and which area is improving.
The audit’s aim is to not only assess the current situation but to also help make plans for the future. The information gathered can help set up new objectives for the following month or quarter – such as broadening the audience, gaining more followers, getting more engagement, etc. By using the data gathered coupled with the right social media analytics tools, companies can make an informed business decision when it comes to reaching new goals.
The Right Tools For Auditing
In case you’re using built-in dashboards provided by large social media platforms, while the analytics tools provided by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. can be very useful, they are limited to their specific platform, which means that gathering all the information necessary for an audit means putting all the numbers together manually.
Thankfully, there are a number of 3rd party options that can smooth out the process of auditing. Free options can be very useful, and depending on how deep you aim to dig for information, they can do the trick and provide with most of the necessary information. On the other hand, most free tools have upgrade plans available, and even in those cases, they might not have the necessary features in order to uncover the most amount of data.
Investing in paid tools is ideal for a complete audit, which not only means more data uncovered, but also more actionable insight. Paid tools come in various forms, meaning that they have various options designed to suit all budgets. In addition, most offer demos of free trials, which means that one can sample what an analytics tool has to offer before making an investment.
How NetBase Can Help
NetBase is an award-winning analytics platform, processing millions of social media posts every day in order to provide actionable business insight for PR purposes, marketing research, product innovation, sales, and customer service. The platform is used by global companies in order to run brands, connect with customers, and build businesses.
The analytics tool provided by NetBase help monitor, analyze and also provide an understanding when it comes to millions of conversations that take place across social media platforms. This helps business owners assess the brand sentiment, while at the same time measuring the impact that social media campaigns have.