NetBase Explains What You Need to Know About Creating a Social Media Audit

There’s a Template for That Too?

When one thinks of the term “audit,” visions of posting to our favorite social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn don’t immediately spring to mind. Social media is supposed to be all about the…well…social experience, isn’t it? Sharing photos with friends and family, catching up with long-lost companions, showing off those snazzy vacation pics…none of it having anything to do with being audited, right?

Unbeknownst to many, there is such a thing as a social media audit, but it has more to do with a business end of the concept; by definition, it is a series of steps taken to evaluate and optimize a business’ social media profiles and strategies, and, if handled correctly, can help ecommerce businesses stay on top of their online presence.

In this article, we’re going to highlight the ins and outs of creating a template for a social media audit – so if you run a business that is in need of auditing its own social media tactics, you’ve stumbled upon the right blog.

After all, with NetBase, getting real time insights into all your customer conversations is something they know a thing or two about.

Some Information Concerning Social Media Marketing Audits

As previously noted, the word “audit” usually invokes thoughts of tax season and the familiar manila envelopes overflowing with forms and receipts we all tend to stash away in the office. Audits seem to equate to anxiety, which is a shame, because not all audits are created equal: Indeed, a tune-up at the shop can be considered an audit for your Ferrari while a check-up at the doctor can be looked at as an audit for your health, and the same logic can be applied to your social media marketing.

You can learn a great deal by examining how you manage (or do not manage) your online brand, but if too much of the aforementioned anxiety washes over you during this process, try not to think of the word “audit” – imagine it as tapping into your “inner marketing mastermind.”

The fact of the matter is that you’re a busy business owner who finds managing a social media presence nothing short of a full-time job, but we can tell you that social media profiles can quickly fall into disrepair when left unchecked – and an audit can assist with getting things back in line. Conversely, there are business owners who maintain active social media profiles and go to great lengths to keep everything cohesive and updated, and audits can help in these situations, as well.

How do they do that, exactly? Audits can serve as much-needed opportunities for growth and reflection.

The Social Media Audit Template

Before inserting vital data into a spreadsheet program to bring it all together, you need to create a social media audit checklist for your template. While we’re going to cover the basics here, you can dig much deeper as you decide to enhance your social media marketing (and that’s something the experts at NetBase can definitely help you with).

In a nutshell, your audit should encompass two primary approaches:

• Examining Your Social Media Profiles – Here, you will locate and document all your social media profiles – both official and unofficial – while checking for finalization of all details regarding these profiles for consistency in messaging and imagery, before following up on your goals and comparing your company’s current performance to performance one/two years ago.
• Examining Those Who Do It Well – In this step, you will hunt down four to eight “influencers” in your company’s niche and study their processes for managing their brand on social media in order to observe branding and imagery on each of their profiles. From there, you can measure key metrics such as followers and engagement.

What you’re hoping to achieve here is crafting a plan of action for improvements and setting goals for your profiles.

Where NetBase Plays a Role

With a bevy of notable brands in their client roster – including Coca-Cola, Arby’s, Cuisinart and Saatchi and Saatchi – NetBase helps you experience real time insights into all your customer conversations via next-generation AI to deliver maximum return on investment. What does this mean for you?

Now, you can analyze all your customer data (including social, survey, digital and care) to gain insights to drive your business to heights you never dreamed existed. As a leader in social analytics, there’s no project too large or too small for NetBase, and they prove this through every undertaking they engage in.