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A social media audit is a highly valuable tool for your business. Not only will it help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, it will also give you the insights you need to make key changes to your strategy. If you feel that your brand’s reputation is currently being damaged by a substandard social presence, read on to discover how an audit will provide you with the data and tools you need to get back on track.
What is a Social Media Audit?
Let’s start with the basics - what exactly is a social media audit? It’s a digital marketing task that involves analysing and reviewing your brand’s current social media strategy in order to find out which areas you’re excelling in and which ones need improvement. This can include everything from your content (copy, images and videos), to your comment and message responses, plus additional behind-the-scenes factors such as account access, page roles and security.
Alternatively, a competitor audit can be carried out to see what other brands in your industry are doing on social, and how your strategy compares. Checking out your competitors’ pages enables you to see if you’re missing any important opportunities to boost engagement and gain new fans, or if there are any gaps in the market that your business can potentially fill.
Removal of Inappropriate Content
Inappropriate content poses a direct risk to your brand’s reputation. If a branch of your business has been sharing posts on social that include profanity, nudity, strong political views, offensive language or crude humour, customers and followers may become upset, annoyed or even disgusted, ultimately deterring them from using your brand in the future. In fact, 45% of consumers say they will unfollow a brand because of irrelevant content.
It’s vital that content of this nature is removed immediately and the person responsible for posting it is notified of its unsuitability, which is why this is one of the main mistakes we’ll look for during your audit.
Post Frequency
Posting too often can be irritating for your audience and may cause them to unfollow or mute your page, with 41% of social media users confirming that they will unfollow a brand if it posts too frequently. However, on the other hand, not posting enough can give the impression that your page is no longer active or that you’re not available to talk to your customers.
As part of your audit, we’ll take a look at the frequency of your brand’s posts to make sure you’re meeting the needs of your fans, but not overloading them with excessive content. We’ll also check for repetitive content and duplicated posts which can harm your brand’s reach and cause further irritation for your followers.
Copyrighted Media & UGC Consent
During your social media audit, we’ll check for any potential copyright infringements, such as stock photos, videos and graphics that have been posted on your pages. Of course, if your brand has a license to download and use media from a stock library such as Adobe Stock or Shutterstock, this isn’t a problem - but sometimes, images are shared on social media without the necessary permissions being obtained, which can result in hefty fines from the copyright holder.
The same goes for UGC (User Generated Content). Downloading and sharing photos, videos and testimonials from customers without their consent is another violation of copyright, so we’ll check that you’re asking for permission and giving credit where appropriate.
Tone of Voice
If your business has multiple locations or divisions - and therefore multiple social media pages being run by different people - it’s important to check that your brand’s tone of voice is being correctly adhered to across all accounts. This is another element that can be achieved with a social media audit.
Using different tones of voice or communication styles on each page will result in a lack of consistency and can weaken your brand identity. 87% of customers think brands should work harder at delivering a consistent experience, plus 71% of businesses agree that inconsistent brand presentation leads to customer confusion, so it’s vital to ensure that your social media presence isn’t disjointed.
Response Times & Quality
A social media audit isn’t just great for assessing your content - it’s a good way to measure the success of your Community Management and Customer Service too. We’ll take a look at your public comment responses to see how you’re interacting with your fans and followers - and, if you’re happy to give us access to your social media inboxes, we’ll analyse your private message responses too.
We’ll also measure your average response times, see how well you’re managing complaints, and identify any missed opportunities to spark conversations and build brand love. In addition, we can find out if you’re responding to reviews on social media and other feedback platforms such as Trustpilot, Google and Tripadvisor - and if so, how effective your responses are. After all, 7 in 10 people believe that a brand’s response to a review has the power to change their perception of it.
GDPR and Data Consent
Another huge factor that has the potential to harm your brand reputation is customer privacy. We can make sure you’re handling sensitive data carefully and are adhering to GDPR and other data consent laws, both in your public comments and your private messages. If you’re sharing content that contains any personal information about your customers, such as a review which displays their full name, this constitutes a GDPR breach too, so we’ll notify you of any instances where this has taken place and will ensure these posts are removed.
Account Access & Page Roles
Sometimes, people who shouldn’t be able to access your social media accounts are listed as page managers or have the wrong level of access, such as former employees, team members whose roles have since changed, or former agency partners. Not only can this make the backend of your accounts feel cluttered and confusing with lots of different names and roles being listed, it can also pose a big risk to your page security and therefore your brand reputation.
We’re experts in Meta’s Business Manager so we can quickly and easily check for any unwanted access on your Facebook and Instagram accounts, and remove or reassign roles as needed.
Unclaimed Pages
Similarly, unclaimed, unofficial and duplicate pages can cause further confusion for you and your customers. On Facebook, unofficial pages are automatically created for your business when someone checks in or tags one of your locations that doesn’t already have an individual page. If your company goes by multiple names, or has a nickname, pages tend to get created for every variation of that name.
You may also end up with duplicate pages if your business has undergone a rebrand and started a new page under a different name without removing the previous one (or if you forgot the login details or got locked out of an old account!).
During your audit, we’ll thoroughly search through each social media platform to make sure your brand doesn’t have any unclaimed or old pages that require deletion or need to be merged with your new one.
Training Opportunities
A social media audit can help you identify training opportunities in all of the areas outlined above. Whether your team needs a refresher on social media competition rules, best practices regarding image sizing and quality, tone of voice or how to respond to customer messages, an audit will reveal any aspects where confidence may be lacking and extra support is required.
From here, you can arrange workshops and training sessions with anyone who is going to be working on your social media pages, and create a guideline document detailing exactly how your brand should be represented online, with concrete do’s and don’ts.
Case Study
We recently conducted a large-scale audit for a nationwide brand with many different social media pages for each of its locations, which produced some highly insightful results.
✔️ We audited nearly 2,000 pages across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok
✔️ We removed over 3,600 people from Meta Business Manager where access was no longer necessary to the brand’s accounts
✔️ We identified over 900 unwanted duplicate pages
✔️ We removed over 3,200 pieces of unsuitable content
✔️ We identified over 700 locations that were not responding consistently to their incoming customer messages
From this, we were able to notify the brand of any areas where additional team training was needed, including understanding image copyright regulations, following content guidelines, adhering to GDPR laws and how to shut down inactive pages.
We also told the brand how we could help make the necessary improvements, and assembled a bespoke service package tailored specifically to the findings of the audit.
Summary
A social media audit is the perfect first step to take towards improving your brand’s reputation, particularly if you have multiple location pages and numerous accounts being managed by different teams. The public’s perception of your business is highly important, so if your social presence isn’t up to standard, you could be missing out on opportunities to gain new customers - or even losing your existing ones. Ready to arrange your audit? Get in touch with our team today to discuss your goals.
