March 12, 2020   |   Vol. 19   |   Issue 3
By Rebecca Rubin, MGI Account Director

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. Video, Photos, Stories, Animation. Long, Short, Personal, Impersonal. And OMG, Hashtags.

Organic Social Media … it’s an amazingly powerful way to engage and interact with members and prospects alike, but it is also constantly changing, challenging to measure, and time consuming.

Not only do you need to be generating content and responding to comments, but you need to pick the right content for the right platforms, mix your mediums, and post at the right times on a near daily basis.

Factor in that the relevance of your social media is not always fully understood by organization decision-makers, every platform runs its own set of analytics that are not all created equal, and there are only so many hours in the day, and running an effective organic social media program isn’t as simple as just clicking “post.”

So how do you know what you need to improve, where to put your energy, and how to best optimize your efforts?

The best way to assess your organic social media program is through a social media audit. A good social media audit should help you:

• Assess your current social presence.
  • What channels are you using, and do they align with where your market is and your organizational goals?
  • Are you maintaining brand consistency across all channels?
  • Do you have your profiles optimized?
• Get to know your followers.
  • What are your follower counts, and how are they trending?
  • Who is following you on each of your channels, and how do their demographics align to your overall market?
  • Are there industry influencers following you?
• Identify the what, where, and when of your content.
  • How often are you posting and in what formats?
  • What kind of content and tags are getting the most engagement?
  • What times of day are you getting the most engagement?
  • How much of your content is informational versus promotional?
  • Are you adopting the right tone for each platform?
• Find opportunities.
  • What low hanging fruit are you missing right now to make your social media work better without you having to work harder?

Answering all of the questions above will help you gain a clear understanding of your current program regardless of whether you’re new to adopting social media or well underway.

And if you need help with your social media audit, reach out to us. Contact Rebecca Rubin, Account Director at rrubin@marketinggeneral.com or at 703-706-0395.