So in this post we will learn about why social media audits are important and why it must be included in Audit plan separately ( Specially if you are working for an internet companies or Dotcom companies. I will also highlight some checkpoints you can use as reference while starting your own social media audit.

Some of the biggest Social media platforms

Facebook : 250 Cr. Active users

Youtube : 200 Cr. Active users

Instagram : 100 Cr. Active users

Twitter: 33 Cr. Active users

Their are many other social media platforms such as linkedin, snapchat, quora etc but for an auditor entire internet is a social media website. They can’t keep them restricted to these 3-4 websites. Even consumer forum will be part of your audit programme. So you need to keep your scope open endend.

Online Reputation Management

The biggest purpose of Social media audits to keep online reputation of company intact and positive. Now days reputation of any company can bought down with a single tweet. We have seen many instances of it as well. Remember a tweet from Rahul bose ??

Single tweet above have following impact

1. This tweet went viral and reached to about 3 million people from one way or another
2. Marriott was fined for Rs 25,000 for illegally charging 18 percent GST by the Chandigarh Excise and Taxation department.
3. Reputation of Hotel comes at stake.
4. Lot of other companies and competitors took advantage of situation.

Purpose of above example is to show how important is for a company to have strong online reputation process and procedures whether you are an internet company or not.

Using social media reach for business

Many companies are using social media sites to accelerate their sales. So whether your company is taking apt advantage of this social media era or not, you have to bring this to your management. You can go through their social media strategies , results and analysis. You can also use online tools to compare with other companies in the industry. If you want to analyse companies own website with its competitors then similarweb is the best tool you can use. You can also check Google ads performance of your website if company is generating leads through it and same analysis with facebook and other ads.

Social Media Audit Checklist

I will list done few areas which you can look into while planning social media audits. Also this is not the complete list, their might be lot of other areas specific to your company which you can consider while making audit programme. Below are few checkpoints for social media audit checklist.

• Check company has defined social media policy for its employees or not
• check companies own social media handles are verified and also check duplicate profiles across the platform
• Check companies policy to deal with social media complaints.
• Check password of social media accounts are regularly updated or not and whether any unauthorised person having access to these accounts
• Compare social media reach of your company with others in the industry
• If your company owns a website you can also compare it with competitors. Site SEO, Speed, reach, design etc.
• Check companies spend on these social media websites in the form of advertisements and also Return on investment
• Check if their are specific campaign for a specific product
• Check whether company has its own wiki Page. If yes verify details are accurate ( If your company doesn’t has its own wiki page then you must report it.
• Check billing done to companies if your company hired some agencies for managing social media.
• Check keyword performance on google ad network and other ad networks

Social media could be both boon or bane for a company. Only thing matters is how you use it

Anonymous

So I tried to give a small introduction to social media audits and how you can plan it. Their are lot of other things you can do in this. If you face any problem while conducting audit then you can contact me at alkitjain@gmailcom. I will be happy to help you.