Social Media Strategy Guide, Pt. 2: Audit Your Current Social Media Status

This is the second of 5 posts adapted from our Guide to Creating a Social Media Strategy . This simple, step-by-step guide allows individuals and businesses to get the most out of their social media efforts by helping them identify, plan and execute their social media goals. View part 1 here.

Prior to creating your social media strategy, you need to assess your current social media use and how it is working for you. This requires figuring out who is currently connecting to you via social media, which social media sites your target market uses and how your social media presence compares to your competitors’.

Take Current Social Media Inventory

Start by conducting a search for both officially sanctioned and unauthorized pages representing your company. These could be fan sites, rogue employee sites or malicious sites posing as you or your company. Check the pages to see how many followers you have, how much activity is on the page and whether all links work. If any of your pages have become overrun with spam, sign on and delete it.

My Business’ Social Media Log

Distribute Surveys

If you’re not currently on social media at all, your first step is to figure out which sites would be most beneficial for you to use. You can do that by inviting current customers to complete a survey online or in store. Consider offering an appropriate incentive to your customers for completing the survey, like a discount or coupon. Collect demographic information as well as information about which social media sites your customers use. If you already have some sort of social media presence, post a similar survey on your social media pages as well as providing it to customers after purchase.

My Business Survey Results

Search for Your Competitors’ Pages

Investigate what your top competitors are doing online. Check out their social media pages on each social media network to see how much of a presence they have. In addition to checking out whether your competitors have a social media presence, it’s important to analyze their existing pages. Ask yourself what each of your competitors does well and does not do well on social media. You can use this analysis to help you in crafting your social media strategy.

Download the full guide and start creating your social media strategy today.

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