We have established the importance of a regular social media audit. To recap:
What is a Social Media Audit and Why Do You Need To Do One?
Now we are working our way through all of the information you need to conduct this audit. And making no excuses on much work it will take.
Keep Up With Your Social Media Profiles
Part of the audit process is finding all of the social media profiles your company has out in the digital world – the ones you know about, the ones that have managed to slip past you, and the ones that came before your time. Because are you really, REALLY, sure that no one at the company started up a corporate Snapchat? It’s time to find out!
If you don’t know it’s out there, and someone else does, this could hurt your company in the long run. Make sure you are aware and have control of, each place your business exists online.
How to Locate Your Social Profile Name and URL
In Column B of our audit template, we ask you to find the Social Profile Name and URL of your social media accounts. What do we mean?
Social Profile Name Example:
For Move Digital Group, our Facebook name is Move Digital Group, and our username is @movedigitalgroup
This information is found in the “About” tab on our Facebook page.
The difference between the two are:
Your Facebook name is the title of your Facebook page. There can be spaces between the words. You can use up to 75 characters.
The username is what will appear in the Facebook page URL and will be all smooshed together. It has to be unique to your business, so you can’t have the same username as another page. If there is no username now, you’ll usually see a series of numbers. This is bad for a business!
Social Profile URL Example:
The URL of your social media profile is what that appears in the address bar when you are on the page of the profile. So for Move Digital Group, the URL is: https://www.facebook.com/movedigitalgroup/
How to Find All The Profiles For Your Social Media Audit
1. Just Google it.
The very first thing you want to do is Google it!
Using my example, I put “Move Digital Group” in Google and immediately see a LinkedIn profile and a Facebook page.
But just Googling your business name isn’t enough! Here are some additional searches that are useful to try:
- Your business name + social media
- Your business name + specific networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
- Common abbreviated ways your business is referred to + social media
- Business address
If your company has changed its name in the past 5-10 years, then you should run all of these searches with both company names.
2. Use the search bar.
Go to each social media site and use their existing search bar. You may have to try variations of your company name, especially if there are common abbreviations or initials.
Here I am still using Move Digital Group as an example, on Twitter.
3. There’ s an app for that.
There are many tools and apps (often free) that let you look for names on social media. These aren’t quite the same as the two above, as you will get mentions or word-matches, as opposed to profile. But if you are sleuthing for the unknown, they can very helpful!
Two examples:
Now that we’ve embraced our inner detective, you should have no problem filling out the column B of the audit template.