The rapid pace of social media means that sometimes, businesses fail to take the time to assess if what they're doing aligns with best practices and you're hitting your goals. Hopefully, you're already doing monthly reports to see growth and impressions for each of the channels you are utilizing, but this report is only showing you a piece of the picture regarding your overall online presence. Periodically, a deeper dive is necessary to step back and see if you're strategy, visual representation, and frequency are getting the job done as well as they should be--not to mention that it's important to reassess which channels deserve more attention and if there are any new channels you need to dip your toes into.

Here are a few insights that a digital audit will glean for your business to help you finish the year strong and plan for 2016.

1. Bios

Your social media bios are something that you might not pay much attention to after you've loaded them the first time--but that might have been months or even years ago. Time to re-read those bios and make sure they accurately reflect what your company is all about now. Keep it fresh and be sure to have a call to action, i.e. for Instagram, you might ask your fans to use a specific hashtag to show off your product, place, or service so that you can then easily monitor this hashtag and post the best fan- and employee-generated content from your feed.

2. About Sections

Like your bios, you might have quickly filled out your About page on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. just to "get it done" when you were setting up your pages. Now, take the time to fill out your about pages robustly. You might think that no one will read all of that information, but you will be surprised what editors, writers, and super fans are interested in. You'd rather be their #1 resource and answer all their questions instead of users taking matters into their own hands and searching all over the place for the information they're seeking.

3. Customer Service

One of the most overlooked areas of social media that businesses sometimes fall short at is seeing social media tools as customer service tools, too. People expect faster response times than ever--especially if they have a complaint or issue--yet many businesses fail to respond to a Facebook wall post, incoming tweet, or other form of attempted engagement from a customer. Aim to respond within 24 hours at the least, 7 days a week. Facebook even rewards companies that respond quickly by indicating it right on their Facebook business page.

4. Consistency

Maybe you think that you're checking your social channels every day and putting out content on a daily basis. But are you really? Often when we conduct audits, clients are surprised when we note that they have only posted 10 times in the previous month to Facebook, or they posted 4 times in one day and then didn't post again for a week. It's important to establish a schedule and be strategic about when you post and that you're posting often enough to get in front of your target audiences without being in their face too much and causing people to hit "unfollow."

5. Mixing Up Content

It's easy to get in a rut with social media, especially if you don't have multiple team members helping to curate content. So, it's important to occasionally stop and make sure that you're honoring the 80/20 rule, which means only outright selling 20% of the time on your social feeds. In addition, are you mixing in:

• questions
• fill-in-the-blank statements
• videos
• stunning images/photography
• behind-the-scenes content
•  user-generated content
• posts that highlight employees and company milestones
• supporting your partner/community businesses with shares
• occasionally (and tastefully) content about your personal life/interests

If you're just constantly sharing other peoples' original content, then it's time to get more creative.

Interested in a digital audit for your business? Contact us today!