Definition of social media. : forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).
A brand audit is a thorough examination of a brand’s current position in the market compared to its competitors and a review of its effectiveness. It helps you determine the strength of your brand together with its weaknesses or inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement and new developments.
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What Social Media real estate do you have?
The term digital real estate or Social Media Real estate refers to the domain names, social media handles, or other markers that stake out a space on the Internet as being yours. Digital real estate can take many forms, from a free service such as a Twitter account, to highly regulated and sometimes, costly domains.
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What kind of content do you produce?
When you think about the content for your business, consider the type of content you need and the format you will use.
(e.g. what content will I use in my social media marketing plan
example: behind the scenes videos for snapchat, polished images and videos for instagram, how to articles for LinkedIn, how to videos for Youtube, etc.)
Competitive Audit
A competitive audit helps you track where your competitors are and what makes them more visible online. The goal is to discover what is working for other people in your industry, so that you can make those strategies work for you, too, to gain a competitive advantage.
A competitive audit is an analysis of your competition. In order to conduct a successful competitive audit, you need to know these key factors:
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Who is your competition?
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Who is your close-in competition?
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Who is your stretch competition?
A competitive audit can be complex if you are not sure of what you’re doing. Your close-in competition is businesses who are just like you. These businesses may sell the same products as you and have the same target audience. Your stretch competition is people who are more successful and have a bigger business than you.
Keeping up with your competition is hard work. There are a variety of questions you need to answer about your competition. You need to know what your competition is currently doing and what platforms are on.
Other factors you need to know about your competition are the kind of content they are creating and what’s working for them. Are their current methods and strategies working or not? You also need to know who your competitor’s current target market is and who they are influencing. You need to know what their engagement looks like. You need to evaluate all of these factors of your competitors and mirror their success. You need to learn from your competitor’s mistakes. There’s no shame in learning from your competitor’s and you don’t have to copy everything they do
Customer avatar
When you’re thinking of your customer avatar, you need to know who you want to reach and what problems you are trying to solve. You need to ask yourself what problems can you solve for your customers. You need to find ways to solve customer’s problems differently and more effectively than your competitors. Most importantly, you need to know as much about your customers as you possibly can. You need to know where your customers hang out, and how they communicate, such as the real world, forums, and online. You also need to know what platforms they use and what they do on these platforms.
Content Platform
You need to know which content platform is the best for you to use, as well as, the right content for your brand. You should start by choosing between a creative field, visual content, strategy, and written content. Did you know there is more than one platform you can use to deliver content? Some platforms you can use include:
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Blogs
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Podcasts
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Articles
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Videos
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Newsletters
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Imagery
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Info-graphics
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Guest appearances
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Discussion boards
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Whitepapers
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E books
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Downloadable PDF’s
