Students will select an organization and review its use of social media. Pretend that you are providing your social media advice to an organization that you wish to work for. Remember you often will not have as much information as they do, as you don’t have access to their analytics, just publicly available information. A necessary component will thus be some comparison to their direct competitors and possibly some examples drawn from those competitors or even other organizations in different fields that you think support that your advice is sound and actionable.

Digital Marketing – Social Media Audit

Students will select an organization and review its use of social media. Pretend that you are providing your social media advice to an organization that you wish to work for. Remember you often will not have as much information as they do, as you don’t have access to their analytics, just publicly available information. A necessary component will thus be some comparison to their direct competitors and possibly some examples drawn from those competitors or even other organizations in different fields that you think support that your advice is sound and actionable.

Part of the exercise lies in your selection of the organization – you want an organization that has enough presence that your advice is deeper than “start using social media”. but not so large that your advice is likely already considered (and has been rejected) by their large and successful marketing department, based on their access to analytics data.

Your audit should consider at a minimum: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Depending on the organization and industry, you may wish to consider Pinterest, Etsy, TikTok, WeChat, or others.

Submissions should be approximately 5 pages double spaced, but I am more concerned with a) thoroughness of your review of existing social media usage b) depth and reasoning of analysis and advice and c) thoughtful and strategic presentation of information.

You should answer at least the following questions:

What tools, networks and platforms are being used? (What are they missing and where should their focus be?)

Who is their target market? (Are there particular platforms heavily used by their target markets? Are there targeting tools available on those platforms to allow the organization to really benefit from that platform?)

What is the organization trying to achieve? How does the organization engage their audience? Is the organization successful? What could be done to improve their efforts? Be as specific as possible with the type of content and platform you recommend.

You may wish to track your audit results in a spreadsheet and can include that as an appendix to your paper, but remember that Excel is often limited in telling stories and communicating advice. A good walkthrough of performing this type of audit is available at:

Please note his is just one of several hundred examples out there and he does rely on client provided access to their analytics accounts, which you are unlikely to have.

Submissions should be in Word or pdf. (Excel sheets should be converted to appear within your main document so that your audience is not having to cross-reference multiple documents, and excel sheets are by their nature, kind of ugly. They are for recording and analysing, not for presenting!)