PR Daily Social Media Audit

Before I dive into the social media audit PR Daily's several accounts, let's learn some background information of what an audit actually is. A social media audit is the evaluation of a company’s social media accounts aiming to collect a variety of information such as the activity and interaction of the audience with the posts in a designated amount of time. By conducting an audit, we can evaluate what we are missing, what we can improve on, and also what we are doing well within the company’s previous posts. We perform audits in order to learn the best way to maximize the use of accounts for the future. By consistently performing audits for the social media accounts of a specific company, we can constantly be aware of what we need to do in order to utilize our accounts to the fullest.

For this specific audit, I evaluated the social media accounts of PR Daily, a news site that delivers current news, advice, and opinions on the public relations, marketing, social media, and media worlds (prdaily.com). PR Daily has two main social media accounts, these include their Twitter and Facebook page. Here is a brief overview of my findings from my social media audit:

As you can see from the table above, in my audit I evaluated the number of posts in the past two weeks, the total amount of likes, comments, and shares for each of the social media accounts. By doing so, we can understand which page our audience is interacting with most and develop an understanding of the pros and cons of each page. To perform the audit, I manually visited each site and counted each post, like, comment, and share and collected my data in an Excel document. After collecting my data, I counted the totals for each category and proceeded to organize them in the table that you see above. By organizing the data this way, it makes it visibly easier to see the numbers of each account be compared side by side. I then evaluated the data I collected in order to get an understanding of how the audience is interacting with each page of PR Daily.

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Twitter: @PRDaily

When conducting the audit for the Twitter account of PR Daily, I found they have approximately 114,800 followers since creating their account in March of 2009. Without counting the tweets of other accounts they had shared, I found they had about 147 original posts in the past 2 weeks of activity (as of September 20, 2020). From these 147 posts, there was a total of 548 likes, 288 retweets (shares), and 8 replies from viewers.

Below I have displayed the three tweets in which received a higher amount of either shares or likes compared to the other original tweets PR Daily had posted. If you evaluate the three different tweets, you see a common concept of a one line explanation and a link to an article on their website. Taking a closer look we can conclude that each article linked has a relation of a media/PR topic and how to promote these skills with the current pandemic our world is tackling, COVID-19. The target audience of these posts appear to be those who are interested in strengthening social media and PR skills, especially within the new parameters of remote work and learning (the top post relating to being a PR pro in a pandemic). Given the skills they are exploiting, the target audience most likely includes a younger audience who are fluent with social media and computer knowledge. The majority of this audience tends to be 18 to 30 year-olds as they could be creating a job for themselves, in college, etc.

Top Three Tweets:

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Facebook: @prdaily

When conducting the audit for the Facebook account of PR daily, I found they have 106,775 people who follow their page, including 106,015 likes on their page as a whole (as of September 20,2020). Amongst these posts, they had a total of 34 original posts, 36 total likes, 7 shares, and 4 comments from the audience.

Similar to their Twitter account, PR Daily introduces an article on their website with one sentence to give their audience an idea of what the article entails and to catch their attention. They then link the article in order for easy accessibility. Communication seems to be a common theme amongst the three most popular posts on their Facebook page. The target audience of their Facebook appears to be a younger audience as they mention TikTok and Youtube in one of their posts which are a common platform for the audience of a wide range such as 14 to 25 year-olds. However, their audience seems to widen on this platform as there are more general posts such as one dealing with mental health which can apply to all ages. This makes sense given the average age of a Facebook user is 40.5 years old (smallbusiness.chron.com).

Top Three Posts:

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Social Media Audit- Findings

After evaluating both the Facebook page and Twitter account of PR Daily, I have found a variety of findings. First, they are much more active on their Twitter account (147 posts) compared to their Facebook page (34 posts) within the last two weeks. This directly results in a higher amount of activity and engagement from the audience with a total of 548 likes compared to Facebook total of 36 likes. These statistics show they should continue to utilize their Twitter page to engage with their target audience.

Secondly, it was uncommon to find any comments from the audience amongst both of the social media accounts. One suggestion I would have for PR Daily is to utilize the new features such as polls that these platforms offer in order to maximize the interaction of the users.

Another finding is despite the small gap between the amounts of followers on both accounts, there is more interaction with the Tweets PR Daily puts out. Twitter appears to be greater tool for them to continue to utilize in order to reach a younger target audience, especially those entering and in media and PR fields. This social platform is more common for any type of younger audience member who they want to reach to be active on.

Lastly, a weakness that shows throughout both platforms is the overall engagement with each post, for example, on Twitter their top post only consisted of 15 retweets and 17 likes. To increase the activity with their posts, PR Daily could consider becoming more active on Twitter with original content instead of linking an article. They could also use prompting content such as asking the audience questions or for their opinion which will encourage the audience to interact with more detail. Most of their target audience, including myself, tend to scroll past tweets that pertain to reading an article. Instead, they can highlight their points in original tweets possibly generating more attention and strengthening relationships with their audience.

By conducting a social media audit on a consistent basis, the data gathered can directly help a company, in this case PR Daily, learn what they should work on and what is working in terms of social media marketing.