Auditing socially successful companies
First, find 3 companies who you aspire to be like. It might be hard to find vegan companies who are doing really well in your sector, so instead you might want to find companies in your market who are speaking to similar people as your customers or at least share some of your ethics.
For example, if you are selling vegan snack bars, full of all natural ingredients and packed with protein, then you might take a look at Nākd (who at the time of writing has 100k followers on Facebook, 80k on Instagram), Trek (25k Facebook, 9k Instagram) and Pulsin (11k on Facebook, 28km on Instagram). On platforms like Facebook and Twitter where posts are visible for all time, scroll through their page and audit their last month of content. If it’s a real-time platform like Instagram Stories, then keep a journal of what they post every day for a month. Record:
- What platforms are they focused on? (eg: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)
- How often do they post? (eg: several times a day, daily, every few days, weekly)
- Which of their posts from the last 30 days got the most likes – do these have anything in common? (eg: do they feature pets or animal images?)
- Which of their posts from the last 30 days got the most comments – do these have anything in common? (eg: are they asking for feedback?)
- Which of their posts from the last 30 days got the most shares – do these have anything in common? (eg: are they special offers?)
- Do they mainly use text, images, or video? (and which gets the best results?)
- How often do they post a ‘sales’ message? (eg: a message which is just prompting you to buy or spend money with them)
- Do they have a theme? (eg: an ongoing campaign or posting the same things on the same day each week)
- How often do they tag in other brands, companies, influencers? (and do these posts get more interaction?)
- Reading between the lines, what do you think their agenda is, what are they trying to achieve? (eg: getting you to share their posts to spread their message to your friends, getting you to go to their website, using their platform to get noticed by other companies etc.)
Doing this will give you invaluable insight. It’s worth auditing a couple of companies with a similar brand voice and a large following to learn how different companies approach their social media in different ways. Look for the posts that get 10 times as many likes and comments than what they normally get and work out why. What was different about the post that got over a thousands likes to the one posted the following day that only go 40?
