In our free Social Media and Google Analytics guide, we share our four favorite Google Analytics reports related to social media. These reports help us understand:
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 You used to have to know a guy who knew a guy in order to get your Facebook page verified. Now the process is automated and can be completed in a few minutes. Find out how to verify your Facebook page, and improve the credibility and findability of your Facebook page, in a few easy steps. ** DISCLAIMER ** Facebook rolls features out to different people at different times, so if you don't see the option to edit your verification right away, try again in a month or two. Some of our clients have been able to verify; some haven't so far. What the Heck is Verification?When Facebook pages are verified a checkmark in a circle appears next to the business page name, both on the page and in search results.  This is what verification looks like on a Facebook page.  This is what verification looks like in search results. Why Does Verification Matter?According to Facebook, if you verify your page it may appear higher in Facebook search results. There are two other reasons why verification is a good idea:
This can be particularly helpful when there are pages / companies with similar names, or when an unofficial fan page has sprung up. How Do I Verify My Facebook Page?1. Page Admin: First, make sure that you have a page admin role on your Facebook page. 2. Settings: Go to the Settings of your Facebook page.  Source: Facebook 3. Edit Verification Settings: Under General Settings, select the the edit link or pencil icon next to "Verification".  Source: Facebook 4. Verify Your Page: From there, you have two options to verify your Facebook page. You can either receive a call at a phone number that is publicly listed for your business...  Source: Facebook ...or you can upload a document, such as a utility bill, business license or tax file, certificate of business formation, or articles of incorporation. 5. Confirmation: You'll then get a confirmation that your page is verified and the symbol will show up right away next to your listing.  The whole process takes about five minutes. For more tips on building findability and credibility, talk to us about an independent audit of your social media program.
 This guest post from Nate Holmes at Widen has practical tips for keeping your images and videos organized when you are managing a social media program. We love to share advice that helps teams work better together. Do you ever find yourself rummaging through folders on your desktop to find the perfect image to share on social media? Or maybe you’ve given up on finding the perfect image and any remotely relevant image will do. Clicking in and out of folders and emailing your co-workers for that one image isn’t the best use of your time. So get ahead of the clutter and save yourself some time but getting your visuals organized. Here’s how to keep your visuals organized so your posts are on-brand, on-message, and on time. Put Your Images in a Centralized PlaceCentralize Your Images: When you need an image or video for social media where do you go? If you’re listing off a half-dozen places or you don’t know, it’s time to centralize your visuals. It’s the first step in getting organized. You might have multiple sources for images, but they should all end up organized in the same place. Things to consider:
 Use Descriptive FilenamesUse Descriptive Filenames: When you’re looking for an image, staring at a list of IMG_3091, IMG_3092, IMG_3093, etc. is not helpful. Take advantage of filenames by including descriptive information about the file’s content. A good filename helps distinguish itself from other files. Consider including the event, project, theme, or creator in the filename.  Things to consider:
Categorize Your Images and VideosCategorize Your Images and Videos: Filenames can help you search for a specific file, but categories are especially helpful when you have an idea of what you want but not a specific file in mind. The goal of organizing your files into categories is to make it easy to drill down to what you want in an organic, logical, and easy-to-understand manner. Things to consider:
Remove Off-Brand VisualsRemove off-brand visuals: One of the key benefits of social media is its ability to connect your brand to customers. Any post may be your opportunity to attract a potential customer to your brand. So your visuals better be on-brand. When organizing your visuals, remove any off-brand visuals, including those that are off-brand due to poor quality. Your visuals should reinforce your brand, not distract from it. Things to consider:
Keywords and Descriptions MetadataKeyword and description metadata: Metadata is data about data. It’s descriptive information that defines and describes your visual. If you apply this information to your files, you can use it to organize and find files faster. A digital asset management (DAM) system gives you more robust search and filtering capabilities than a basic folder structure. Things to consider:
Organize Now!It’s tempting to put off organizing any newly created or purchased images and videos. Don’t wait! There’s never a great time for more mundane tasks like organizing your visuals, but a little time invested now will save you more time later. Like when you need that visual again.
 Have you taken a look at all of the pages on your website recently? How about the depths of your Twitter account? Chances are there’s a page lingering somewhere in the dark corners of a drop down menu that hasn’t been updated in a while. In this post, we’ll take a look at four different ways to assess the freshness of your content. “Freshness” can refer to content on your website, blog, or in your email and social media channels. Why does freshness matter? It sends a signal both to your audiences and to search engines that you’re still there and that you care enough about them and your business to keep your content up to date. There’s nothing worse than showing up at a restaurant only to realize that the hours on their website aren’t accurate, and that they’ve changed for the summer. Or to be working on a policy issue…that’s already passed through Congress. Here are four ways that you can ensure that your content is fresh: Look for Ghost TownsChecking for Ghosts: When’s the last time you updated your Facebook page? How about your blog? The first step in the process is to see if you’ve posted anything in a while. Are you active, or is it a ghost town? If you’re not sure what to talk about, think about the top pages on your website, and pull a fact, quote, or statistic from that page to share on your social media channels. Your blog is a great place to answer all of the questions that your clients are asking. Your email inbox might be a great source of blog post ideas.  Look in the Back of the Content FridgeThere's Something Scary in the Back of Your Content Fridge: Okay, so let’s say you are pretty on top of updating your website and social channels on a regular basis. What you might want to do is to go page-by-page through your top-level navigation, and check to make sure that the most visible pages on your site are accurate and up to date.  Your top level navigation consists of your main landing pages and also the stuff that appears in your drop downs. Pay particular attention to facts, such as dates, hours, addresses, and staff names and emails. Google looks for a consistent name, address, phone number, and URL for physical locations featured in local search. So if your business or organization has a brick-and-mortar location, you might want to check those facts a second time to make sure that they are formatted identically.
Look in Google Analytics Google Analytics has a wealth of information on your content. One report that we like to look at regularly is Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. This report will give you a nice look at the most popular pages on your website.
But if you click on the column labeled “Pageviews” it will also let you look at the least visited pages on your website. If one of your least visited page is pretty important, you may need to think about ways to make it easier to find on your site. (User experience designers call this “surfacing” content). If it’s a blog post that hasn’t been viewed in a while…it might be time to share it again through your social networks. Looking at blog post metrics over a longer period of time, might yield some insights on topics that are more popular, or less popular. You can also rewrite a post, taking a slightly different angle or approach, such as turning a fact-heavy article into an infographic. Repurposing content leftovers are a-ok in our book. Speaking of which, if you want to look at content metrics in a single area (also called a directory or folder) of your website, here’s a handy trick: go to Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown and then click on the directory that you want to look at. This makes it easy to look at the content metrics only for your “blog” or “about” section. In the below example, I see the directories for my homepage, and my blog.  Look in your Social Media Management ToolGet Social with Your Metrics: It’s a good idea to look at your top posts. We recommend doing this on a monthly basis. We like to look at our top 5 posts sorted by reach, and then by engagement. When looking at engagement (which is a catch-all term that describes likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc.) it's important to keep in mind that if a post reached few people and the engagement rate is very high, that bit of might not be as helpful to you as seeing the stats on a post that reached more people but had slightly less engagement. Our top five social media posts often give us ideas for future social media posts or even blog posts topics. Below, is an example from a report we pulled in Sprout Social for our client Clergy for a New Drug Policy.  Why aren't we talking about the bottom five? We often look at those posts too, but if there's a clear reason that a post may have gotten less reach (such as a Facebook boost not being approved, or spending less on a boost), that’s less interesting to us than seeing the posts that really resonated with our audience. Keep it Fresh!We hope this gives you some great ideas to keep things fresh! Let us know if you have questions about content freshness in a comment below. For more tips on making your social media content work harder, check out some of the other posts in our social media audit series.
 I spent a lot of time in my father's and my late Pop Pop's woodshops as a kid. They used to say "Measure Twice, Cut Once." Another way to say that is if you plan an effort carefully, you won't waste costly resources and time. I think that's a good lesson that also applies to work that I do in helping companies large and small evaluate their social media efforts, and develop a social media strategy. So this post, which considers three different yardsticks that we can use to measure the effectiveness of our social media efforts, is written in their honor. Happy Father's Day Dad!  Evaluate Your Social Media Accounts Against Known Best PracticesEvaluate your social media accounts against known best practices: There are certain well-defined best practices that can help you understand if your accounts are set up to succeed or fail. These include making sure that your Facebook posts are not too long, tagging partner organizations in your tweets, using hashtags appropriately on Instagram, understanding what types of content (such as DIY projects and recipes) tend to do well on Pinterest, and figuring out how to leverage both your employee's personal accounts and your company's page on LinkedIn. A social media strategist can perform an social media audit, an independent evaluation of your social media accounts. Or, take a look at what your competitors and peer organizations are doing and see whether their content sparks any fresh ideas.  Evaluate Your Social Media Efforts Against BenchmarksEvaluate your social media program against benchmarks: There are several types of benchmarks you might consider when evaluating a social media program. Internal Benchmarks: Establishing a Median Across Your Accounts If you have a very complex social media program, creating internal benchmarks can be very helpful. Let's say you have multiple Facebook pages for different divisions of your business. Throw all of your accounts into a spreadsheet and figure out what the median result is for statistics like account growth and engagement rates. If you have a median, social media account managers who exceed the benchmark can potentially mentor team members whose skills could improve. Looking at which accounts fall below the median helps you to prioritize which accounts need the most attention. Industry Benchmarks: Compare Against the Metrics that are Typical for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn The second type of benchmark is known industry benchmarks. This applies to engagement, for example. There are known average engagement rates for Facebook (in our experience, for boosted posts, 10-15%), LinkedIn (in our experience, often less than 1%...people aren't necessarily on LinkedIn to hit a "like" button), and Twitter (in our experience, often 1-2%). Knowing those benchmarks will help you set reasonable goals and understand what you can feasibly hope to achieve. Competitive Benchmarks: Measure Against Organizations that are Similar to You With a little effort (and a spreadsheet) you can track a competitor’s audience growth over time. Why is this important? Well, you want to make sure to compare apples to apples. A flagship account for an international nonprofit should be compared to other flagship accounts for international nonprofits, not against the performance of an account with a more niche following, such as accounts targeted to reporters, scientists, policymakers, human relations professionals, and so on.  Evaluate Your Content BalanceEvaluate your social media program for content balance, tone, and relevance: Your social media program is not going to be effective if every post that you do is focused on sales.
Rather, you need to create a balance of content that informs, inspires, and drives clear calls to action. You also need to consider what types of content might be most useful and interesting to your target audience. Similarly, you want to make sure that the tone of your accounts is aligned with your target audiences, and is consistent across all of your social media accounts.  A social media audit can help any business or organization rally their team around a cohesive vision that fits seamlessly into broader marketing and business goals. But to be successful after an audit is completed, you need to develop a roadmap to success. It’s important to prioritize what issues you’re going to tackle, and to develop a specific timeline for implementing those changes. Creating a Roadmap to SuccessHere are four questions you can ask yourself when making a roadmap.
 You've got to do lists for days. We get it. 4. How can you train staff to support them in achieving your company's vision? Training your staff is a common follow-up step to implementing audit recommendations. Identify any internal and external experts that can help improve competency in core areas. Whether you are bringing in an outside consultant to address the issues that were uncovered by an audit or you’re engaging in peer-to-peer learning such as a brown bag lunch-and-learn series, it’s important to identify who will do the training and to put dates on the group's calendar for training sessions. 5. How can you train your staff to address any issues uncovered during the audit? If your social media audit has uncovered any issues that can be solved through training, get that scheduled too! If you have more than one person on your team consider assigning team members who are stronger on certain skills as a mentor to team members who show (through your social media metrics) or who self-identify as needing a little help. 6. When will we reevaluate your program? Getting a social media audit should not be a one-and-done activity. It’s important to set dates to re-evaluate your program, staff progress, and to check your progress against your timeline for implementing the recommendations from your audit. These deadlines will keep you accountable and ensure the success of your social media audit. Read More in Our Social Media Audit Series Roadblocks in Setting Social Media Marketing GoalsFor large organizations with complex teams who might be dispersed around the country or the globe, there are often significant roadblocks to estimating and capturing social media data in traditional ways. This can make it difficult to set social media marketing goals. This is also a common workflow problem for groups of nonprofits who are partnering together on an awareness or fundraising campaign. Some of the common obstacles I've observed in my social media audit practice include: 1. Using Different ToolsThis can be a problem for both groups of organizations working toward a common goal, and for geographically dispersed teams, or teams across several departments. Some orgs and departments will not prioritize professional social media management tools in their budgets, or won't allow social media managers to select the tools they'd like to be using. 2. Different PhilosophiesWhen you are working with diverse teams or organizations you may not have a shared understanding of the metrics that matter. 3. Differences in KnowledegeOn very large teams, it's common for some people to have advanced skills, and others to have a more rudimentary understanding of social media management and metrics. 4. Access to Ad SpendTeams who have adequate spend to support their efforts will have an easier time reaching goals than teams who don't. Let's Consider a Radically Different ApproachThere are a range of tactics for addressing differences in philosophies and knowledge, such as peer-to-peer mentoring or educational brown bag lunches. When teams are using different tools or have different levels of knowledge, templated reports can help you collect information in a standardized way. But let’s consider for a moment, what would happen if we threw our social media goals out the window and took a radically different approach to setting goals for shared campaigns. Working Together Toward a Common Goal In bike racing, a peloton works together to achieve a common goal. We All Share the Same Finish LineA joint campaign, executed by several teams, departments, or partner organizations, might have common key messages or even a library or shared social media content. What would happen if, instead of trying to collect metrics and reports from a number of different people, groups, or organizations, who all have different reporting workflows, that we gave each person a simple target based on the size of their audience and empowered them to meet that target on their own timeline, using the content and schedule that they felt would best fit their program? If we think about a campaign as a road race that happens over a month, a quarter or a year, it might be helpful to establish a starting line that is tied to the size of the partner's account. (For a longer campaign, you might want to multiply that number by the number of months in the campaign.) Example of Simplified Social Media Goals
For the individual social media manager, the task is then to get to the finish line by doing whatever they need to do to reach that goal. For some groups, it might only take one or two posts, within a library of shared content, to hit their individual target. For others, they may need to post a number of times over a longer period of time in order to hit their goals. And that’s okay. Reaching the finish line is what matters. As long as you enforce where the finish line is (our expectation is that we all need to reach this point) your role becomes less taskmaster and more coach and cheerleader. Individual managers or groups will be empowered to complete the race in a way that makes sense to them. Gathering Success MetricsHere's the best part of this approach: it vastly simplifies the problem of collecting metrics to create a campaign report.
Instead of tracking people down at the end of the campaign, and gathering disparate spreadsheets and reports, doing a lot of manual tabulation and analysis across accounts, you can instead ask this team two simple questions:
The answer to the first question gives you the metric to report your success as a group. The second question will tell you if you need to adjust your goals in the future. The third question gives you open-ended qualitative data on how things went. What approach to you take to setting social media goals? Learn about other solutions to common social media workflow issues in our earlier blog post.  There's a simple, powerful action you can take in the next five minutes to strengthen your social media brand. This tip, which comes out of our social media audit work, is quick and easy to implement but will make a big impact. Cornerstones of social brandingThe cornerstones of social branding are consistency and repetition. You want to state the same key messages about your company, product, or service over and over again over a long period of time. Are your social media bios consistent?One quick action you can take to improve your social media branding is to look at your social media bios, or your “About” copy, on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Are you describing your company the same way every time? If not, take the best, most concise statement and use it as your bio across channels. Example of consistent social branding: StarbucksIn each of the five examples below, you will see that Starbucks uses an identical bio on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. "Inspiring and nuturing the human spirit--one person, one cup, one neighborhood at a time." Are your social bios searchable?Bios are searchable, so if you are providing professional services, for example, you might want to mention what you do in your bio to make it easier for people to find you. If the messaging is consistent, it's okay to tweak your bio slightly to fit the channel. In the example above, you can note that Starbucks' Instagram bio includes an emoji of a coffee cup. Your Twitter bios may include some tagged accounts and hashtags. Executives, public information officers, and social media managers might want to tag their company accounts in their bios. The Starbucks Partners Twitter account links back to the main Starbucks Twitter account and includes a branded hashtag for employee engagement.   Today, in our social media audit series, we’re sharing a quick tip that you can tackle in five minutes, to improve the effectiveness of your social media content. Are you asking people to do anything?We all know that strong calls to action, such as "buy now" or "sign up today" are critical for getting people to do the things that we'd like to see them do as a result of seeing our social media posts. But it's important to check your posts to make sure that you're actually remembering to include them. Here's what you should do in the next five minutes: Take a look at your five most recent social media posts and see how many of them include a specific "ask" to do something, whether that's read an article, sign up for your newsletter, or purchase tickets to an event. If the answer is "no", here are some follow up actions you can take to improve your posts. Use Short, Clear Calls to ActionShort, clear calls to action are the best way to pop the question. These include phrases such as: book now, sign up, buy tickets today. Terms like “now” in calls to action improve success because urgency drives people to take action. Turn “I’ll take action at some point” into “I need to take action RIGHT NOW.” Make it Easy for People to Take ActionIf you want to increase email newsletter sign ups, for example, send people to a dedicated sign up landing page. Don't make people hunt for the form in the bottom of your website. Create Reusable Calls to Action Focused Social Media PostsFor calls to action that support your main goals, such as "sign up for our newsletter" don’t waste time writing Facebook posts or tweets related to these core calls to action messages over and over again. Instead, build a spreadsheet or Word document with reusable content in it, so that you deploy those posts again over time.
 By SARAH BEST Whether your business has a handful of accounts, or you're running a complex global social media program with hundreds of accounts and dozens of social media managers, a social media audit can be a valuable way of making sure that your work is strategic and effective. Learn more about what a social media audit is. Importance of a Social Media AuditHere are a few common reasons why businesses make the decision to conduct a social media audit: You want an independent, expert evaluation of your programWhether you’re a busy social media manager, or a marketing director trying to make sense of whether your social media program is working as hard as it should, gaining an outside perspective can be really helpful. Audits help us understand objectively how your social media program is performing. It can also identify marketing and growth opportunities you might not currently be taking advantage of. Something big is on the horizonWhether you have a large annual event coming up, a new product that you’re launching, or an important fundraising campaign on the horizon, these are all good junctures for making sure that your accounts are in top shape. You want to make informed decisionsAre you on the right channels? Are you posting frequently enough? Do you have too many staff working on social media or not enough? Having some data, interviewing your staff, and getting expert advice on how your program should be performing, can help you make better decisions. You want to advocate for resourcesConducting a social media audit can help you build a case for what you need, whether it’s a professional social media management tool, or a new marketing coordinator, but it can also help you find places where you can gain some efficiencies.
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