Telling you about our Social Media Audits

Over the last year at Public-i, we’ve worked hard to develop a new product, the Social Media Audit – which we’re now ready to start talking about a bit more on the blog. That’ll take the form of a few case studies – and we’ll share them as they arrive. But for the moment I thought it might be helpful to take you through what the audit is, by way of an introduction.

What is a Social Media Audit?

For the uninitiated, the Social Media Audit is really a piece of consultancy research in which we carry out a detailed search of a client’s social media communities, providing them with a picture of these communities and advice on how best to engage with them. The ‘development’ I make reference to is really the work we’ve put in to creating a number of things:-

• A methodology, which we’re pretty sure is unique. It takes information about our clients and applies it through search terms to social media and then qualifies this data.
• A Social Media Audit tool, which we use to undertake the searches for us.
• A refined project management process that ensures a swift delivery of the audit, but also allows our clients to play an active part in the audit and see a clear route at the end to developing a relationship with the public that really responds to the opportunities social media provides.

It’s unique, but why?

Well, there are three reasons…

1. It’s dedicated to our market (public-sector, governmental clients).
2. It’s focused on civic content and civic content creators (i.e. the folk who are most important in creating civic content).
3. Its chief aim is a co-productive relationship where social media is a tool to helping the public and public sector solve problems together.

So… while there are lots of people out there claiming to find the valuable conversations that involve you online, they’re not necessarily going to help you make decisions – not on their own. We take the view that what’s important for our clients is understanding how the connections between your organisation and the public can be enhanced by social media and how that’s really a learning process.

It’s about understanding how the rules have changed and the implications those rule changes have in terms of resourcing, best practice and strategy. And it’s about the people. Because social media is just a means to make contact and share information with people, it needs an approach that concentrates on those people – and we think that’s about identifying the key individuals who are now operating online and how you can build a new kind of co-productive relationship with them.

Telling you about the audits

We’ve carried out audits in quite a few places, so over the next few months we’ll be introducing some of the stories behind those audits – what we’ve acheived, what has happened as a result of the work and how and why they were undertaken. We have a growing list of clients, which includes:-

• Cambridgeshire Renewables Infrastructure Framework – as part of delivering the engagement work package for Cambridgeshire Horizons
• East Sussex and Sussex Police
• Wolverhampton City Council and West Midlands Police
• Cumbria County Council and Police
• South Cambridgeshire

I hope to give you the stories behind each of these client’s audit in the next few months – so we can help people to better understand their value and what they can lead to.

Find out more

We’re always keen to talk to people about the audit (that’s while we’ll be writing about them – and as much as anything it’s about learning more), then please leave a comment or get in touch with us.