Introduction

For my CAP 105 class, I was tasked with undertaking a social media audit of PRDaily’s Twitter and Facebook. A social media audit is a basic gathering of information on a site’s social media page; gathering data such as total followers, likes, and comments. It is a good way of understanding the entity’s social media effectiveness. The following were my findings for both sites!

Facebook Audit– PRDaily

With a social media following of around 106k, the PRDaily Facebook page has a size-able following/audience. Anything over 100k is impressive for a social media page. The page focuses on professionals looking to gather insights in the industry of public relations. Headlines of successful articles of theirs include “3 Steps to Developing a Content Calendar for Instagram Stories” and “How TikTok plays into influencer marketing“. As you can tell the articles are focused on people learning about the changing world of PR and Advertising, while also already having a good understanding of the industry as a whole. The posts on Facebook have very low engagement rates, averaging around 4 Likes per post, little to no commenting, and maybe 2 shares per post (past 2 months data). Over the last two months, the page posted roughly 112 posts, so they are relatively active for a social media page. The worry with this page is not their audience, or the volume of their posts, but the low engagement rate on their posts, and if they hope to reach a broader audience, their content should include more discussion and posts that encourage engagement.

Twitter Audit– PRDaily

PRDaily has a Twitter following of around 116k, so again a very strong following over 100k. The Twitter account posts more frequently than the Facebook page, having around 450 posts in the last 2 months, and uses more info graphics and polls to encourage discussion, while also using the platform to promote their own articles. The problem again comes in the engagement with the tweet. Even today the PRDaily account has a poll running that is 5 hours in and only has 12 votes. This shows that very few of their followers are engaging with their content, and therefore it is not getting spread very fast. In total, PRDaily is getting only around 125 likes per week, with 116k followers, on an app that requires engagement and likes/retweets to push the content up on peoples ever scrolling feeds. This lack of engagement can be fixed with content that encourages discussion and does not just lend itself to professionals in the PR field. More of this can lead to more engagements with the posts and more visibility for the website.

Conclusion

When auditing these two social media sites for PRDaily, I was at first feeling very daunted by the task of counting the likes on posts for such a big page as PRDaily, but i quickly realized that the posts they have did not have many likes/comments/shares going on. For such pages that have 106k and 116k followers, these numbers seemed too small. When i looked closer I saw it was pretty common for their posts to not receive much of these engagements, and I wondered why. For Facebook, I believe their content is just too website based. Almost every post on their Facebook takes you directly to their website, and off of Facebook entirely. Social media scrollers do not like to take the time to go to a website and read the lengthy articles unless they have the time to do that, so PRDaily should consider focusing more on quicker reads for commuters on their way to and from work in the PR Field.

For Twitter, they have done a better job of creating content that allows for discussion/engagement, yet they still are lacking likes/retweets. I believe this is because their Twitter account is TOO professional. Twitter is a more informal platform, and long articles to read about PR are definitely not what the app was designed for, and people know that; thus they are less likely to share a lengthy article with a friend over Twitter than other platforms. Twitter needs to expand their content more into the info-graphics and short video content side of Twitter to better reach PR Professionals.

Both accounts have a great following/audience that they can greatly benefit from, if they handle their content properly. A more discourse-centric style of content for Facebook and faster information for Twitter can help PRDaily go from a small scale PR help account to a true force in the social media world.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.