Auditing...top 3 lessons learned

In my Social Media Theory class here at Virginia Tech, one of our biggest semester assignments was to complete a social media audit on a well-known company or brand. An audit. The word alone sounds terrifying.

Through this project, we were to complete a situational analysis (including our brand and its competitors), a content analysis (of the current social media postings), hold a focus group (inclusive of members of the target audience) and complete a detailed SWOT analysis. Sounds daunting, right?

My team chose to audit Nordstrom and identified Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Neiman Marcus as key competitors.

Here are the 3 biggest lessons I learned from this assignment:

1. Approach every research question without bias- One of the biggest parts of this assignment was the completion of the focus group. In our preparations, we came up with questions to ask the group and topics to discuss. I thought I knew exactly how our focus group participants would respond to each question, but I was very wrong. I learned it is always important to research and gather insights on your consumer because it is almost guaranteed that you will learn something new about your audience.

2. Treat your brand and your competitors equally- It would have been easy for our team to really dig into the competitors social media critically and only breeze through Nordstrom's platforms. Or the opposite- treat our competitors like gold and judge Nordstrom too harshly. Nordstrom and their competition are all playing the same game and it is important to treat them like that in order to have results that will truly benefit your brand.

3. Don't be afraid to be honest- While our team was not asked by Nordstrom to complete a social media audit, through this project I saw how it could be difficult to be honest with a company about their shortcomings. But that's the point! When you complete an audit, its important to be honest with yourself and with the client/brand.