Carry out a Competitor Analysis
While it’s imperative to analyze your results, it’s just as important to do the same with those of your competitors.
Why?
To have a point of comparison! Your audit alone is worthless if you don’t compare it to other players in your sector.
Are you happy to see that your Google reviews are rated around 4/5? What about your competitors? If they’re getting scores of 4.5, they’re overtaking you!
Similarly, if you get a high number of negative comments per day, it may not be so bad: is your competitor getting just as many?
Unfortunately, this is closely related to your industry. Examining your competitors’ results will also allow you to position yourself and set realistic goals later on.
I suggest selecting four to five main competitors for your online reputation audit.
You will then do the same analysis work as for your brand, focusing on the selected KPIs. Some of these will not be available (such as post reach, which is only accessible via account statistics); focus on the others.
On Facebook, go to the Pages to watch section in your statistics to compare your page and your competitors.
You can report your searches in your database to keep track of them over time.
To conclude this analysis, carry out your own competitor mapping.
The objective is to easily visualize your competitors’ position concerning the two criteria you have chosen. For example, in the case of online reputation, you can start with:
Customer satisfaction: Low/Very High.
Sphere of influence: Local/National.
Awareness: Low/High.
Community engagement: Low/Very High.
Reactivity to requests: Low/High.
Etc.
The Deditex Case Study
Before you launch into actioning yours, here’s an example of competitor mapping from the Deditex case study:
This mapping aims to understand what arguments these brands are basing their communications around. After analyzing their website, blog, social networks, and responses to comments, we positioned them based on two criteria:
Are these brand images more about lifestyle or more technical?
Do they emphasize their ecological or local commitments, and in what proportions?
This allows us to position the Deditex brand, a newcomer on the market, based on the objectives set.
Carry out Your Digital SWOT Analysis
After reviewing your platforms and those of your competitors and observing the conversations in your industry, you now have a more global view of the challenges facing your brand online.
You must know your strengths and weaknesses to answer this question.
This could be summarized by the SWOT matrix, which has the advantage of presenting these elements in a condensed and clear way:
The Deditex Case Study
If you are already in a company, carry out a digital SWOT analysis for your organization for practice.
Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis we could have for Deditex.
Communicate Your Action Plan
Your audit is coming to an end. ⏳
If you had to prioritize ten key points, what would they be?
Based on the digital SWOT and competitor analyses, make a list of these ten or so insights.
Ask yourself the following questions as a guideline:
Which platforms does your brand appear authentic on? Which ones is it less so?
Where do your customers mainly chat? What additional content could you bring them?
What are the areas you need to be mindful of? Points for improvement?
Have you identified people/media to get support from? Any others to watch out for?
Does your online reputation match your brand image? If not, why not?
Which competitor is overtaking you? Why?
Once you establish this list, format your results in a document. Then, you can prepare a presentation summarizing your audit results leading to an action plan to share with your employees or contractors.
Here’s what your presentation could include:
A quick introduction and a reminder of the audit objectives.
A reminder of the methodology (choice of platforms analyzed, mentions followed, market or geographical area monitored, analysis period, etc.).
The main performance indicators by platform or lever (reach, origin, sentiment and tone of messages, characteristics of engaged internet users, etc.).
Key brand-related issues/recurring questions/potential crises identified.
Competitor analysis and competitor mapping.
A diagnosis with the presentation of a digital SWOT analysis.
The action plan to be put in place and the new objectives to be reached.
What does the action plan contain in concrete terms?
It consists of a series of recommendations, areas for improvement, and proposals for one or more operational deliverables consistent with the audit.
Depending on what is expected, you may have to turn to your communications team, marketing agency, SEO expert, or PR agency.
This work will make it easier for you to brief people on what you want from them. In addition, you will be able to provide them with significant and concrete insights.
The Deditex Case Study
It’s your turn now to define the Deditex action plan. What do you think are the three most important actions to take? Who will you brief to help you do this?
Have you finished? Find the proposed action plan that Michael wants to present to his management team.
Let’s Recap!
You’ve analyzed your statistics, but the audit isn’t over! Here is some additional information to complete this first piece of research:
Compare your results to those of four or five of your main competitors. You can track their development on a dashboard and complete a competitor mapping to determine their positioning in relation to your brand.
Use a SWOT matrix to summarize your company’s main advantages and disadvantages compared to your competitors and the market.
List the main insights to remember from your audit and propose a future action plan.
Your audit is ready to be shared with your team! It will help you establish a roadmap and prioritize the main levers to work on. For some help, here’s the template for the online reputation audit: it includes the various elements you have seen. Feel free to add to it based on your requirements.
Did you realize that your online influence was not what you expected during your research? Don’t worry, we’ll talk about that in the next part, but first, test your skills with this quiz!
