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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

The importance of managing a client’s social media accounts is often underestimated, even by marketers themselves. In our current digital age, social media is no longer an alternative world that people plug into, but rather an extension of the world that we already live in. So, by this logic, your social media page reflects who you are and who you want to be, which is especially true for brands who actively showcase their personality online. As far as the 1 billion monthly active Instagram users across the globe are concerned, your social media is your brand. 

With this in mind, running an account or ecosystem—from content creation to community management—is a crucial responsibility. However, it can often be difficult to tell how well you’re really doing. Choosing the right social media metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) is therefore vital in helping you to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns.

But why do social media KPIs even matter?

Social Media Metrics: Definitions and Calculations

See if your social media KPIs were successful

As Lewis Carroll (and later, George Harrison) so famously stated, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” If you’re running a campaign on social media without taking the time to use an analytics tool to assess if you’re getting the results you want to achieve, then you really don’t know where you’re going.

Social media KPIs and measurement matters because it tells you where you are in terms of starting metrics, where you want to go (objectives) and it informs what action you need to take if you want your social media marketing campaign to meet those objectives. Otherwise, you're driving towards an unknown destination, with no map to guide you, wasting time unnecessarily.

If your business has been trying to make sense of calculating the KPIs of social media posts, here’s where you should start.

Tip: Learn how to measure your social media marketing campaign success.

Given how big of an umbrella Engagement is, you'll find a few marketing metrics that fall beneath this category such as: 

Engagement rate is a metric generally used to measure how involved your audience is with a piece of content that's been shared on social media. This interaction with a post will take on the form of likes, comments and retweets, for example.  

To calculate the Engagement Rate, you'll take the total number of engagements for your post, divide that by the total number of page followers and then multiply that by 100. It is important to remember that each platform will have their own total engagement metrics. For example, you might want to measure retweets on Twitter, reposts on Instagram and reshares on Facebook. 

When it comes to measuring brand awareness, impressions and reach are the two important metrics you'll use to measure ROI, but there is a tendency to confuse the two.

Impressions: how many times your post appears on someone’s timeline or feed.

Reach: the unique number of users who saw your post.

This may sound like a very basic definition of the two terms but with social media platforms constantly updating their already complex algorithms that determine which content shows up on someone's feed, it is very likely that only a small percentage of your audience actually sees your post whenever you share it on social media. This is one reason why there has been a decline in organic reach across social media platforms, and why reach is often lower  than impressions.

In addition to the above, share of voice is another important social media metric that falls under the Awareness bracket, as it measures how many users mention your brand on social media, compared to your competitors. Most likely to be used in public relations, share of voice will look at how many times your brand gets mentioned (volume) and how your brand is being perceived on social media (sentiment). 

When it comes to calculating awareness metrics, in-app analytical tools on social media platforms will provide you with the necessary numbers. However, Meltwater's Social Listening tool can give you an in-depth look into the social data collected to help you make informed decisions about your next social media campaign.

If you are looking to see just how impactful and effective your social media KPIs were, you may want to look into the below conversion metrics:﻿

Conversion Rate: after clicking a link in your content, this is the percentage of visitors who took an action on a landing page (such as subscribing to your newsletter or downloading an e-book) against the total number of visitors on that same landing page. 

Click-Through Rate: the percentage of users who click on the call-to-action link you have in your social media post.

Bounce Rate: the percentage of page visitors who click on a link in your social media post but then leave the landing page without taking an action.

Take a look at this video on how to calculate your conversion rate. 

[HOW TO] Calculate Your Conversion Rate!

The 10 Most Important Social Media Metrics & KPIs

Find the one social media metric that matters

Marketers are often tasked with proposing a set of KPIs for their clients and tailoring content and ads to meet these KPIs as consistently as they can. 

At first glance, choosing social media metrics such as engagement rates and click-throughs may seem like the right approach. However, these metrics may not always be reflective of a client’s overall campaign success. While all metrics are helpful for different reasons, savvy marketers should be able to justify why the ones they’ve chosen are best suited for fulfilling specific marketing goals. For example, you can choose to focus on one or more of the following goals:

Getting more social media engagement (likes, comments and retweets)

Getting more branding, reach and visibility online

Getting a reputation as an expert (thought-leadership)

Is your client launching a new product in the market? Is generating brand awareness their main goal? If so, then metrics such as impressions and reach should be used to gauge the effectiveness of promotional ads and content. After all, you want more eyes on your new product and more time spent viewing it, as opposed to clicks to the brand’s website or engagement on a social media post. 

Conversely, there are times when metrics that indicate a deeper level of engagement should be considered. Have you published a new short video about a brand’s set of kitchen knives on Facebook? In this case, video views is probably the most relevant metric for measuring brand awareness. In this case, 3-second and 10-second video views are a couple of options that are available to you. 3-second video views give you the number of people who have watched your video for 3 seconds or more. However, it might not reflect the true effectiveness of your content as your audience may be dropping off after the first few seconds. Hence, consider measuring 10-second views instead.   

Once you have decided on the social media metrics to measure, tracking campaign performance is next on your list. More often than not, your campaign will run across multiple platforms, and measuring its performance can become tedious. Meltwater Engage reports allow you to view your performance across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and obtain a cross-channel summary report.

This means that you can view your social performance at a glance, track the number of fans you’ve gained, or review post engagement on individual channels. With this information, you can report on top-performing posts, while optimising content for your audiences simultaneously. 

Sometimes, a post’s intent can matter more than its format in determining your success. Perhaps you’ve published a photo that users are meant to tap on in order to view it in its entirety. Users may find it funny; they may laugh and show the post to their friends, but they may not ‘like’ your post. In this instance, a metric such as ‘Post Other Clicks’ will allow you to measure other reactions on posts that follow this meme format. 

Similarly, if your goal is to drive footfall to an event, measuring a post’s reach or engagement rate may not be ideal. After all, even if your audience interacts with the post, they may not be interested in your event. In this case, click-throughs to the landing page or to your social media account are more indicative of its reception.

The point is that social metrics aren’t always as straightforward as we may believe. As a marketer, you have to analyse data both quantitatively and qualitatively so you can best propose a set of KPIs that will actually help your clients. For example, it's already a given that ad dollars are an absolute necessity due to declining organic reach. A good ad strategy is what gives you the most bang for your buck, and you'll need the right data and insight to effectively create one.

Use social media data to guide you in your campaign planning

The social media campaign that you decide to run will ultimately depend on your goals. For example, if you decide to go after leads, you will have to create a lead magnet campaign – which incentivises your prospects to share their email address or phone number with you. If you go down this route, you might want to invest in doing some primary research and use the insights you find as gated lead-gen content. Or, you may choose to run a Twitter card campaign or a Facebook ad campaign to generate leads from these two channels immediately, while creating a blog as a long-term mechanism for  generating leads from organic traffic.

Most social media platforms have native engagement metrics (Likes on Facebook posts, Views on Instagram stories, etc.) but these are rarely qualitative. For example, engagement rate itself tells you very little. Which demographic engages the most with your social media posts? What are their interests, and how are your communities connected to each other? Meltwater’s Consumer Insights Reports segment and profile your target audience so that you can better understand the type of content that resonates with them. With these insights, you can create content that not only reaches your audience, but also suits their interests and will boost engagement. 

Naturally, gaining insight on your target audience will help you during campaign planning. If you’re planning an Influencer Marketing campaign, finding influencers that can bring you sufficient ROI can be quite a feat. Vanity metrics, such as follower count and number of likes, are not indicative of true influence. Additionally, with Instagram removing likes, it will be a lot harder to track the success of your social media posts. Meltwater’s Social Influencer tool allows you to narrow down potential influencers for your campaign based on their true reach and audience demographics. Take a look at how Vans used this tool to identify, evaluate, and activate influencers as an example. In this way, legwork can be automated with great accuracy, freeing you up to run your overall campaign strategy. 

Another reliable tactic when it comes to campaign planning is the clever use of Social Listening tools. On any given day, an average of 1.4 billion people log into Facebook, and an average of 95 million photos are uploaded onto Instagram and Social Listening helps you to not miss out on any important mention.

This high volume of data contains potentially invaluable information on your target audiences. and where tools such as Meltwater Explore come in handy. They provide you with a comprehensive view of the conversations that impact your brand, products, and industry. With unlimited searches and full historical data from up to 15 months, you can access reviews, online news, articles from blogs and forums, and data from social media channels such as Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. In addition, you can perform searches on-the-go with our mobile app, or obtain reports to track your progress. These insights can benefit you in improving your campaign strategy. 

The wonderful thing about online marketing is that you can measure just about everything. From the content that works best on social media to the path your visitors take through your website, to the signups, leads, sales and follow-up; everything can be monitored, measured and customised to optimise the customer experience.

If you’re using a CRM system, you can customise and track the entire customer experience. By measuring 'moments that matter' touchpoints along the customer journey, you may spot a common pattern where prospects fall off or the conversion rate declines. Armed with this insight, you can create campaigns and track which ones are working and which aren’t so that you can put your time, effort and money into the social media campaigns that are providing the ROI you want.

A good marketing CRM will have the option of using APIs to connect your social media analytics tool with your internal CRM data. That way, you can understand key social media KPIs such as how many clicks and conversions a certain post is getting you so you can adjust your copy and creatives. We'd advise you to get familiar with tools like Google Analytics, Facebook conversion tracking and strategies like A/B testing to refine your social media campaign further through measuring and optimisation.

Once you have calculated your social media ROI, it’s time to analyse your results, assess if they are taking you where you want to go and tweak and fine-tune your campaigns to take you on a trajectory that leads to social media success. It's a good idea to benchmark your results against a different period; usually brands do this on a quarterly basis. This helps them see where they've moved the needle with their social media efforts. You can do this for your competitors too. If you decide to benchmark against your competitors, social media share of voice is a key metric to evaluate. 

Calculating your social media ROI isn't going to be as easy as putting random dollars and cents to some retweets, comments and likes. It is much more than that because social media ROI includes all the time, effort and resources used for your social media activities. 

However, not all hope is lost, as it is possible to measure your social media campaign results, as Hubspot shows in the below video:

How to Measure ROI from Social Media Marketing

As netizens blaze through trends at unprecedented speeds, so does the world of digital advertising and marketing. Arming yourself with the right tools is crucial in helping brands to formulate actionable steps in order to stay ahead of the curve. 

The Importance of Social Media Metrics - Definitions and Calculations

Without the right resources, reporting can be a hassle. From collecting and double-checking data to choosing what to include and how to present it, it's no wonder that many people procrastinate on reporting altogether. Various software programs and platforms have streamlined the process by automating data sourcing, analysis, and report compilation. 

However, standardized reports can't cater to the specific, ever-shifting needs of modern business operations. 

This is where bespoke reporting comes in, giving you the power to create reports that meet your organization's decision-making needs. 

But what is bespoke reporting and why is it valuable? Read on to learn more.  

What Are the Benefits of Bespoke Reporting?

How Do Organizations Use Bespoke Reports?

How to Choose the Right Bespoke Reporting Tool

Bespoke reporting, also known as custom reporting, refers to the tools and services that allow users to create and deliver reports tailored to their industry, organization, or team. 

Instead of including a standard set of metrics, bespoke reports customize the formats, data, analysis, and content presented to eliminate irrelevant information and focus on the KPIs and data analysis you need most. 

And while standardized reporting can be fully automated, bespoke reports use technology like AI alongside human qualitative media impact analysis to help companies get a grip on the 'why' behind the data, not just the what. With context into the numbers, organizations can rest well knowing they’re making informed and objective strategic decisions.

One pain point that can come with standard reports is the limited insight they can provide. Great reports highlight achievements, prove ROI, shine a light on next steps, and are easy to understand. But these qualities aren't always achievable with typical reporting.

Many times, reports also need to be customized for the needs of different audiences. So, for example, while a VP of Marketing may be interested in data analysis related to leads, brand awareness, or share of voice, a report for a board of directors may focus more on market share, growth, and company positioning. Meanwhile, a Director of Communications might require something else completely, like an in-depth rundown of reach, brand sentiment, and key influencers. 

Going the bespoke route ensures that stakeholders at all levels can stay informed of the work, projects, performance, and outcomes that are most relevant to them. From an organization-wide perspective, the ability to build custom reports lets organizations capture and communicate the details and data that are unique to their business or industry. That way, stakeholders can be sure that they have comprehensive coverage and insights on the most important external forces impacting their business. 

In a nutshell, reports are supposed to make decision-making easier and more effective. Bespoke reporting enables organizations to better meet that goal.

Since they are customized, the use cases for bespoke reports are extremely varied. With that being said, more often than not executives rely on bespoke reports to:

Get a comprehensive health check on the brand, product portfolio, industry, and/or competitive position

Whether you want to harness consumer feedback to inform product development, understand trends to stay relevant, or keep tabs on your competitors, custom reports ensure you’re covered on all levels.

What to Look for in a Bespoke Reporting Solution

Creating business-critical reports take time, patience, and an infinite number of spreadsheets, but with the help of external partners, the process doesn’t have to be so painful. Leading media intelligence providers create bespoke reports backed by data science so you can have comprehensive reports without lifting a finger.

Think bespoke reporting might be right for you and your team? The next step is to choose a solution that meets all of your reporting requirements. One feature to consider is user experience. Easy-to-use dashboards set you up to produce the quality reports you need.

Another consideration is data access. Is your bespoke reporting tool part of an all-in-one data intelligence solution or does it require extra data migration steps? For example, Meltwater's hand-curated Social Insights Reports draw data directly from our social and media intelligence solutions, saving our clients both time and money. The process of custom reporting becomes a bit clunkier outside of all-in-one platforms and services.

When commissioning a bespoke report from a media intelligence provider, it’s wise to opt for a partner that has an experienced team of in-house analysts who are experts in blending quantitative media monitoring data with qualitative analysis. You can then have confidence that your custom report can help your business stay agile in highly competitive markets.


Finally, take a look at your solution's customization options. Does it provide easy-to-understand data visualizations and layouts? Can you access executive summaries as well as more in-depth insights? Is there a human expert on the job who can reveal the narratives behind the numbers?

An audit of your past reports can help you understand where they are falling short, making it easier to move forward with a new solution that includes bespoke reporting. 

Meltwater's bespoke Enterprise Reports and Social Insights reports give organizations the insights they need to make better business decisions. Learn more and access a free demo by filling out the form below.

What Is Bespoke Reporting?

Whether you’re blowing the dust off your X/Twitter account or your Tweet game has been going strong for years, it’s a good idea to do a Twitter audit to put you on the right track. An audit can tell you how your X/Twitter account is performing (or how it performed in the past if you’ve pushed the pause button), how many followers you have, and other helpful details to support your social media management strategy.

As time passes, your X/Twitter profile may change. Content becomes stale. Even your branding may have slightly changed. Plus, an audit provides a great opportunity to do a fake follower check and get rid of spammy comments and followers that might erode your brand image.

Here’s how you can do a Twitter audit to keep your brand credibility intact and what to do if you discover fake followers on your account.

A Twitter audit evaluates the activity and data related to your X/Twitter account, such as follower count, new followers, unfollows, mentions, engagement, and more.

It can help you to answer critical questions about your X/Twitter presence and Twitter strategy, such as:

How many of my Twitter followers are real?

How does my Twitter account perform in comparison to my competitors?

How does my Twitter presence compare to my Instagram or TikTok?

Using Twitter audit data, you can identify areas for improvement, increase engagement, improve the content you post, and grow your audience. You can also glean insights about your most engaged followers so you can create more targeted content and campaigns in the future.

Tip: Learn how to do a generic social media audit in 10 steps and download our ultimate guide to a social media audit.

Conducting a Twitter audit can be a reliable, straightforward way to gauge your X/Twitter performance. However, its reliability depends on how you go about it.

There are some social media metrics and KPIs you can track manually, such as follower count and engagement. But a thorough audit looks beyond surface-level data to see whether your followers and engagement are real or the product of social media bots and fake accounts.

Social listening tools like Meltwater's social listening suite can provide more reliable audit results. AI-powered tools and technologies go beyond the surface to learn more about the context behind follower counts and engagement rates. It can detect sudden spikes in audience growth that might indicate fake followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, for example. It also looks for patterns in the data to uncover fake followers better than the human eye can.

What’s more, you can apply this same auditing strategy to the Twitter influencers you partner with. Learn whether your influencers are as influential as they claim — or if they just look good on paper.

Auditing your X/Twitter account and strategy gives you a better understanding of your status. Know where you currently stand and compare it with where you want to be. From there, you can prioritize the right actions that will help you reach your goals.

As with other social media platforms, X, formerly known as Twitter, has become a place where fake followers abound. Some brands may find that many of their new followers are actually bots in disguise, ready to troll users with spam, hate speech, and false information. And in some cases, people purchase fake followers to appear more influential than they really are. One way to find out who’s the real deal is to do a Twitter follower audit.

Knowing whether your followers are legit is essential to your brand image. If your loyal fans see that you have fake followers on X/Twitter, it could irreversibly damage your brand. Your followers might not trust the content you post. You might also slip lower in organic rankings if you have too many fake followers.

The only way to find out all of the above is to audit your social media account. Conducting frequent audits can help you spot issues early and take decisive action. 

The good news: Conducting a Twitter audit doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Here’s how you can do a complete Twitter audit with confidence:

Step 2: Audit your followers to spot fake accounts

Step 4: Include your own engagement metrics in your Twitter audit

First impressions are everything. When Twitter users visit your profile, think about the impression your brand delivers. Will they know who you are and what you do? Will they understand your brand voice? Have you given them a reason to follow you?

Some areas you’ll want to examine during your Twitter audit include:

Changing any of the above, even if they already meet your brand requirements, is a great way to show your followers that you’re active. Tie each of these elements back to your brand goals to ensure you’re delivering the right first impression.

Fake “friends” might help you win a popularity contest, but those followers aren’t going to affect your business goals. They won’t convert into paying customers. And if bots do comment on your content, their engagement could turn off potential customers, putting your goals even further out of reach.

One estimate finds that anywhere from 5-30% of Twitter users are fake. Doing a follow check on Twitter can help you separate real X/Twitter followers from the fakes.

How quickly your audience grows can indicate potential X/Twitter fake followers. Check your month-to-month growth rate to get a feel for how many real Twitter followers you gain each month. If you notice a spike in newcomers but weren’t running any campaigns or trying to recruit followers, it could be a follower bot Twitter scheme.

Review engagement rates compared to growth

You can also compare your follower growth to engagement. It stands to reason that your engagement metrics will increase alongside your audience growth. If you’re gaining a substantial number of new followers but aren’t seeing a corresponding uptick in clicks, likes, and comments, you might be growing a X/Twitter follower bot army.

One red flag of fake followers is that they don’t represent your target audience. You can manually check suspect profiles to see if they follow other brands in your industry or share content relevant to your company.

If you can’t find many common denominators between your genuine followers and your brand, your content strategy might need some work. Your audience shouldn’t be a potluck — you’ll have more success on X, formerly known as Twitter, if your audience cares about your brand and what you offer.

Use a third-party fake Twitter account checker

Fake Twitter account checker tools like Twitter Audit can analyze your X/Twitter audience on your behalf. This removes much of the manual labor from the process so you can skip right to the insights.

Complementary third-party social listening tools like Meltwater's social media listening platform can also help to perform ongoing X / Twitter audits. For example, Meltwater can help you track spikes in follower growth, odd engagement patterns, and other social media analytics to support your strategy.

Everything we’ve covered so far is important to your Twitter marketing strategy and your Twitter management strategy. But ultimately, it comes down to content. If your content isn’t performing well, your Twitter strategy won’t help you reach your goals.

Part of a thorough Twitter audit is to review the content you’ve posted in the past and see how it performed. How many people liked, commented, and retweeted your posts? What about your top-performing posts made them so compelling? When and how often are you posting?

These details might seem minor, but they can add clarity and context to what you create and the results you earn.

If you notice engagement spikes at certain times of the day, make a note of it.

If you see that content around a certain topic or style of humor works well, create more content like it.

If a certain hashtag sends your reach skyrocketing, remember it for next time.

If you get more engagement with certain content formats (such as videos, text, images, GIFs, threads, infographics, or memes), double down on those formats.

Knowing what’s working and what’s not can inspire better content and a more targeted strategy.

Engagement is a two-way street. Besides the engagement your content earns, you should also audit your own engagement rates with DMs, responses to comments, mentions, and other people’s content.

More and more brands are using Twitter as a customer service channel. Studies show that 64% of X/Twitter users expect a response within an hour. Audit your response times for Twitter users in your DMs and comments to ensure you’re meeting their expectations.

You can also do an audit to see how often you’re engaging with other people’s content. Mentioning other brands and commenting on others’ posts is a surefire way to attract more eyeballs to your own account, grow your audience, and showcase your brand.

Putting the finishing touches on your Twitter audit, make sure you compile your findings in an official Twitter audit report. This report details the data you collected, the insights you garnered, and any action steps you plan to take.

Each time you do an audit, you can refer back to your previous Twitter audit reports to track your progress. See which actions you took paid off and which areas might need more attention.

If your Twitter follow check revealed fake followers, there are a few things you can do about it.

First, if you can pinpoint which accounts are indeed fake, you can report them to X, formerly known as Twitter, or manually delete them from your follower list. Red flags include a stock photo as the main profile image, no or few Tweets, and a lack of engagement.

You can also use a follower tracker or fake follower analysis and removal tools to detect and remove bots from your account.

Meltwater's social media analytics tool can also help you keep an eye on your Twitter analytics so you can take quick action to address fake followers before they affect your branding and reputation.

Conducting a Twitter audit is your best path forward to learning more about your content performance and audience. It not only helps you learn how to improve your strategy, but it also allows you to avoid the damaging effects of having too many fake influencers and followers associated with your account.

Meltwater supports your X/Twitter auditing by providing real-time analytics of your account. Take the guesswork out of what content performs, best posting times, and real vs. fake engagement so you can achieve your business goals without fear.

How To Do a Twitter Audit Incl. Fake Follower Check

Creating happy, loyal customers is simple. Just give them what they want! While you might think the only way to do this is to gain mind-reading superpowers, there is another, more feasible approach: consumer insights.

Thanks to social media, online forums, and other digital media, customers have more ways than ever to speak their minds. They’re increasingly willing to share their thoughts with others, be it their opinions about a brand or company or their need for a product or service. When companies understand the power of consumer insights, they have a one-way ticket to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Let’s explore the official consumer insights definition and how to use consumer insights to your advantage in this Ultimate Guide.

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