3 audits every brand should conduct

Heather Whaling is the founder and CEO of Geben Communication.

The media landscape is evolving at a relentless pace — shrinking newsrooms, shifting algorithms and emerging content platforms make it impossible to rely on a single strategy. Brands that don’t adapt risk losing relevance and visibility.

The solution? A strategic, proactive approach: auditing. And no, this isn’t like your taxes, where an audit only happens annually. By regularly assessing communication efforts, brands can identify vulnerabilities, refine messaging and stay focused on reaching the right people in the right ways, building communication strategies that can withstand industry disruptions.

As communication channels expand, so do the tools to measure their impact. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to auditing, especially as platforms continue to diversify.

Through Geben’s work with clients across industries, we’ve found that three specific audits offer the critical insights needed to navigate changes in today’s and tomorrow’s media landscape.

Social media audit

This audit helps brands measure their effectiveness, identify emerging trends and optimize their platform presence. When we’re conducting social media audits, we analyze emerging platforms and focus on evaluating existing content in these areas:

1. Platform relevance: Are you investing in the proper social channels? Where is your target audience most active?
2. Content performance: What types of content (video, infographics, long-form posts) generate the highest engagement?
3. Engagement and sentiment analysis: Beyond likes and shares, how is your audience interacting with your content? Are the conversations positive, neutral or negative?
4. Competitor benchmarking: How does your brand’s social presence compare to key competitors?

A client in the consumer goods space saw a drop in organic engagement. Our audit revealed that while their Instagram content was high-quality, their target audience had migrated to LinkedIn and niche online communities. By shifting resources accordingly, they increased engagement by 40% in three months.

Competitive earned media audit

For brands looking to strengthen their media presence, this audit provides a critical benchmark revealing gaps, opportunities and how to outperform competitors in the media. By analyzing share of voice, key narratives and media placements, brands gain a clear understanding of their positioning and areas for growth. While many data points can be assessed, these are the most valuable:

1. Share of voice: What percentage of industry media mentions are about your brand compared to competitors?
2. Messaging and positioning: How does your brand narrative compare to others in your space? Are you leading the conversation or reacting to it?
3. Media placements: Which outlets are covering your competitors but not your brand? What journalists are writing about your industry?
4. Thought leadership: Are competitors gaining traction with bylined articles, speaking engagements or executive LinkedIn presence?

Our client in the B2B technology space continued seeing their competitors featured in trade publications and hired us to replicate that success. However, our audit showed competitors’ coverage in these trade outlets stemmed from sponsored, pay-to-play advertorials. With these insights, we shifted our efforts to focus on securing coverage in their local markets and national outlets with industry trends and insights to highlight their industry expertise rather than product capabilities.

Strategic communication channel audit

The best communications campaigns are the ones that seamlessly integrate multiple communication mediums into one experience. This audit identifies which channels drive the most impact, optimizing your mix of paid, earned, owned and shared media to maximize engagement and ROI. When you’re looking at your entire strategy from a singular lens, focusing on the following can create the largest impact:

1. Media mx analysis: Are you balancing paid (advertising), earned (PR), owned (blog, email), and shared (social) media effectively?
2. Crisis preparedness: Do you have contingency plans for sudden media shifts (e.g., algorithm changes, platform bans, negative press)?
3. ROI and resource allocation: Are you investing in the channels that provide the highest return?
4. Brand consistency: Is your messaging cohesive across all platforms?

When working with a nonprofit, we used this audit to determine why their earned media wasn’t driving the donor engagement and retention they expected. Our audit showed that the lack of owned media, compared to other organizations, was a significant factor in their donor relationship and management strategy.

Implementing auditing findings

An audit is only as valuable as the steps taken afterward. Too often, brands conduct audits but fail to translate findings into meaningful action. To maximize impact:

1. Define clear goals: What do you want to achieve — higher engagement, better media positioning, improved ROI?
2. Leverage data and context: Look beyond raw numbers to analyze trends and industry shifts.
3. Collaborate across teams: Involving PR, marketing and digital teams ensures a holistic approach.
4. Implement and adapt: Use findings to refine messaging, reallocate resources and strengthen your overall strategy.

Audits provide clarity, uncover opportunities and help brands make informed decisions. Whether it’s social media, earned or paid media, or overall communication strategy, regular audits ensure that brands stay ahead of change rather than reacting to it.

One Response to “3 audits every brand should conduct”

Katie Paine says: March 3, 2025 at 9:31 am

LOVE this advice. I start all my assignments with an audit. I would add one element to your list of audits – and internal audit, so that you start whatever you are doing with a unified understanding of the goals, the metrics, the resources and who gets to make what decisions. Far too often leadership has one set of expectations, mangers have a slightly different take on the goals and the actual front line workers creating and putting out the content think their job is to just make more content. Unless you have complete consensus as to goals, priorities, objectives and strategy the result will be a disaster.