Social media is more than entertainment these days.
It is a valuable marketing platform for expanding your business reach, increasing brand awareness, and developing relationships with your audience.
While you may already have a social media marketing strategy in place, you still need a way to determine if it is working.
A simple yet powerful way to do this is by conducting regularly scheduled social media audits.
Don’t let the word audit induce dread or anxiety, however. Once you realize how easy it can be and how it can help, you’ll be enthusiastic to give it a few tries and make it a regular habit for your business marketing strategy.
Learn all about it below!
What is a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit is a strategic step-by-step process to help you identify and assess your current social media efforts.
The audit looks for strengths and weaknesses and provides you with clues as to how to better those efforts.
You gain insight into opportunities in how to better reach your targeted audience and boost your positive social presence.
Simply put, the audit is a thorough, in-depth review of every social media account you have and your activities on each one.
With it, you can learn everything from the demographics of your audience to the number of engagements with a single post.
What is the Importance of a Social Media Audit?
The importance of a social media audit is evident today.
By including it in your marketing strategy, you can uncover more opportunities to reach audiences and more beneficial ways to plan your social media efforts, saving you both time and money.
You can easily identify your strengths, determine weaknesses, and confidently boost your online presence.
A few important things you can learn from conducting a social media audit include:
- The most effective platforms for your business or brand.
- The main demographics of your audience.
- What your target audience is seeking on each platform.
- What post or content type is growing your audience.
Regularly scheduled audits can also help ensure that you are remaining consistent in how you represent your brand across social media, remaining recognizable by your audience along the way.
What are the Steps of a Social Media Audit?
Your social media audit doesn’t need to be complicated.
A simple way to achieve results is to work your way through the following six simple steps to complete a beneficial social media audit.
1. Compile a Spreadsheet of Your Social Media Accounts
To ensure you include all your social media accounts in the audit, compile a spreadsheet listing each one along with basic information.
Don’t forget to include those social media platforms you rarely post to or remain inactive for one reason or another.
Act as if you’re new to the company or brand, and search each platform for accounts under its name.
Forgotten accounts set up by former employees may be found. You may even find imposters or infringers benefiting from your logo or copyrighted materials.
Search on each of the following:
Also, notice what social media platforms are missing. While you rarely need to be on every platform, an audit can show you where you might want to add an account.
On your spreadsheet, list out the following:
- Social Media Platform
- URL
- Username
- Number of followers, fans, or subscribers
- Last activity and date
2. Identify Your Top-Performing Platform and Social Media Content
To start, go through your list and evaluate the performance of each platform. Identify the top-performing one.
Look at the number of followers, fans, or subscribers. Also, check the engagement rate of your posts. How many people are commenting, sharing, liking, or mentioning you elsewhere?
Once you discover which platforms are performing highest, it’s time to analyze the content types.
Utilize the built-in native analytics available on each of your social media platforms. These can show you impressions, engagements, and reach of each piece of content.
By drilling down and examining the content that receives the most attention from your audience, you gain insights into what type of content they want. This information can guide you when improving your overall content marketing strategy.
For example, do your posts with video content draw the most interaction? If so, consider adding more videos to your strategy.
You will also want to look at the times you publish your posts. Which time is reaching more people and leading to more engagement?
3. Get to Know Your Audience on Each Social Media Platform
Instead of creating posts and blindly posting them to different social media platforms, take the time to get to know your audience on each one. Are they mostly millennials or baby boomers?
Research the demographics for each social media platform so you can better attune your messaging and content type to fit their preferences.
For example, Facebook remains popular for those between the ages of 35 and 44. YouTube attracts the younger crowds of 18–25-year-olds.
Take the time to clearly understand the demographics of your target audience for each of these platforms and use what you learn to build buyer personas and target content accordingly.
Each platform provides metrics for your use, so become familiar with how to use and interpret the results you receive.
4. Look for Patterns
With the data you obtain on your best-performing content on each social media platform, begin to look for similarities or patterns.
What do the most popular posts on each platform have in common?
Also, cross-examine the popular posts on all platforms. What do they all have in common?
Things to look for include:
- Post type
- Content type
- Target audience
- Time of posting
Patterns should soon become obvious, showing just how your audience is being reached and how they engage with you.
5. Calculate Your ROI
To be sure you are getting the most from your social media marketing efforts and not wasting time and resources, calculate your ROI.
For example, determine the conversion rate from each social media platform. Track downloads or click-throughs. Analyze how your hashtags are performing.
It may all seem challenging, but with a little practice, you can determine your social media activities ROI with ease and use that information to refine your strategy.
6. Track Your Social Media Audit Results
Once you have your audit results in hand and make adjustments to your strategy, continue to track those audit results.
Monitor your key metrics, such as:
- Engagement
- Post shares
- Mentions
- Click-throughs
- Impressions
- Follower/Fan Growth
- Content by type
Look for percentage changes each month as compared with the previous one, and also yearly evaluations.
To learn more about this topic, check out this video by Neil Patel:
Free Social Media Audit Tools to Assess Your Social Performance
To simplify and speed up your social media audit process, utilize online tools as often as possible, many of which are free.
Become so familiar with how to use them, what you can learn from them, and how to incorporate them into your digital marketing decision-making.
To get you started, consider using any of the following free social media audit tools to save both time and resources.
- Native analytics on individual social media platforms (e.g., Twitter Analytics)
- Google Analytics, to measure your traffic, conversions, and sales
- Social media listening tools (e.g., TweetReach, Social Mention, HootSuite, Google Alerts)
There are other tools available that offer basic free versions along with paid versions. These include:
- Later’s Lite Instagram Analytics to track performance of past 30 posts to find content type with the highest engagement.
- Planoly for Instagram and Pinterest, allowing basic analytics for any chosen timeframe.
- Followerwonk for Twitter audits on brand mentions and social growth.
How Long Does a Social Media Audit Take?
The good news is that a social media audit doesn’t have to take days or even hours to complete.
Once you understand the process and follow each step, you can complete the audit in 15-30 minutes.
Once you compile your spreadsheet of social media accounts, familiarize yourself with each platform and any analytics it can provide.
Determine if any other social media tools will benefit your efforts, and set up accounts.
Finally, create a checklist of steps to use with each monthly and yearly audit.
You may also be interested in these articles:
- Social Media Challenges and how to use them as opportunities
- How to Become a Social Media Freelancer
- Interactive Posts for Social Media: how to approach and engage your audience
Wrap Up
Social media is here to stay, and you can use it to your advantage when it comes to marketing efforts. An effective tool to help you reach that higher success is the audit of all of your accounts monthly and yearly.
Following simple steps, you can find out which platforms are high-performing and what content is creating the most engagement among your audience.
From there, you can begin to improve your social media marketing strategy, expand your reach, increase conversions, and grow sales. Continue to track your metrics, and you’ll always stay on top of your social media capabilities.
Looking for a way to organize and analyze your metrics in one central location?
Download our marketing and sales team performance tracker spreadsheet!
