Social media heavily relies on numbers. When you want to know how your posts perform, you can review key metrics and adjust as needed. You can access the analytics on your backend when you need your audience demographics. Whatever the data, you get valuable insights because the numbers don’t lie.
Social media audits help companies maintain credibility and sustain their campaign strategies by providing quarterly data reviews.
What is a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit determines whether your business’s strategies are moving in the right direction. It’s essentially an assessment of your goals, post metrics, and the steps you need to take to move forward.
Why You Should Do A Social Media Audit
Regular social media audits will allow you to evaluate key metrics, such as your top posts or channels, follower count, and audience reach. They will enable you to develop new objectives for your next campaign.
Additionally, you can identify your brand’s SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and measure your brand performance.
How To Do Your Own Social Media Audit
A social media audit can be time-consuming, but there are ways to make it more efficient. Numerous social media audit templates are available online, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Once you’re all set, take note of these steps so you can stay on track during the auditing process.
Define The Objective
Set different objectives to help determine your audience demographics per site. Make sure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This can define your goals in the direction you want your campaign to achieve. You can set goals like:
- Convert your social media followers to website visitors and increase your site’s traffic.
- Increase brand awareness and audience reach.
- Establish your brand reputation while also monitoring customer feedback to get ahead of potential issues.
- Expand community engagement to include growth in your page’s likes, shares, and follows.
Take Stock Of Your Social Media Profiles
Keep track of all your social media profiles by listing and prioritizing accounts your company uses often. Be on the lookout for old profiles so you can include them in the audit. Categorize each profile according to the account’s activity or what needs urgent attention.
The standard social media channels to review include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Check for any potential fraudulent pages and report them immediately, and search Google and other platforms for any possible profiles of your company. Make a note of the departmental pages, if there are any.
Streamline Your Branding
When you have a list of your social media profiles, take some time to look them over and see if they make sense to a potential customer or client. Here are some tips to help you make sure your branding is on point:
- Use the same social media handle across all platforms so users can easily find you. Ensure your brand name is prominently featured to make you more discoverable.
- Your homepage should include your brand name. Your cover photo and profile picture should have your logo or branding and be formatted properly.
- Verify your accounts to let your customers know you’re legit.
- Review your bios. Make sure they are up to date and follow your brand guidelines and messaging.
- Update your contact information on all your accounts.
- Take advantage of your pinned posts to share the latest updates about your company’s marketing campaigns.
Identify The Metrics That Provide Insights
The data you can gather from your KPIs will give you a closer look at how your pages are doing so far. Some metrics, like the number of followers, are necessary but not enough to see the quality of your accounts.
Pinpoint Content That Performs
A social media audit is a great way to see which content is performing better in terms of audience engagement. However, the results may differ per channel. Videos may perform better on Facebook than on Instagram, so it’s best to use a social media monitoring tool to help you determine engagement and the most popular mentions.
You can also use Google Analytics under Acquisition to see which channel contributed significantly in terms of reach.
Conduct Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis can help you understand how people feel about your brand, which can be useful in detecting potential problems with your products or a decline in customer satisfaction. Additionally, sentiment analysis can help keep track of changing consumer demands.
Determine Your ROI
A Return on Investment (ROI) can gauge which social media strategy you should use to distribute more of your resources. You can track the number of downloads on your content or the hashtag performance and identify your ROI by seeing a month-on-month increase based on your strategies and targeted results.
Review Your Presence Score
Your presence score can guide you in checking your brand popularity and awareness so you can make feasible campaign goals. A social media monitoring tool can effectively track your online presence regularly and monitor your presence score.
Assess The Best Platforms For You And Plan
An audit of your social media channels will help you strategize and better connect with your prospects. You will be able to see where you need to focus your efforts based on the information you have gathered.
Once you set goals for each platform, assess if they can be achieved. You can also determine whether there are new platforms you can put in your lineup to expand your reach.
Finally, devise a plan for future campaigns. Quarterly social media audits can help you determine what worked and didn’t, identify best practices to implement in the next campaign, set the tone for your strategies moving forward, and give you a solid foundation to build new strategies for your business.
Key Takeaways
A social media audit doesn’t need to be intimidating. Conducting regular audits is essential to make sure your digital efforts are being put to good use. Social media audits can guide your future campaigns, whether to retain your previous strategies or use another method altogether.
Doing your own social media audit can:
- Help you make adjustments to your campaign goals as needed
- Minimize potential red flags and fraudulent profiles
- Help you understand what people think about your brand
- Assess the top-performing platform and content from your account
- Monitor your brand’s current digital performance
Ervin Kalemi
