With the tremendous time, skill, and budget that it requires to master Social Media Marketing, Social Media audits have increased in popularity, therefore, conducting one is a giant step in the right direction.
Questions we often get asked by clients are: why do we conduct a social media audit before we even start working together? How will it benefit us?
We understand this entirely since the word “audit” cause many to shiver. Having your company audited by tax authorities is enough to cause unimaginable stress. But we assure you, a social media audit is not the same as a tax audit.
We can cite a lot of reasons why we suggest a social media audit, not only for us but for you as the client. So, let’s dive right in and look at what benefits you’d be able to reap by starting to explain:
What is a Social Media Audit?
Like accounting, an audit is an opportunity to go through everything that has got to do with your assets and finances and look at what’s right and what’s wrong. But instead of assets and finances, a social media audit investigates your social media exposure and the social media platforms you are in.
A social media audit entails taking the time to look at all your channels regularly.
An audit will tell you where you can be stronger, make your branding more recognisable, implement consistency, which of your posts worked well, which ones didn’t, and more. Then implement changes necessary, all backed up by data.
Why is a Social Media Audit Important?
A social media audit, as you may have already concluded from what you’ve read above, provides an analysis of all your existing Social Media efforts. This includes knowing who your customers are, how well you are doing at reaching them effectively, and of course your strategy for using social media.
Everyone’s marketing strategy varies, with specific goals, and objectives. Conducting an audit is the first step to realising these objectives. There are many areas of a social media strategy that will detail the importance of conducting an audit.
Here are some reasons that might result from an in-depth Social Media audit:
1. You’ll discover what’s working and what’s not.
Identifying your top-performing posts will reveal to you and your marketers what your audience is resonating with the most. Knowing this information might show what offers the most value to your visitors.
This is important because it will in turn encourage you to produce similar content. Learning what resonates with your audience encourages you to adapt your strategy to provide the most value to them. It is important for building an effective brand and enhancing your credibility.
Additionally, it provides an ability to analyse performances across all platforms. Learning areas of your strengths and weaknesses will drive your social media marketing efforts that aid in your social media marketing efforts.
2. You’ll know to deliver the right content to the right customer at the right time.
When you look at your overall audience, you’d probably be able to spot a small percentage who are ready to buy that instant. A Social Media audit will identify what among your content is getting the best results and how to use that information in your content strategy.
3. Understand your audience better.
A useful feature of analytics is the ability to view demographic data This type of insight, will help you better deliver to your audience and create more relevant content for them.
Understanding your audience is a big factor in social media success. Conducting a social media audit results in getting a fuller picture of who your target audience is and what they want from your brand.
4. You’d have pertinent information that you will need to set up goals and objectives.
Goals are the main components of a worthwhile social media audit. The data you collect from an audit allows you to make educated adjustments to existing goals or to formulate new ones.
Once goals have been set, the data collected will guide you to develop or adjust your social media strategy to align with your goals. Additionally, if for instance you are investing in ad spend, you would be able to immediately identify areas of weakness that may require revision.
How can a Social Media Audit help perfect your social media strategy?
The key ingredient in social media marketing is having a well-established social media strategy. Without a strategy, you might just as well post blind, or simply post for posting’s sake.
Without understanding and establishing what your goals are for social media, not knowing who your target audience is, and what they want to see, it would be challenging to achieve favourable results on social media.
A social media audit helps you in identifying and understanding these metrics and helps you formulate to create Social Media Strategies or help you adjust and perfect existing strategies for maximum efficiency for each social media channel you are on.
A social media audit helps you in answering the following:
- Why are you on this social media platform?
- Who is my target audience?
- What am I going to share?
- Where am I going to share my content?
- When am I going to share/publish my content?
How can a Social Media Audit help in increasing my profit?
We know how challenging it is to measure ROI from your social media activities. One area you can get look into is to count the number of conversions you get from social media channels, regardless of if conversions are not your main objective.
What if you wanted to focus on brand awareness? Or what of sales that are inspired by social media but do not come directly from socials?
Fact is, an ROI is an indispensable part of a social media audit. What it can do for you is to help you in preventing from spending resources on activities that will never deliver any worthwhile value to your company.
Through social platforms, marketers can drive revenue by:
- Locating your target audience.
- Attract your target audience with compelling content.
- Running social promotions.
- Driving consumers to landing pages and collect leads, and eventually convert to sales.
A social media strategy can be streamlined for efficiency after a social media audit. This in turn can potentially increase your social media engagement which can have a huge impact on your revenue.
You can measure social media ROI by setting objectives and linking the results to those objectives. A Social Media Audit should provide you with a detailed analysis of how to measure these results. This includes metrics that you should be tracking, including an explanation of why you should be tracking them.
In Conclusion
Social Media “best practices” are always evolving. By investing in a Social Media Audit, you can save time and money. You’d be able to sleep better in knowing that you and your team have laid the foundation for the best possible results.
Social media is an undeniably effective business tool – and auditing your social media presence is the best way to gain a comprehensive understanding of your presence and work toward the best results possible.
If you’d like to learn more about Social Media Audits, The Growth Manager can provide you with our Social Media Auditing Template, to help you review your social media activities and ensure to maximize your online presence.
