It’s no longer an option for any business today, large, or small, not to have a social media presence to succeed in today’s digital world. Social media has changed the way we do business and opened previously closed doors.
The latest figures show that there are currently 4.62 billion social media users worldwide as of January 2022. And that number is still growing as more and more people the world over is gaining access to internet services.
It is no secret that today, companies employ social media to primarily increase brand awareness and generate leads. Sadly, we see all too often, companies struggle in implementing some sort of social media strategy through improvisation with little or no plan.
This may be due to various reasons, but the bottom line is that they must not have the time to sit down and really dig deep into what’s working and what’s not. Either way, conducting a quick audit can let you know whether your social media strategy aligns with your business’ goals.
To the uninitiated, a social media audit can sound intimidating, or even frightening. A social media audit is not the same as a tax audit, where the word “audit” seems to equal anxiety. This is too bad, since not all audits are created equal.
A social media audit provides a clear picture of your business’ current social media efforts and shows you areas that may need improvement. It can also help you in formulating easy-to-follow action plans to make improvements to ultimately improve your results.
By creating an auditing template, you can ensure that you are maximising your online presence by helping you in reviewing your social media activities throughout the year.
What is a Social Media Audit?
Though the word “audit” evokes a feeling of anxiousness for many, a social media audit is an entirely different animal. Though it may sound intimidating and terrifying, it doesn’t have to be.
A social media audit is the process of reviewing your social media and business metrics to help you assess growth opportunities. It helps you in formulating a sound social media strategy or adjust your current one to improve your results and social media presence.
An audit shows you how well you are doing with your social media and to implement changes if necessary. It also shows you if your team is well-equipped to make the most of your social media.
How Often Should You Conduct a Social Media Audit?
It is considered good practice to always be analysing your performance on social media – whether keeping tabs on your followers and likes count, checking on website referrals, or monitoring how well your posts are performing.
It is recommended that a full social media audit should be carried out quarterly, or every three months. Reasons being:
- Social media is constantly evolving, and this fast and constant evolution sometimes has a negative effect on your page’s performance.
- Your business itself evolves and changes over time. You may have new products or services that you’d want to promote.
How to Conduct a Social Media Audit.
Maintaining a social media presence can be a full-time endeavour. It can fall into disrepair quickly when left alone. An audit can help to get things back on track.
Following the guide below allows you to conduct an audit in a short amount of time. We cover the basics here, and you can dig as deep as you choose.
Step 1. Review Your Social Media Accounts.
A lot of business owners believe that there is no need to list down and document all their social media accounts, saying they can remember them off the top of their heads – but can they really? What of unofficial accounts?
Don’t be surprised if you find fake accounts, fan pages, even employee pages. By recording your Social Media Profiles, links, and account names, it will help you and your team to have all your bases covered for when you need this information most.
Record all the social profiles you find, and do keep tabs of the following:
- The social media network/platform
- Their URL (Universal Resource Locator)
- The profile name used and its full description
- The total number of followers or fans of each page
- The date the profile was last active
Record your findings organised by arranging the data in a spreadsheet. This can be used as a starting point once you conduct your next audits later.
The information you gathered above will be useful for you to ask yourself the following questions and determine your standing on each social platform.
- Is my presence in this platform beneficial?
- Why am I using this social media platform?
- Will it help me to stay on this platform?
- What do we aim to achieve in using this platform?
- Do our target audience use this platform?
If there are no beneficial reason to stay on with a particular platform, and more important if your target demographic is elsewhere, it would be prudent to drop that platform and focus your efforts where it counts.
Step 2. Are You on Brand?
Being accurately represented online and ensuring visibility of your business is an ongoing project. It is a must that everything you put out, regardless of if they are images, videos, and even the method on how you engage on social networks are consistent and on brand.
Additionally, check and see if all your social profiles are filled out. Each social network has customised settings and make sure that all your images, text, and other options are used and optimised.
Once that’s done, ensure that your branding is consistent on all your social media accounts. Ensure that:
- You are using the same avatar.
- Your images, backgrounds, and theme are on brand.
- All your descriptors and URLs uniform.
Pro Tip: You’ll need to look at each of your social account individually. This is an excellent time to review your Brand Style Guide and check each element against it to ensure you are using up-to-date images, hashtags, keywords, and brand voice.
Step 3. What is the Best Performing Content?
Take a closer look at your analytics and insights from all your social media accounts on various platforms you are on. Which types of your posts have received the most reach, and engagements? Why is this important?
Organic reach has significantly dropped on almost every social media platform there is in recent years. However, accounts with high social media engagements are the least affected ones. On Facebook, for instance, utilises “meaningful engagement” as an important signal that a certain post should be given priority.
In other words, posts with the greater activity and thoughtful interactions get more reach. To add, engagement should not just be looked at as an ego boost, but it is much more important to monitor how such engagement impacts your business.
Pro Tip: You can find the key metrics for your social posts using the built-in analytics tools each social media network has.
Step 4. Review Audience Demographics
By reviewing and understanding your social demographics, it will help you in fine-tuning your marketing strategy and reach the right people with your message. When you have a clear picture of different audiences on each platform, you can potentially:
- Reach the right audience
- Engage that audience
- Create compelling messages for this audience
- Fine-tune your marketing strategy
You can immediately check for audience demographics from each social network since they have them. Facebook for instance use “Facebook Audience Insights.”
Do note however that it is important to analyse your demographic on each social network. Since your follower group may not be the same as your overall audience.
Step 5. Review Competition
You can improve your own social media profiles tremendously by looking into what your competition are doing in your industry niche. You cannot overlook what your competition is doing right and learning from them.
Check all your social media and see who among your competitors are on the same platform. Observe who among them are doing well and learn what they are doing right.
Also, observe those who are not faring well, and learn from their mistakes. Compare the two findings and look for similarities and deviations, and check in what areas you excel and the areas where you could do better.
Step 6. Evaluate Your Platform Performance
Taking a close look at your social profiles, you will have a clear understanding by the data you collect how well (or bad) everything is performing. The important part is that good or bad, it gives you invaluable insights on which areas you need to focus on and improve.
Analysing and evaluating your social media performance can be quite a scary proposition, but there would be zero room for improvement without a social media audit.
Start by examining the following:
- Record your overall platform performance – Review each social channel you are on and evaluate how it is performing by looking into your Insights and Analytics.
- Your post performance should tell you the amount of engagement, reach, impressions, and website clicks you are getting and if your call to actions is converting. Apart from the platform’s Insights and Analytics, you can also check and review these through Google Analytics.
- What are you wanting to achieve on this platform? — With an audit, you will have a clear idea how everything is performing by giving you insights on areas you can improve. Make a commitment to look at your data and create goals that support your high-level company objectives.
- For example, if you are an entrepreneur who creates educational content for online courses. Your objective can be to roll your online course goals (such as increasing your lead conversion, for example) so everything you do (and create) leads you one step closer to your overarching goals.
- Are you targeting the right audience for this social network? — Targeting a group of people that you have identified and want to appeal to can be based on demographics. This can be based on age, job title, education, income level, location, or behaviour. They are the people that are most likely to be interested in your services or products.
- Typically, identifying these targets is like drafting your company’s buyer personas and will help you develop your brand guidelines.
- Should your business be active on this network? — By working on social media, you will be able to raise your brand awareness across your industry. If you have an active presence on social accounts, you are opening yourself up to be tagged in recommendations.
- This means you would be able to reach new leads who don’t know anything about you. Additionally, you can keep in touch with your existing customer base and increase brand loyalty. If a particular social media network or platform is not working for you as you had hoped, then consider focusing more on those that bring the results you expect or assists in helping you achieve your business goals.
Step 7. Plan
Knowing is winning half the battle. This holds true with a social media audit. The next logical step is to then create a plan of action.
If you have come this far, you now have an idea of what you know of your social accounts and if each are measuring up to your expectations. You’ll also have a clear idea of your weak points in others and devise a plan to improve if you decide to stay on that platform.
With this knowledge, you now have a solid base to devise an actionable plan to refine and fine tune your Social Media Strategy.
Afterthought
A social media audit is something that you can’t be anxious about. In fact, conducting audits regularly ensures that you are on track and can compare your results with the goals you have set in your social media strategy.
If you are unsure on how to implement best practices for social media to gain maximum return. Or perhaps you are short on time to learn how to best perform a complete social media audit, we at The Growth Manager can help you out with our Social Media Audit Template.
Learn how to enhance and improve your social media presence and increase your sales and grow your business. Book your slot today, it would be our pleasure to guide you through.
