Any business plan executed without proper forethought and procedure in place is bound to get hectic and overwhelming quite quickly. That’s why it’s critical to lay the groundwork before you begin. To give you a headstart on this one, I’ve created a beginner’s guide that breaks down what a social media audit is, explains why you need one, and offers some structure to get your approach started.
What is a social media audit?
A social media audit is meant to ensure that brand presence is complete and accurate across all claimed platforms, to measure the performance of all social media platforms during a specific time period, and to determine the direction of future social media strategy. During a social media audit, a company assesses specific business metrics that can offer insights on their social media strategy performance. These metrics measure growth, unveil untapped opportunities, and give clues about other tactics to help improve their social media presence.
Why do you need to conduct a social media audit?
Have you ever gotten caught up in the details of day-to-day execution and then taken a step back to see the bigger picture? A social media audit grants you exactly that — the bigger picture. It’s an opportunity to view your social media efforts, outcomes, and opportunities from a broader viewpoint, to see what works and what doesn’t.
How can you get started conducting a social media audit?
As social media evolves, there will be newer and more efficient ways to evaluate your social media presence. What might feel a bit manual and tedious today is likely to be far easier down the line. The good news is that once you have a base structure to inform your approach, that structure - and any baseline data you collect when first using it - will continue to show value and relevance regardless of social media management and tracking evolution.
Here are three key elements to consider when conducting a social media audit:
1. Identify all the social media platforms you will be evaluating and KPIs
Although this sounds trivial, you’d be surprised how many people quickly skim this step. Make sure to inventory all of your social media accounts before beginning the audit — even the ones your company is no longer actively posting on or that only have old profiles created. A quick google search of your company name can reveal what social accounts exist.
Here’s a list of commonly used social platforms that you can check against to make sure you aren’t missing anything:
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Youtube
TikTok
Snapchat
Reddit
Pinterest
Once you’ve identified your social media accounts, you’ll want to identify a list of key performance indicators to track, commonly referred to as KPIs. KPIs are quantifiable metrics that can be used to measure social media performance.
KPIs relevant to a social media audit might include:
Frequency of posts
Number of followers
Average number of likes
Average number of comments
Average number of shares
Average engagement rate
2. Ensure your company descriptions are accurate and up to date
Social media is a great tool to enhance discoverability. Whether it’s on Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook, wherever your company has claimed a social profile, you want to be sure that the information is complete, accurate, and up to date. Log in to each social media account and check that all details are filled out correctly. Each social account profile will require a variety of different details depending on the platform. Social accounts like Twitter will require the basics such as a profile image, a header photo, and a bio. Other social platforms, like LinkedIn, require a bit more detail such as company size, industry, and more. By doing this, you can discover and correct any missing headers, inaccurate bios, broken links, and other errors that may have occurred by not regularly updating the accounts.
3. Discover patterns to create a performance baseline and assess changes over time
In order to uncover patterns, it's recommended you look at top-performing content across your platforms. Look for posts that had exceptional engagement rates - a high number of likes, comments, and shares. Among those top performers, take a deeper look to see if you can find a pattern. Do your most popular pieces of content utilize video strategy? Do they have hashtags while other posts do not? Was the social post shared, liked, or commented on by multiple employees? Patterns like these are hard to uncover when looking at social as a whole, or even rating in a performance report. But when you take time to look at individual post-performance, and specifically your outliers, the patterns become more apparent. These are all subtle, yet impactful tactics that can make a difference in your future social strategy.
Interested in conducting a social media audit for your company, but don’t have the bandwidth? No worries - let’s chat and see what we can do to help get you there.