Social Media Audit: What You Need to Know

Social media is an integral aspect of any company’s digital marketing strategy. That’s why it’s so important to regularly conduct a social media audit to see what’s working well and what isn’t. An audit can help you establish your strengths and weaknesses so that you can implement the necessary changes to get the most from your digital marketing activities.

But what is a social media audit exactly? And how do you conduct one?

Read on as we take a look at how conducting regular reviews can benefit your business. We will also share a step-by-step guide so that you know what to keep in mind when you conduct your audit. This will help you get the most from every element of your social media strategy.

What Is a Social Media Audit?

A social media audit is a periodical review of your social media metrics. The aim is to assess growth, opportunities, and areas for improvement to help you grow your online presence. This includes establishing what’s working and what’s not, whether your followers are relating to your content, and if there are any new opportunities to engage your audience and expand it. All this gives you a clear picture of how much of an impact you are making with your online campaigns. The ultimate aim is to use this information to design a social strategy moving forward.

A social media audit usually reviews the following elements:

• Audience data: from all social media platforms, including demographics of your target audience.
• Profile data: for all platforms and whether bio information and URLs are up to date.
• Engagement rates: whether your content is resonating with your target audience and performing as well as expected.
• Publishing schedules: whether you should increase or decrease the frequency of posts published on all social media channels.
• Referral traffic: which social media channels are driving the most traffic to your website or landing pages.

Why Do a Social Media Audit?

Now that we’ve answered the question, “What is a social media audit,” let’s take a look at some of the benefits of conducting regular reviews of all your online networks.

A social media audit can:

• Help you expand your audience, find new leads, increase conversion rates, and raise awareness of your brand.
• Give you insights that will help you improve your online presence. You can use the data you collect to perform a SWOT analysis and identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• Provide you with key social media metrics including reach, volume, and engagement. This helps you measure how well your brand is performing on different social media channels. For instance, top-performing posts serve as an example of what content works best with your audience. You can then use this data to adapt future posts and boost engagement.

How to Do a Social Media Audit

Use this step-by-step guide to help you get the most from your social media audit. Before you begin, make sure you locate all your social media profiles. Check all online platforms in case you have any profiles you’ve forgotten about or unofficial pages your employees may have created in the past.

Also, don’t forget to conduct audits periodically so that you keep your finger on the pulse. This might be once a month, once a quarter or once a year. Be consistent and keep to a schedule. The more data you have, the more insight you will gain.

Create a Spreadsheet

The first step is to create a spreadsheet to keep a log of all the data you collect during your audit. You can use Excel or Google Sheets. This will make it much easier to compare results with previous audits to establish whether or not your metrics are truly improving.

Your spreadsheet should include columns for collecting account information and tracking key performance indicators.

These might include:

• Usernames and URLs
• Number of follows
• Engagement and performance metrics, including shares, impressions, and clicks
• Demographic information
• Popular content
• ROI data
• Frequency of posts

You may need to create a separate document for each social media platform as metrics will vary.

Audit Your Social Media Profiles

The first step is conducting a full audit of all information included in each of your social media bios. Is the information consistent on each channel? Are you using the same logo and imagery? Is branding and messaging consistent? Are all descriptions and URLs uniform?

You might also want to consider the platforms themselves. Are you active on enough platforms? Are all platforms necessary? You might find that some of your channels are not relevant or useful for your target market. If that’s the case, then you may want to delete dormant accounts and focus on those where your audience engages the most.

Define Your Audience and Identify Content That Works

The data you collect during your social media audit should help you clarify who your audience is and what content resonates with them the most. Use this data to design your buyer persona. Consider aspects such as age, gender, location, interests, and pain points.

Who is your typical follower and what interests them? What content formats generate the most interactions - images or video? Do different content types work better on certain platforms?

Determine Your ROI & Track Your Metrics

When it comes to social media, it’s not always easy to determine the return on your investment, unless your main objective is conversions. If your goal is simply to increase brand awareness and inspire indirect sales, then calculating your ROI is a bit trickier. There are some ways to do it though. For example, you can monitor organic traffic through Google Analytics. For platforms like Twitter, you can track the performance of your hashtags.

Other metrics you can track include:

• Follower growth, engagement, and content
• Referral traffic
• Click rates
• Reach
• Followers
• Social influence score

Whatever goals you set, the most important thing is making sure you track your metrics and conduct a social media audit on a regular basis. That way, you get a full picture of how you are performing so that you can continuously improve your social media strategy using measurable goals.