On average, we spend 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media every day. While I’ll cop to being at the top of that bell curve (hello TikTok!), it is astonishing how much we rely on social media to connect and stay informed. It’s no secret that with so much attention on these channels, social media marketing has become a crucial part of any good marketing strategy.
Now you might be asking yourself, “I track my metrics weekly/monthly, so I know what’s going on with my social. Why would I need an audit on top of that?” Much like a routine check-up, you’ll want to be aware of your strengths and opportunities on social media, as well as any underlying concerns that could eat up your time in the future. Beyond day-to-day activities, a successful social media audit helps pinpoint:
- Audience sentiment towards your brand
- Consistent branding across your profiles
- The ROI of your social media channels
- And more!
These audits are the cornerstone to any good social strategy and can set your brand up for impressive results down the road. Here are a few key steps you’ll want to consider as part of your social media audit as you get started.
Related: 9 Steps For Creating an Engaging Social Media Content Strategy
Strategy First
Okay, okay, we know this isn’t flashy, but good strategy comes into play with every decision you make on social media. Before you can evaluate your social media presence, you need to understand your unique criteria that matters most to your business. These criteria can include:
- Your business goals. Ask yourself, “What does success look like?”
- Your area of expertise. Ask yourself, “What do we do well for our customers?”
- Your audience. Ask yourself, “Who are my likely customers?”
- Your audience’s needs. Ask yourself, “How do my customers consume social media?”
During this stage, keep in mind that your social media efforts are top-of-the-funnel activity. If you’ve listed goals or strategies geared towards conversion tactics, take a step back and figure out how social media can funnel audiences into more targeted strategies for those goals.
Get Organized
Break out your spreadsheets because this social audit step is all about taking inventory of your social media footprint! A critical part of this process is gathering all social channels, whether active or inactive, and tracking year-over-year social media analytics that can allow you to evaluate performance. Include key performance indicators (KPIs) such as follower count, impressions, engagement and video views. Note, if you find a handful of social accounts that you own but don’t post on regularly, you might want to make that a core part of your action checklist. Here are a few tips on the importance and steps to maintain an active social presence.
In addition to gathering social media metrics, you’ll also want to consider a light SEO audit. Yes, you read that correctly! SEO and social media work hand in hand to make your business discoverable to existing and prospective customers. Take a look at our recommendations for conducting this light technical site audit and make sure your social channels are helping you be discoverable on search engines.
Create a Scorecard
Here comes the fun part! Let’s take our marketing goals and strategies from part one, along with our inventory from part two, and let those factors guide decisions about what’s working well and what’s not delivering a strong ROI. Align your business goals with the strengths of each of your channels — maybe you have the largest audience on Facebook, but the most engaged audience on Twitter — and score each platform based on how well it achieves each of your goals.
Pro tip: take notes on why you scored each channel the way you did to help specific actions in the next step.
Take Action
Once you’ve scored each channel, you’re ready to make those final decisions on how to move forward. Create a hit list of items that need updating to level up your platforms, particularly your top-performing ones, to better align with your goals.
One thing to keep in mind: it’s okay to dump social media profiles that are inactive! You’ll want to be careful that you’re not leaving your target audience in the dust if they depend on your social platform for things like event registration, news updates, etc. Refer back to your light SEO audit to understand how removing that channel could impact SEO and determine if redirecting your social media channel is a better strategy.
And just like that, you’ve completed your social media audit! Set a reminder to do these audits once or twice a year (depending on the number of social channels and level of activity) to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Are you looking for a partner to help you with your social media strategy? Check out our social media services, and let’s chat!
