Most businesses are already on social media in some form or fashion. While this is good, it is only the first step! Businesses also need to know how to utilize their social media channels for the good of their company. As a business owner, you must know how to audit your social media accounts and analyze the data.
What is a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit is simply reviewing your business’ metrics to assess growth, opportunities, and what you can do to improve your social media presence. Audits help you understand what is going on with your social media and whether or not what you’re doing is effective.
It’s important for businesses and organizations to audit their social media from time to time to ensure they’re getting the most out of their efforts, and it’s not as difficult as it might seem. Social media is a powerful tool IF it’s being used correctly. Auditing your social profiles is the place to start.
Once you’ve completed your social media audit, you should have a clearer picture of what’s been working and what needs to change. The goal is to complete the audit and get to work on a new strategy that is sure to help your business reach success online.
How to Audit Your Social Media
- Begin by writing down all of your social media accounts and the login information for each of them. This is also a good time to ask yourself who has access to your accounts and if those roles are set properly within each platform.
- Look to see if each of your accounts are complete with all necessary information and that all platforms are consistent with your branding. Do all of your channels look similar, use the same voice, and represent you well? For instance, look at:
- Profile pictures – Are they quality pictures? The same across all platforms? Platform-specific?
- Cover images – Do you have cover images set on platforms that support them? Are they quality images?
- Bio or info sections – Is the information accurate and updated? Does it briefly tell the story of who you are?
- Handles – Do all of your platforms have the same handles? If not, should they? Are they recognizable handles?
- Links – Do you have a link in your Instagram bio? Where does it lead?
- Pinned posts – On platforms that support pinned posts, are you utilizing that feature? What posts are pinned?
- Identify some of your best posts. You can do this by look at the analytics for each of your pages. Ask yourself these questions:
- Which kinds of posts are performing best?
- What trends do you see in your posts?
- How are people responding to the different types of posts?
- Has your engagement level increased or decreased since your last audit?
- Evaluate each individual channel’s performance. Instead of your posts overall, go through each of your social media profiles to see how they are performing individually. Each channel should serve at least a slightly different purpose, so you’ll want to analyze them with those specific purposes in mind.
- Consider your return on investment. Especially if you are spending money on your social media, analyze how much of a return you’ve made off of that investment.
- Understand your audience on each platform. As we said earlier with your channel performance, your channel audiences might be different depending on which one you’re looking at. Figure out who is following you on which platforms. This will help you know how to plan a strategy that speaks to your varied audience.
- Create your strategy. From here you can take all of the information that you have compiled and consider a few things –
- Are the channels that you are using successful? Do you need to add new ones, or even delete ones you currently have that aren’t helping you reach your goals?
- How can you use the information you have to shape your goals for each social media platform? What did you learn that informs you on what might be good practices and bad practices for each site? How can you implement those things?
- What is your strategy moving forward? What needs to be shifted in order to bring your business success online?
Learning how to audit your social media accounts might take some time, but it’s the best way to know where you stand and how you can improve. Audit your social media accounts, give them a few months and then audit again to ensure that you are staying on track!
If you’ve taken this step and you’re not sure how to implement a strategy to accomplish your goals, our digital media specialists can help you out. Give us a call today!
