The Ultimate Guide to a Social Media Audit: 4 Simple Steps To Get You Started
Gone are the days of simply posting updates and marketing yourself when it comes to social media marketing. Now, you need to have a strategy that involves listening to your followers and engaging with them—and this starts with a social media audit. A social media audit is a great way to help you identify what you’re doing right on social, find areas for improvement, and get started establishing a growth plan.
Here’s how to do an audit so you can start growing your following on social media:
1. Collect data from each of your platforms
2. Sort the data according to engagement
3. Analyze from top-level insights down
4. Plan accordingly
The Benefits of a Social Media Audit
A social media audit is one of the best ways to grow your following on social media. Knowing what’s working and what’s not makes it easier to spot trends.
The benefits of using a social media audit are pretty straightforward:
– You can get an accurate picture of your performance
– You can identify areas for improvement
– You can plan your strategy for growth
How to Conduct a Social Media Audit
Social media is a great marketing tool for any business. However, to get the most out of marketing on social media, you’ll need to do an audit.
A social media audit is a great way to help you identify what you’re doing right on social media, find areas for improvement, and get started establishing a growth plan.
Here’s how to do an audit:
1. Collect data from each of your platforms
2. Sort the data according to engagement
3. Analyze from top-level insights down
4. Plan accordingly
What to Look for in Your Data
Collect data from your social media accounts by downloading their reports. This data includes your followers, likes, shares, and so on. You can do this for all of your platforms or choose the ones you feel are most relevant to you.
Sort the data according to engagement (i.e., likes, comments, shares) and analyze it from top-level insights down (i.e., how many followers you have).
What are some top-level insights you’ll want to look at? You’ll want to know what posts generate the most engagement; which posts are getting a minor engagement; if any of your social media accounts are dormant; if any of your accounts include spammy content; how often people like, comment, share on each post; etc.
Plan accordingly by looking at low-performing posts and figuring out ways to make them more engaging. For example, if you post links in a Facebook post but only get a few clicks on them versus a photo of yours shared on Facebook that gets a lot more traction—think about strategies for making more useable links in the future.
Actionable Takeaways From Your Data
It’s always great to know what you’re doing right and see the results of your efforts. However, it can be even more helpful to look at what you could improve so you can maximize your results.
By looking at the data from your social media audit, you’ll be able to identify areas for improvement.
For instance, if you have a small following on Facebook and most of your engagement is coming from Twitter posts, it might be worth putting more resources into Facebook. You would want to put fewer resources into Twitter because you’re not getting as much engagement and attention there and more resources into Facebook. After all, that’s where most of your audience finds and engages with your content.
This data will also help inform how much time and effort you should spend on each platform to increase engagement.
You might notice that you need to post less on Instagram because it doesn’t generate as much engagement as other platforms (like Twitter). If this is the case, don’t feel like you need to post daily because of its popularity! Consider posting once a week or once a month instead so that the content is fresh when your followers receive it.
Conclusion
A social media audit is a great way to help you identify what you’re doing right on social, find areas for improvement, and get started establishing a growth plan.
This article covered how to perform a social media audit and what insights can be gained from the data.
Data from your social media posts may reveal insights about your followers, such as their interests and engagement with your posts. You can use these insights to improve your content strategy, target new customers, and establish market-specific goals.
This post has given you the necessary tools to start a successful audit of your business’s social media accounts. And remember: A social media audit is not just a one-time process. Your strategy should evolve as your company changes—so make sure you revisit this post periodically!