As a business owner, you can get great benefits by investing in high-quality social media marketing. Over 80% of people ages 18-49 use social media regularly, and 3 out of 4 people ages 50-64 use it. For the best results, it’s also necessary to perform social media audits.
So – what is a social media audit, and why is it important? Read on for some tips from the team at Digital Neighbor, and get a free downloadable template to guide your next audit!
What Is a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit is the process of reviewing your current social media marketing strategy. You check the performance of different social media platforms, the effectiveness of your content, and your progress toward objectives.
To evaluate these factors, you’ll check metrics relating to engagement, lead generation, click rate, and similar goals.
Why Would You Want To Conduct a Social Media Audit?
On any journey, you need a map to show you where you are, where you’re headed, and what obstacles there are. Social media audits do the same thing for digital marketing. The right “direction” can provide tremendous benefits for advertising, customer satisfaction, business growth, and profits.
Better Results
You can determine which social media strategies are working by tracking essential metrics, such as user engagement. Once you know which methods give you the best results on one platform, you can apply the same techniques elsewhere.
Smarter Marketing
Analyzing social media data can teach you more about your customers. For example, some business professionals trust LinkedIn chats even more than in-depth product guides on company websites.
Do certain topics tend to get more interactions or likes on social media than others? The better you understand what your primary audience is worried about, interested in, or looking for, the more engagement you can get with your posts.
More Customers and Sales
Done right, social media marketing can significantly increase the number of customers you have, both online and offline. These days, even local clients are likely to visit one of your brand’s social media platforms in search of information. In turn, more leads provide more opportunities to make a sale. Social media marketing also helps you stay connected to repeat customers.
Higher Return on Investment
Maximizing your ROI should be on your mind when choosing the next move with marketing. A social media audit can show you the most valuable platforms for reaching your unique audience. Prioritizing can free up money for features that matter, such as videos, animations, infographics, or targeted advertising.
Improved Conversions
Don’t give up if you aren’t getting results from social media marketing yet. An in-depth audit can show what is going wrong. Maybe you need to pay more attention to search engine optimization. Making changes can help you overcome obstacles with engagement, reach, and conversions.
What Should a Social Media Audit Include?
Performing an audit correctly requires some tools and techniques. Whether you handle it yourself or hire our expert marketing team, learning how to conduct a social media audit can be beneficial. We’ve put together a handy checklist to help:
List of Social Media Accounts
Create a list of the social media platforms your business uses. Remember that social media includes more than Facebook and Instagram. Sites and apps such as YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, Quora, and Discord count, too. Even community review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, Glassdoor, and Trustpilot can be part of your social media strategy.
Target Audience & Tone
Getting to know your target audience is especially vital with social media users. Create groups using key demographic information: age, family situation, interests, and economic factors. Think about each group’s motivations, needs, feelings, and problems.
Next, choose a tone and approach for your social media content. Create a brand persona like the following examples:
- Jaime: A fun-loving and hard-working dad who shares his favorite recipes and product reviews
- Lucy: A good-natured, friendly college student who is also an “employee” of your store
- Desiree: A longtime manager with business experience and industry info to share
The critical thing when auditing the tone for your social media is to connect successfully with your customers.
Tools for Tracking Metrics
Many platforms include tools that help you track vital statistics, such as Instagram’s Insights tab or YouTube Analytics. Meta Business Suite combines social media advertising, marketing statistics, and social media metrics for Facebook and Instagram. If you want a faster way to view key metrics from various platforms at a glance, you can use Google Analytics for free.
Key Performance Indicators
Above all, a social media audit is about trying to find your most compelling content. Take special note of your top posts. The following KPIs can help you:
- Total views
- Likes
- Comments
- Followers
- Group characteristics
- Interests
Put simply, you’re looking for data that answers who, what, why, when, and where. Who is interacting on social media, what type of content grabs their attention the most, why are they interested, when are they visiting, and which platform or apps do they use?
Content Suggestions
Delivering incredible content for your social media is easier if you plan the topics beforehand. Do you need some ideas to get started?
- Examples of past work: Show off your company’s skills with testimonials, before and after images, and completed projects.
- Tips: Offer pro tips, helpful solutions, or tricks of the trade as an industry expert.
- Trends: Share up-to-date news about recent trends in greater detail.
- Team info: Offer a behind-the-scenes look at your business with staff intros, project updates, or image reels of your work.
- News: Set aside posts for promotional content, such as new hires, product launches, special sales, or lists of benefits.
Tailor each post to the needs of your clients.
Aesthetics
An excellent social media audit considers the user experience. Communicate your message clearly and simply. Make a great impression with bright, cheerful, and clean photos. Use layouts that look stellar on mobile devices.
Make videos. Animated and video content reaches social media users in ways other avenues can’t come close to. Instagram Reels ranks high in algorithms, for example.
Bring photos to life with animations, vector art, and musical snippets. These add-ons can turn bland text into engaging content that’s impossible to ignore. The added movement allows algorithms to register these as videos.
Competition
Take a glance periodically at your competitors’ social media profiles. See what you can imitate or avoid. If you notice lots of likes, figure out why. Try out their good habits on your profiles and see whether your numbers improve.
Tips & Tricks
Make life easier for yourself with these social media audit tips and tricks from our pros:
- Be active: Post at least three times a week.
- Be punctual: Choose the best times of day to post based on follower activity patterns.
- Be energetic: Use Instagram Reels, YouTube videos, and animated content for max views.
- Be authentic: Ditch marketing speak – be a real person on social media.
- Be creative: Invest in engaging content people love, comment on, and share.
- Be consistent: Stick with the same tone and brand identity throughout. Post appropriate versions of the same content on all your platforms, including your feed, when possible.
- Be respectful: Reply to comments and questions frequently, but always in a positive manner — even for negative feedback.
Guess what? We want to make your social media audit even easier! Download our free social media audit template right here.
How Can You Get Started With Your Social Media Audit?
Social media isn’t something small businesses can afford to ignore. Taking the time to perform a social media audit is essential for reaching marketing objectives.
Are you wearing too many hats to focus on managing your company’s social media? Our friendly team of digital experts is happy to help! At Digital Neighbor, we provide complete social media marketing services, including advertising, audits, content, and platform management. Contact us today to get started!
