Audits aren’t just for tax season…
In a perfect world everything would be automated, and we would never have to worry about manually doing things. But we do. Luckily some of us love to do the things others don’t. Social media is a great marketing tool for any business, and while some prefer not to be on social media, it is a vital component in your marketing arsenal.
So where to start? A social media audit.
A social media audit is essentially the performance of your social media and reviewing KPIs to assess the baseline of what your social media is doing for you right now. It’s the non-bias hard data of all of your accounts and the mentions of your brand across the internet.
A social media audit will help you create or recreate a social media strategy that aligns your accounts to business goals (of which I just wrote a blog about you can find in on our website under the tab ideas). Audits also give you the insights into your audience as well as the latest trends that help you moving forward.
An audit helps you keep informed of what is changing on social media and what you need to do to keep up. It can help you identify new benchmarks and KPIs to determine what social media platforms you should focus on to reach the right audience at the right time.
These are the questions to ask yourself when performing a social media audit:
- Where are your socials? Create a comprehensive list of all social media platforms you are currently on. If your company is on multiple platforms you will need an inventory and passwords to access these, if an employee or agency has those. This is also the chance to figure out whether or not there are existing channels of your brand that you need to update or delete.
- Who is on your socials? Get the specific number of your following. This is more of a vanity metric, but it’s still important to number to your accounts.
- What are you sharing? Brand Adherence: Are your social media platforms a good reflection of your brand guide. Logos, colors and tone and tenor should all be consistent to your brand. With the only exception being tone and tenor, it may be essential to change the voice according to the platform in order to appeal to the audience that uses the platform. For example, an Instagram post is could have a little less technical/industry terms than LinkedIn.
- What are your socials doing? Gather insights using the tools on each social media platform: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter all have insight tools with different capabilities. You will use this to analyze your content.
- How is the content performing? Content KPIs: What posts have the best engagement and what posts didn’t? What was the content? What creative did the post have? What time and day were the most engaged posts?
Answering these questions will give you an idea of what your audience likes and dislikes are and how to effectively communicate to them.
One more thing to consider when doing your social media audit are your competitors. Now, don’t get too involved with competitor research… you could fall into a rabbit hole, but don’t forget that your competitor’s social media channels have some valuable insight as well. Use some of the same measurement tools that you have at your disposal and see how they engage with their audience. One of the valuable insights you will get from this is finding any gaps that you can fill.
Social media audits should be performed annually in addition to monthly monitoring.
It seems pretty simple, and it certainly can be if you take a little time to review where you are and were. In performing this task, you will have clear sense of what direction you should go in the future. Take your blah social media into influencer territory. If you need help, Kinetic is here!
