The How of Social Media Audit: Measure What Matters

Social media marketing is a critical part of your branding and content strategy, and like the other tactics you use, it needs to be monitored and measured so you can spend your time and money wisely, while getting the best return you can.

What is a Social Media Audit?

A social media audit is a review and examination of the total social media presence of a person or organization. This means studying social media profiles, content, posts, posting times, and audience engagement for strengths and weaknesses. The goal of this review is to gather the data that will give you benchmarks, and from there you’ll have insight into how you can optimize your return on investment, and improve performance of the social media channels that deliver the best returns.

Auditing your social media begins with identifying the channels that produce your best gains. Analyzing these can help you figure out what to do to boost your social referral traffic and also shed light on your audience’s tastes. These insights can help you build a better, higher-converting overall content strategy that connects deeply with your target demographic.

Know Your Target Customers

Before you can dive in to evaluate content and interactions on your different social channels, make sure that you have a deep understanding of your audience. Take a look at your best customers, the ones you want to replicate. Better yet, take a listen.

You should know the answers to these questions about your target audience:

• Which channels are they on?

• What topics do they respond to?

• What do they talk about on social?

• Which hashtags do they use?

• What are their pains and challenges?

• How do they interact with different types of content in general?

• How do they interact with your competitors?

• Do you have potential customers in different segments, concerned about different things?

Make sure you understand your audience so you can create social content that answers their questions, piques their interest, and gets them to engage with you through likes, comments, shares, clicks, and web visits.

Perform Your Audit Using A Spreadsheet

You are going to have to collect a quantity of data for this job. Much of the data will be numerical, so it makes sense that you use a spreadsheet for this purpose.

You are going want to analyze all your organization’s existing social accounts – even the ones you may have started up but then abandoned. Record all your social network usernames and URLs in your spreadsheet.

Know Your KPI And Business Goals

Start with a set of metrics you want to look at. Depending on your business, you might consider:

Metrics that show reach:

• Likes

• Followers

• Views

• Subscribers

Metrics that show engagement:

• Shares

• Retweets

• Comments

• Downloads

Metrics that show revenue:

• Leads, opportunities and closed sales attributable to social engagements

• Service opportunities that retain customers

You could look at engagement as being:

• Facebook: Organic Likes, Paid Likes, Mentions, Impressions, Post Engagements, Links Clicked, Reactions, Comments, and Shares.

• Twitter: Organic Impressions, Links Clicked, Mentions, Direct Messages, Retweets, Replies, and Likes.

• Instagram: Likes Received (Including Live and Stories), Comments, Engagement per Media, and Most Engaged Hashtags.

• LinkedIn: Impressions, Clicks, Likes, Comments, and Shares.

Branding Audit

Go through your social media accounts and check to make sure your branding and slogans are consistent, on message, and completely up to date. This will typically cover items such as:

• Profile photos and headers: Check each one to make sure they are optimized for the platform they are on. Sizes and viewable areas are mportant across multiple devices. Check this guide to make sure you’re ready.

• Descriptions: A few of the key social media platforms give you limited space, so be concise.

• Links: Make sure all the links in your profile (to your company or content) are current.

• Company name, address, and phone number: Make sure hey are all current and consistent with what’s on your website.

Content Audit

Take inventory of the content you’ve been sharing, and note the posts, tweets, and shares revolving around each item. Here are the areas that you should be focused on while doing so:

• Goal of the content: What goal is this content created to achieve? How well is it working?

• Engagement: How many people are interacting with the content? This means people who shared it, commented on it, or clicked on any associated links. This can help you identify the content that performs well, going beyond approval (e.g. likes) to engagement.

• Impressions: How many people have viewed it?

• Relevance: Is the content “evergreen,” meaning will it stay relevant to your audience for an extended period of time (potentially forever)? The posts you’re sharing should be using up-to-date data, and should be addressing problems and topics that are top-of-mind for your prospects.

• Conversions: This might take a bit more searching to uncover, but with the right technology to deliver attribution insights, you can see which content is leading to real dollars for your company.

Review Regularly

Social media channels will change, your audience will evolve, and tastes will adapt over time to different tactics. Auditing your social media is a regular process that cannot just be completed and forgotten.

Depending on the frequency of your content creation, and the ferocity of your social media strategy, you could be auditing anywhere from one to four times per year. Much like the structure of your audit spreadsheet, there is no “right” answer when it comes to how often you should conduct your review.