What is a Social Media Audit, and What Does It Include?

Social media marketing is essential in your business, and there will be a time when you will have to know if your social media efforts are paying off. Finding these results is called a social media audit. 

In this article, we will dive into what exactly social media audit is, its components, how to conduct it and many more. Let’s start now!

What Is Social Media Audit: The Basics

A social media audit is like your social media marketing strategy report – they measure your marketing efforts.

Such an audit analyzes a company’s social media presence on all its platforms. The  process goes beyond likes and follows; it also focuses on the effectiveness of the social media content, overall marketing strategy, etc. 

After this audit, you will have all the data you need to enhance your social media marketing strategy for your accounts.

You will get information like the following:

• Which one is your most effective social media platform?
• What your target audience wants to see on each social platform?
• Audience data (demographic data)
• What’s the factor for your audience growth rate?
• New social media platforms posting ideas
• What content should you focus on for each of your social accounts?

A social media audit can include audience insights, community engagement, other interactions, and knowing which of your best-performing posts are. 

Here are the basics you need to know about:

• List all your social media profiles – The first social media audit step is to create a list of all your accounts and platforms on different social networks/media, including active and inactive ones. Make a record for each account, including the username, URL, number of subscribers/followers, engagement metrics, etc. 
• Analyze each social media profile’s engagement metrics – Social platforms already have their analytics feature to help you track the engagement metrics. Record the engagement rate and metrics, demographic information, and top-performing posts for each social account. This data can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy for each platform.
• Identify the patterns – After having a record of all of your top-performing posts, you should analyze and identify if there are any similarities. Find out if there are any similarities between the popular posts or content among all platforms. Determine the types of posts, audience demographics, the time of posting, and any media or interesting thing in the post.
• Check your branding – Check your social media platforms and ensure the accounts align with your branding. Make sure it has a uniform banner or professional picture. This can help the target audiences recall the information. 
• Evaluate and set goals for each platform – After identifying all the data you need, you now need to evaluate and set goals as to what you want to improve. By setting goals consistently, you can increase your brand awareness, web searches, and traffic to your website. 

You can find various free options online, so make sure you choose the right social media audit template for your business, utilize and leverage it to your advantage. A typical audit includes all the basic elements and is simple to use and follow. 

Why Conduct a Social Media Audit: Benefits and Importance

Knowing your social media metrics is important for your business. You can analyze them through regular audits that can help you evaluate the performance of your marketing efforts. 

By leveraging important metrics, you can gain essential and valuable insights to help your business have a practical approach. You can also gain brand consistency, adaptation to changes in the market, a competitive edge, and holistic strategic planning. 

Overall, a social media audit is not just about how you can maintain your good records on social media platforms. Since change is constant, it is about gaining insights from the data to evolve, adapt, and refine your approach to the targeted audience. 

Key Components of a Social Media Audit

Social media auditing requires a simple yet comprehensive process to get all the important data you need.

Here are some of the key components of a social media audit:

• Social Media Platform – Analyze the relevance of your social media platform for your brand, product and business. Identify whether or not the audiences you want to target are on these specific platforms. 
• Social Media Profile – Ensure your social media accounts are uniform, consistent, and true to your brand. 
• Leverage Google Analytics – Google Analytics can be your friend in social media audits. By exploring referral traffic, you can determine which social network is driving audiences/customers/web visitors to your site, and from then, you can create a more strategic approach to improve it.
• Paid ads – If investing in paid ads, you must analyze the ROI or return on investment from your paid campaigns. 
• Utilize User-Generated Content – You can explore UGC or user-generated content to help you gain more insights from the content your audiences made to enhance your brand/product and strengthen the connection between you and your audience.

Posting frequency and timing and content and audience analysis are all important in social media audits. If you are familiar with the social media platform TikTok, some users have mastered the time posting to get immediate viewers. 

Evaluating Social Media Profiles: Platforms and Presence

As a business owner, you can’t just create a social media account on each platform because it has millions of users; you must also examine its relevance to your business.

You must assess its relevance and relate it to your target audience and brand development objectives. If you leverage Facebook for your social media marketing strategy, you can use “Facebook insights” to gain insights about your engagement metrics. 

Instagram accounts and Facebook pages are the most commonly used platforms for almost every business. You can never go wrong with these two platforms. Then, after gaining engagement with those, carefully assess if you need other platforms to reach a larger audience.

Don’t forget that would mean content adjustments and consistency. The visual appeal of your accounts is also important. Always allow your company to adapt to changes and align your goals to your brand.

Assessing Profile Information and Brand Consistency

Your brand serves as the storefront of your business. You need to carefully assess your profile to see if it’s complete. 

Ensure that your profile has all the basic information your audience has to know, including  your goal and purpose, and have an impactful profile photo/banner, etc., so that people can recall your brand. 

Create uniformity across all of your platforms as much as possible. You need to have only one username or name for all of your platforms and the logos you would use should also be the same. 

The tone and messaging of your content should be consistent and in communication style rather than selling.

Here are some other things you need to take note of:

• Website links
• Leveraging user feedback
• Aligned with your target audience
• Consistency.

As your business evolves, don’t forget to update your profiles on all your platforms. Stay always alert on market trends and cope with them immediately. 

Reviewing Content Strategy and Posting Frequency

Content strategy and posting frequency assessment are important in your social media marketing strategy. 

A critical key in content strategy is its relevance to the audience. Creating content only your brand relates to and understands cannot generate engagement traffic. Ensure you are up to date with the recent trends and algorithm changes, and always incorporate the trend into your content to rank up and reach a bigger audience. 

Remember, the heart of every social media strategy is the content itself, but you also need to align it with the posting frequency. 

After doing a social media audit, you will be able to identify the content that reached a large number of interactions at the time of its posting and how often you should post to gain more traffic. 

Regarding posting frequency, you need to consider the platform you are using. Every social media platform has a different optimal posting frequency. Also, keep in mind that it is quality over quantity.

Analyzing Audience Engagement and Interaction

User-generated content is one of those marketing strategies that helps you promote your brand and produce more. These are videos or content created by your audience to promote it. In terms of your content, make sure it is interactive and in trend to gain more traffic to your websites. 

Examining Social Media Follower Growth and Trends

The follower growth rate is a percentage that shows how fast your audience is growing or slowing in a certain period. Counting the follower’s growth is often discounted in social media audits and is called a vanity metric, but it is still important to measure the success of your marketing efforts. 

Suppose you are leveraging Instagram for your social media marketing. An example of growing your followers on this platform while being on trend is creating relatable and relevant reels or short-form videos. It is a powerful tactic to gain an audience.

If you are on TikTok, make sure to use the trending sounds as background music for your content. You can also hop on some trending relatable posts or challenges to reach many audiences, but always stay true to your brand. 

Assessing Social Media Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key metrics such as click-through rate, engagement metrics, conversion rates, and key performance indicators are important to track your growth in your social media marketing. 

Using social metrics, you can track your follower growth, reach and impressions, acquired customers, video engagements, and more. 

Evaluating Competitor Social Media Presence

Social media competitor analysis can be done in an easy and simple way. 

First, you need to identify your competitors. After identifying who your competitors are, you need to track down their social media activities and check them. After knowing how they manage their social activities, leverage the insights you gain from these and compare them using your competitive analysis template. 

By watching your competitors, you can improve your customer service, develop unique-selling propositions, and make more audience and brand-related relevant content. 

Identifying Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT Analysis)

Conducting a SWOT analysis is the backbone of every marketing effort. 

You need to identify your brand’s strengths and what sets it apart from your competitors and make use of them as selling points. Address your weaknesses in creating a strategy. Never stop exploring new opportunities – be open to changes and threats. 

Evaluate all the internal and external factors to create great decision-making and strategic planning. 

Reviewing Social Media Advertising and Paid Campaigns

You can identify if your paid campaigns have a successful engagement by leveraging metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), ROI, and conversion rates. 

Reviewing the performance of your social media advertising can help you get valuable insights into whether it has reached a large audience or if there is something wrong with the campaign. 

Assessing Social Media Customer Service and Response Times

Good customer service and fast response time in social media means that you are consistent and committed to your brand. 

You can leverage chatbots and integrate them into your social media platforms to respond quickly to your audience’s important and relevant FAQs. Fast response time and a customer-centric approach can gain you more audiences and customer retention.

Compliance and Legal Considerations in Social Media

Always ensure that your contents are not subjected to copyright issues and privacy regulations. 

Ensure your content is decent and can be watched by people of all ages. Always oversee all potential legal issues before posting or creating content on all your social media platforms. Compliance keeps your business in check and proves authenticity to your audiences, creating that sense of trust and legitimacy. 

Developing Actionable Recommendations and Improvement Strategies

Always document and keep a record of all the important data you gathered, so that you can look back on it and get new insights. 

SWOT analysis is always important after leveraging social media audits. You can also optimize advertising budgets and invest in paid ads or paid social media campaigns, or you can also invest in enhancing your customer service processes. 
Ensure you leverage audience feedback in all your social media platforms to gain the trust of targeted audiences and potential customers.