Understanding your Social Media Platforms: How to conduct a Social Media Audit

Summary

Why do you need to perform and social media audit? How can it help you and your team to develop a successful marketing strategy and reach your goals?

What is a Social Media Audit?

A social media audit is a process of reviewing your social media accounts and evaluating certain metrics like engagement, demographics, locations etc, to help determine your growth and potential, identify your possible opportunities and how you can improve your online presence via social media. 

The ultimate goal of this audit will be to identify the areas that your online presence could improve and realise your missed opportunities. By understanding and re-evaluating your current strategery and analysing your gathered data, you will be able to realise gaps you may currently have in your approach. You will also be able to identify platforms you may be underperforming on and realise why that may be. By conducting this process, you and your team will be better equipped when coming up with an updated social media strategy and are more likely to achieve your goals.

How do you create one?

Creating a list of your platform logins

Completing a comprehensive list of all of your different social media accounts is an important step towards managing your online presence and protecting your digital identity. You should also make sure that you have deleted any test accounts and flagged any possible copycats.

You need to make a note of:

The Name of the Social Media Platform: [Facebook/Instagram/Youtube]

  • Account Name/Handle: [@YourUsername]
  • Login Email/Username: [example@gmail.com]
  • Password: [********]
  • Account Owner: [Full name]
  • Authorized Access: [TeamMember1, TeamMember2]
  • Notes: [Additional information or specific instructions]

You then repeat this format for each social media platform that you have.

By documenting your login details and who is authorised to use them, you will be able to keep track of your accounts and ensure proper management. This will also be helpful to your legal team when identifying any potential imposters or unauthorised accounts. 

The document/spreadsheet you create with this stored information is carefully secured and password protected. Keep this up-to-date in order to prevent any confusion in the future.

Checking your branding

Look through each of your profiles to ensure that they are all up to date with your current branding, it is essential that you review and update your profiles regularly.  By reviewing your social media content and accounts regularly,  you will be able to better maintain a consistent and professional face across your platforms, which strengthens your brand awareness. You should check:

  • The tone of Voice: Review the types of language that you use in the accounts bios, posts and interactions with other users. Consider whether they reflect your current brand personality and align with your messaging.
  • URLs and Links: Ensure that the links that you provide lead to the correct places and are updated (that they don’t bring up any 404s).
  • Images: Check that your profile photos, banners and any other photos that you have shown represent your brand and the people within it.
  • Hashtags: Hashtags give you the opportunity to find new users that may be interested in the topic that you cover. You should evaluate whether the tags you use are relevant to the content and align with your marketing strategy.

Identify the best-performing social media content

For each of your social media profiles, create a list of your top 5 posts/videos including their links and place them into a table. You can include the number of followers you have so you can see if your content is engaging for all of your audience. After you have listed them you can evaluate what may make those posts/videos more engaging for your followers.

  • What type of content on your platforms is getting the best responses from your audience?
    • Which ones have the highest engagement?
  • What specific content (e.g video/reels, posts with people in it, events) performs better than others?
  • Do you get more engagement and comments if you ask your followers a question?
  • Are the top posts/videos reflect your branding and tone of voice?

(Here’s Grayce’s as an example)

PlatformUp-to-dateFollowersViews (28 days)
InstagramActive Use6611218 (Reels) 
LinkedInActive Use12.6k671 (latest video)
FacebookNeeds updatingBanners, bio, links790n/a
TwitterNot Active10.1kn/a
YouTubeActive Use564951
Platform12345
Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/reel/CtGzHWnMzmg/https://www.instagram.com/p/CsoVIgnOtkS/https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs34ssRMamC/https://www.instagram.com/p/CsRKD1kMchP/https://www.instagram.com/p/CrOGn3OsEwP/
LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/grayce_sap-b2b-partnerships-activity-7064268285776678912-MRYE?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktophttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/grayce_toughmudder-fundraising-community-activity-7054408576886333443-o0j7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktophttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/grayce_onboarding-awards-community-activity-7064162569837531137-qmjX?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktophttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/grayce_awards-community-consultant-activity-7062381876950249472-Dw0x?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktophttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/grayce_meet-georgina-change-analyst-activity-7029053251366834177-5W6i?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Facebook(No note-worthy engagement)
Twitterhttps://twitter.com/WeareGrayce/status/1552640478675456000https://twitter.com/WeareGrayce/status/1628726891392782336https://twitter.com/WeareGrayce/status/1580846145198125057(The rest are insignificant)
YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-ROZGNLmcohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfCCYAzI6-k&t=1shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmW6SZ4CCT0&t=1shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFGtdOYWzd4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVutssh-Tq8&t=6s
(Scroll to see the rest)

Evaluate each channel’s performance

You should reflect on how each of your social media accounts contributes to your overall marketing goals and strategy. This can be more manageable when you have your platforms connected to your Google Analytics and any other analytics tools. By linking your accounts, you will be able to gain valuable insights and more effectively track your site traffic and conversions.

Understand your audience on each platform

For you to be able to effectively engage with the right audiences across your different platforms, you need to understand who you are reaching. For example, you will reach younger demographics on Instagram than you will on Facebook, so it is important for you to adapt the content that you create to ensure that it will be relevant to the audiences you deliver to. 

By recognising the differences between your platform audiences, you will be able to effectively tailor your posts to their expectations and preferences on how they consume content. It should be visually appealing and relevant to them. 

Update your social media strategy

Once you have completed a list of your accounts, listed all of the posts that did best on each and have a better understanding of each of you different audiences, you should re-visited your social media strategy. This is where you reflect on your current strategy and how you can tailor it to your current presence online. 

  • Which accounts have the best results with your audiences?
  • Are there any platforms that you are neglecting and may need to be updated and/or re-evaluated?
  • Are there any new social media platforms that you could be branching out to?
    • Or should you stick with the ones you currently have?
  • What types of content are currently working best, and evaluate why?
  • Do the posts/videos you create resonate with your expected audiences and demographics?
    • Why is this?
    • How can you better tailor your content to engage with more of your target audiences?

To understand more about how you can use your understanding of the customer lifecycle, read this blog: https://emjaymoore.com/2023/02/03/customer-lifecycle/

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