How to perform a successful social media audit

Companies should have a social media strategy but often don’t. A lack of planning and strategy can lead to poor results. That’s why it’s import to perform a successful social media audit.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States, inventor, scientist, printer, and politician

Social media has become a key part of today’s digital marketing efforts so it’s important. Managing your social media presence is a full-time job.

The word audit sounds like you are getting audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That’s why it seems like a dirty word. Don’t let the word get in the way of its purpose. To help you improve your social media efforts.

If you don’t want to use the word audit, you could say health check.

A social media audit is an assessment and analysis of your company’s social media presence. It determines what actions can help you improve your social media presence.

A successful social media audit helps you take a step back and reflect on what’s working and not working with your social media efforts.

You could do an audit or health check yourself or you seek third-party help from an agency or an independent consultant.

There are 5 key steps to perform a successful social media audit.

First things first, you should establish your social media goals.

Your goals could be:

Increase brand awareness
Generate more leads and sales
Build an audience (followers)
Improve engagement
Grow website traffic

Now that you have your goals, the next is to analyze each social media channel. What social media networks are you on? To do this analysis you should do the following:

Social media icons on the website. Look at the footer or header of your website for your social media channels (if they are not there, you should add them)
Google search. Do a Google search of some variants of your company to see if any accounts show up that are old or you forgot about.
Branding. How does the artwork and images look on the channels? Is there a profile photo and cover image?
Contact info. Do you have an up-to-date company description? Is your mailing address, phone number, and website address correct? What about description of services and hours of operation?
URLs. Do the URLs match the company name? Can any of them be shorter? When you click on the icons of your website, do they go to the correct URLs?
Social media channels. Are you active on all of your social media channels? Do you still have Google+? Google+ is dead and should be removed. If you haven’t posted on a social media channel in months, you should consider deleting that channel.

Your next step is to dive into the data. Find out how your social media channels are performing. In the analytics section of each social media network, you should see what social media channels are performing better than others.

Which of your social media networking accounts has the most followers? Which social media platform is getting the most engagement? What type of content is performing the best?

Then, you should find the correlation between your social media presence and your website traffic. How much traffic are you getting from your social media channels? Which channels are bringing in the most traffic? Which social media networks are generating the most leads?

You can create a Google spreadsheet with the following info:

URL for each one of your social media networks
Number of followers for each account
Engagement metrics
Demographic information
Popular content
Number of leads generated

Now that you have analyzed your social media channels and reviewed your metrics, you can now decide what social media channels you should be on and which ones you can cut using a tool like justdelete.me.

Target audience

You should only be on the social media networks where your target audience hangs out. Ask yourself questions such as:

Where do they spend time online?
What social media channels do they use?
How do they communicate on these channels?

A good rule of thumb is to have three to five social media accounts. You may get a higher return on your investment and results on fewer networks than diversifying to many. It’s important to test on a smaller scale and see before you invest more time.

Look at the demographics of your social media channel. What does an average user look like? Gender? Age? How much education? How much money do they make?

Let’s dive into the high-level demographics of today’s top social media networks and what type of audience is active on these channels.

Facebook

Facebook is still one of the most used social media.

69% of U.S. adults use Facebook
75% of women use Facebook
84% of 25–30 year olds use Facebook
75% with some college education use Facebook
74% making more than $75K use Facebook

Instagram

Instagram continues to rise in popularity yet its daily login is still behind Facebook.

35% of US teens rate Instagram as their favorite social network
43% of women use Instagram
75% of 18–24 year olds use Instagram
43% of those with more than college education use Instagram
42% of those making more than $75K use Instagram

LinkedIn is for people with professional careers.

Men and women usage of LinkedIn is very similar
44% of 25–30 year olds use LinkedIn
51% of those with more than college education use LinkedIn
49% of those making more than $75K use LinkedIn

Twitter

Twitter usage with U.S. adults is lower compared to other networks.

24% of men use Twitter
44% of 18–24 year olds use Twitter
32% of those with more than college education use Twitter
31% of those making more than $75k use Twitter

YouTube

The social media is used by more U.S. adults than Facebook.

78% of men using YouTube
93% of 25–30 year olds use YouTube
80% of those with more than college education use YouTube
83% of those making more than $75K use YouTube

This platform is visual-first focus and ideal for highlighting products.

42% of women use Pinterest
38% of 18–24 year olds use Pinterest
38% of those with more than college education use Pinterest
41% of those making more than $75K use Pinterest

5. Determine your new action items

Now that you have a better understanding of where you are now and where you should go, you can start making plans for where you want to go. You may want to create a SWOT analysis for each network and use the data you collect from your audit to include in the SWOT.

Figure out how often you should post and what types of content you should post. You should also put together an editorial style guide that outlines the expectations and brand standards that every piece of content should meet.

Consider using an editorial calendar platform, a social media management program, and a hashtag tool.

A social media audit is a great way to check your metrics, find new opportunities, and how to optimize your social media presence. It helps you paint a holistic picture of your social media efforts and how your social media efforts are helping grow brand awareness, generate more leads, and increase sales.

What is a social media audit?