Sometimes in digital marketing we can get stuck in a rut, doing the same thing over and over with our content and still we’re surprised when the results haven’t changed. Social media marketing can be like that sometimes, your accounts are doing okay but you don’t really know where to look to level it up.
If there’s one thing you don’t want to be in digital marketing, it’s stagnant. Social media marketing continues to grow and change with each passing Tik Tok dance trend so it’s important to ride that wave and stay ahead of the curve.
That’s why we are going to show you how to do a social media audit on your accounts, find any weak spots in your digital marketing plan, and level up your approach.
What is a social media audit?
A social media audit is all about reviewing everything you do on social media and the results you have achieved. It helps you find weak spots that could be improved and measure the success of previous campaigns. It’s a way to review what’s working and what’s not working.
Don’t be put off by the term ‘audit’ it’s really just about reviewing and critically assessing your social media presence. A social media audit should be done at least every quarter. It will give you a chance to refine your approach and your social media marketing strategy will be stronger with each audit.
Completing a social media audit will help you refine your social media marketing strategy and keep your brand’s content from becoming stale and losing the audience you have built.
You can tell when a company hasn’t been auditing their social media accounts, the brand tone is inconsistent, there are irrelevant posts, and they are still engaging with trends that have finished a long time ago.
What’s working in your social media marketing strategy? What is taking a lot of your time and not showing you any results? What new practices can you add in to get better results?
Begin with an overview
You should begin your social media audit by reviewing all social media platforms for your brand on your management software so for some of us this is Later, Hootsuite or Hubspot. Whatever social media scheduling and management platform you use there will be options to review the overall engagement and performance on each post for each platform.
You will also be able to gather statistics on your account’s performance over the past three months. It can help to compare year on year for these time periods as our campaigns and our audience’s engagement can ebb and flow.
Now that you’ve got your statistics and you can identify where you’re performing well and what content is generating engagement you can review your content calendar and adjust accordingly.
Are you on brand?
A really important part of a social media audit is confirming all your messaging gels with your brand voice and tone. Ask yourself the following questions: Are you consistent across your platforms? Are your visuals of a similar aesthetic and do they resonate with the brand identity?
Evaluate your ROI (return on investment)
Perhaps your social media channels are getting a lot of engagement, but they are not generating the leads or sales you wanted. If there is something in your strategy that isn’t quite achieving the results you were after it’s time to revise your approach. Research other content ideas or campaign types that might yield more value. There isn’t much point in doing well on social media for vanity metrics if it’s not working towards your marketing goals.
Competitor analysis
Understanding where you sit amongst other similar brands and businesses gives you an insight into your point of difference as a company and your competitor’s. This is why as a part of your social media audit you should complete competitor analysis.
Gather up details such as their follower count, engagement rates, weekly growth and posting consistency. This gives you an overall impression for a quick comparison with your metrics. Then you’ll want to evaluate what they are doing differently.
- What hash tags are they using?
- How does their brand voice differ from yours?
- What type of content are they putting up?
- Do they do more video content, reels, or stories?
- Are they going live regularly?
These factors will help you find the difference in your respective social media strategies and then you can decide on any changes you want to make based on this.
When and how 
Lastly, it’s important to review when you are sharing content and how you are sharing content. You should be able to isolate how these two factors have impacted your engagement rates based on previous metrics.
Take some time to review when your audience has most consistently engaged with your content – are they online and commenting in the morning between 8am and 9am or are they night owls who want to catch up with your brand from 6pm to 8pm?
And what type of content are they responding to? Is your audience all about Instagram stories and Q and As or do they like to watch your reels? Which content type is getting you the most discovery clicks?
Taking these two factors into consideration will have a massive impact on your account’s growth and engagement.
At the end of the day social media is about building your brand, finding your audience and strengthening that connection so use these tips to give your audience what they have shown you they like and you’ll see an improvement on your socials.
Also Check out 6 Personalization Ideas to Boost Your Social Media and these seven digital marketing mistakes to avoid