How to Conduct an Effective Social Media Audit

A social media audit sounds like a complicated process full of data and statistics, right? Well, it does not have to be as complex as it sounds. You can look at it as a necessary way to get your social media accounts in order and ensure that they benefit your business.

The most basic role of a social media audit is finding the channels working for your audience and either adjusting or eliminating those that don’t ensure your company's growth.

Not sure where to start your social media audit? Read on for a step-by-step process on doing it right.

1. Analyze All Your Social Media Profiles

Analyzing your social media profiles is the first step of a social media audit. You cannot conduct a technical SEO audit without understanding a site. Likewise, you cannot conduct a social media audit without understanding your profiles.

So start by making a list of all the social media profiles and accounts in your company name, whether still active or forgotten. That helps you determine the profiles you will audit. It also helps you find and close misdirecting social accounts.

Find the email address and username used when signing up for each profile. Record passwords, followers, engagement level, and reach metrics for all social profiles. Then check for brand consistency.

Ensuring your social media profiles have a consistent structure, voice, and style helps you gain the credibility of your target audience. That is why they are an essential detail for the social media audit.

Here are a few general questions you can use for each social media account to determine consistency during your audit:

• Do you have an updated profile or cover images?
• Are your usernames consistent?
• Are your pinned posts still relevant?
• Are the links leading to the right website or effective landing pages?

If you are looking for social media profiles to emulate, Aliexpress profiles are good options.

Aliexpress makes it easy to find their social media profiles. As depicted in the Instagram and Twitter profile examples above, they both have the logo as the profile picture, a similar bio, and verified social profiles.

Their social media profiles also use a similar casual voice and tone in the social media posts. That aligns all the social media profiles.

2. Identify Goals for Each Platform

After the social media analysis and identifying the social media platforms you will be auditing, the next step is setting goals. Your goals guide you on what to look for in your social media audit.

The audit will give you many social media insights and analytics, but which ones should you be interested in? By creating SMART goals for each social media platform, you can easily find critical metrics that will guide you.

For instance, one of your goals can be increasing brand awareness through your Instagram account in a specific period. With this goal, you know that you will need to look at the follower growth and engagement rates on your social media profiles.

If each social media account serves a different purpose, you should set profile-specific goals and strategies. So, for instance, if you want to use Facebook to grow your subscriber list, you can integrate an email finder into your profile to help collect and find email address details.

3. Check Critical Metrics for Each Profile

Setting your social media audit goals should be followed by checking key metrics. The metrics help you determine if your current strategies are working as projected in the goals through data and analytics.

Your metrics should be specific to each social media profile’s goals, making it easy to know what to look for. For instance, if your goal is boosting Instagram engagement, then your key social media metrics can be the growth in the number of followers, likes, and shares.

You can use various categories of metrics in your social media audit. Here are some of the general ones:

• Conversion metrics that determine profiles engagement
• Consumer metrics that help learn what customers think about a brand
• Awareness metrics that show the current and potential audience.

You can use external analytics tools or the in-built social media site analytics tools to track the metrics. The latter provides relevant and more specific profile data that outline your performance. Here is an example of Meta's insights.

It is easier to check critical metrics like your page reach and conversions with Meta Facebook and Instagram insights since they collect the data and process it. In addition, the tools visualize the insights through graphs, making it easier to keep track and compare different metrics.

4. Look at Your Top Posts

What types of content are working for your audience? The best way to answer this question is to find your most popular posts. You need to go back to your analytics and look beyond likes for this.

Make a list of your top-performing posts and analyze them to note the trends. Find out the content types, and go the extra mile to get more details. Do they share a topic? What was the level of audience engagement? How many likes and impressions? What hashtags did you use?

You can also compare it to the lowest-performing content to note the key differences and determine your audience's preference. With this knowledge, you can easily create better strategies.

For instance, if you notice your Instagram followers prefer reels to still content, then add more of them to your social media plan. You can also use tools like a sentence rewriter to gain an extra punch in your copy for the lowest-performing posts.

5. Identify Which Platform Gets You the Most Traffic

The goal of having an online presence for most companies is to direct the audience back to the website. Hence, the amount of traffic each social platform brings is the ultimate measure of success.

Your social media audit needs to measure how much impact each profile has on your website. Find out which profile or channel has the most significant conversion rate or brings in the highest number of leads. Doing this helps you identify the proper channels for your brand. It also helps you identify important patterns that can help you develop better social media strategies in the future.

Analytics tools and platforms can make this process easier for you.

Google Analytics provides data that will show you what traffic, level of engagement, and bounce rate you are getting from each social media channel. As the example above shows, you can tell and differentiate the channel performance with a glance.

6. Look at New Platforms

You don’t have to be on every social media platform, but you should not be missing out either. So if you notice gaps in social media audit results, add them to your content calendar.

Adding a competitor analysis to your audit process will help you figure out the platforms your competitors are gaining from that you are yet to join. For instance, you could realize you are missing out on a larger Gen Z audience because you are not on TikTok.

Ensure you have a social media strategy to guide you through the new platforms. The best thing is that you don’t have to stick to the channel if it’s not working. But to determine this, you have first to give it a shot.

Trust the audit process and factual data to help you determine whether you want to keep your accounts on the new platforms or not. If you are uncertain about joining the channel immediately, reserve your preferred usernames and social media handles.

7. Create a Plan

Once your social media audit is complete, it’s time to plan how to get better results from your social media presence and your social media content strategy. So you need to create a good plan.

Your plan will need new, well-thought-out strategies and social media goals covering the areas needing improvement. For instance, one of your goals can be to finally get a TikTok account and gain an X number of followers.

Finally, settle on a plan to conduct your future social media audits. Running social media audits allows you to evaluate your set social media goals and make necessary changes to ensure more benefits to the company. It is advisable to have them every quarter.

In Closing

To benefit from your social media presence, conducting consistent social media audits is necessary.

Start by analyzing your social media profiles, identifying each platform's goals, and creating critical metrics for each profile. Next, identify your top-performing post and social platforms creating the most traffic. Then, consider new platforms and create a better social plan.

With an effective social media audit, you’ll understand your social media presence, inspiring better social media strategies.

Best of luck!

Owen Baker is a content marketer for Voila Norbert, an online email verification tool. He has spent most of the last decade working online for a range of marketing companies. When he’s not busy writing, you can find him in the kitchen mastering new dishes.