Social Media Audit
Not sure if your social media marketing strategy needs a makeover? In this blog post, we will give you a nine-step checklist to audit and improve your social media strategy. Best of all you…don’t need fancy tools to get started! All you need is access to your business’ social analytics and a spreadsheet platform (Google Sheets is free 😉). Let’s get started:
Catalog Your Social Media Profiles
On your spreadsheet, create a list of all your business’ social media platforms, including both active and inactive accounts. Compare the basic elements (bios, links, profile and cover photos) and brand assets on your social profiles and make sure they are all accurate and up to date. If not, make a note of what needs to be updated to get your social media profiles ready for next year. Even if you no longer plan on posting on the platform, by making sure all the information is up-to-date, you ensure that possible customers who come across them are able to find you.
Collect Content and Follower Analytics
Download social media analytics for each of your social media accounts for the previous 12 months. For efficiency purposes, try to export each stream of data (Newsfeed posts, Stories, ads) separately. Unfortunately, some platforms like Instagram only allow you to access the last 90 days of analytics, in which case you will have to get in the habit of collecting this information monthly so that you have it for the future. Likewise most social platforms do not provide you with follower metrics, so you will likely have to track follower growth month to month and start recording this data now so you have it to track trends throughout the year.
Identify Top-Performing Content
Although most platforms will tell you which of your posts were the top performers, the metrics they use to identify these posts may not be what matters most to your business. However, you can easily identify your top-performing posts based on the criteria that matters most to you using the data you downloaded. Not sure metrics you should be looking at? Post reach, total engagement, and engagement rate are great metrics to focus on. Once you have your top Newsfeed posts, videos or Stories picked out for each social profile, try to identify the reason they were so successful. Doing so will give you an idea of what to replicate in the future.
Review Key Performance Indicators
If you have the data from last year, you can compare this year to last year. Did you grow your audience? Did you increase your reach or hit the engagement rate you expected? Keep in mind that KPIs will vary from platform to platform and heavily depend on your audience size and how often you post on them, but here is a list of metrics to look over for each social media platform:
Facebook
For Feed posts: Reach, Reactions, Comments, Shares
For Reels: Reach, Plays, Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves
For Stories: Reach, Likes, Replies, Sticker taps
Instagram
For Feed posts: Reach, Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves
For Reels: Reach, Plays, Likes, Comments, Shares, Saves
For Stories: Reach, Likes, Replies, Sticker taps
LinkedIn
Impressions, Reactions, Comments, Shares, Clicks
TikTok
Views, Likes, Comments, Shares
Twitter
Impressions, Likes, Replies, Retweets, Clicks
YouTube
Views, Impressions, Impression click-through rate, Average view duration
Look for Patterns and Trends
When you look at a full year’s worth of data, looking for patterns is a great way to get an overall picture of how you did. Here are a few questions to ask:
Are there any overall trends for the whole year? For example, was engagement gradually decreasing/or increasing throughout the year? Do you know why?
Was there a spike in performance during any given part of the year? If so, why? Is your business affected by seasonal patterns or did you try something different?
Did any campaigns you launched have an obvious effect on your analytics? If so, would it be beneficial to do what worked again?
Did your audience grow or decline during certain parts of the year? Can this be explained by other metrics you already looked at or is there another reason?
Check Audience Metrics
When evaluating how your campaigns and content did, understanding your audience plays a big part in that. Therefore, part of understanding why your audience responds to certain content or topics, checking your audience metrics (age, gender, etc) can give you great insight. If you have last year’s audit on hand, seeing if and how your audience has changed could possibly explain the change in your content’s performance.
Measure ROI
At times social media content is designed to promote special offers or to get followers to click through to your website. If this is the goal, you can often use Google Analytics to measure revenue-generating activity on your website. Likewise, if you’ve added tracking codes to the links on your social media pages, you can also get a campaign-by-campaign breakdown on your click-through rate to see which campaigns created the most website traffic. If you haven’t started using tracking codes, you can use Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder for future campaigns.
Establish New KPIs
After you have looked at the analytics from the past year, you can establish annual or monthly KPIs and goals for the coming year based on all the trends you spotted. The goal in setting KPIs is for them to be relevant for your company’s overall marketing goals, which may or may not have changed from last year’s. Likewise when deciding on KPIs, you very well may have different goals for each social media profile. Here are some standard social media goals that you may want to consider adding to your marketing plan:
Building brand awareness by growing your audience and increasing share and mentions
Improving consideration by getting followers to engage more on posts and clicking links to your website
Generate new leads by getting followers to subscribe to you email list
Increasing revenue by selling through you social profile or driving traffic to your website
Adjust Your Future Social Strategy
So now that you have gathered all this information what’s next? Putting together your social media strategy for 2023 of course! Here are a few prompt to help get you started:
Has your audience grown or declined on one or more platforms? Might it be time to retire some of the accounts that no longer meet your needs?
Did certain types of campaigns generate the biggest ROI? If so, you might want to run them more often in 2023 and across all platforms.
Did certain types of content or themes perform significantly better throughout the year? Review your budget and make it a priority to ensure you can publish that kind of content again.
Although they require a lot of leg work, running an annual social media audit is essential for creating a successful marketing strategy and will help you put your best foot forward for the coming year. Or you can leave it to the experts, set up your meeting with LASK today!
