Social media has become integral to any successful organization’s communication and marketing strategy.
In today’s digital age, social media has become a part of nearly every business’s marketing strategy. But with so many platforms and endless amounts of content, it can be easy to lose track of what’s working and what’s not. That’s where a social media audit comes in. By thoroughly analyzing your social media presence, you can identify areas for improvement, build on your strengths, and ultimately create a more effective social media strategy.
Why is Performing a Social Media Audit Important?
If an audit is performed effectively, it can serve as an ideal platform for sharing your messaging and business updates and connecting with your existing or potential audience. It can be a time-consuming process, though if adequately strategized, it can yield great success for the business. This said, if a social media audit is poorly executed, the social media management process can become cumbersome with little to no return on your investment.
How Often Should Social Media Audits Be Performed
Businesses, both big and small, can benefit significantly from performing regular social media audits. Social media audits should be performed annually to ensure your social media strategy is on track. Performing quarterly check-ins is advisable to ensure no external or internal factors may affect your existing strategy.
Variables to consider include:
- Organizational changes
- Internal process and staff changes
- Changes in products or services
- Industry-wide challenges or updates
Who Should Perform a Social Media Audit?
In determining the appropriate contact or point person for a social media audit, it’s essential to consider various departments or contacts and their responsibilities within the organization. You may want to appoint one primary contact (possibly your Communications Coordinator, Marketing Coordinator or Social Media Coordinator) to coordinate the process and involve various team members who can provide valuable input to the process.
For example:
- You may want to incorporate your Creative Director to review social media branding to ensure all platforms align with established brand guidelines.
- You may consider including various departments, such as your customer care teams, social media and communications teams, sales teams, and account management teams, to provide insight into the type of content you could share through social media. They may have some valuable insight into the kinds of questions or concerns that clients have.
- You may want to include your web development, SEO, or IT team to ensure all technical items are correctly implemented and tracked.
Steps to Performing a Social Media Audit
Locate All Social Media Profiles Associated with Your Organization
Consider the most widely used social media platforms used by businesses, brands and organizations:
- Snapchat
- Google Business Profile
- Tik Tok
Start by searching for your company on all relevant social media platforms to locate all profiles that may be directly or indirectly associated with your brand. This may include employee-created profiles, regionally specific profiles, and bots or spam accounts. The purpose is to understand where and how your brand is represented on social media platforms. Are there old profiles that may no longer be relevant or used? Does your company have an unused Pinterest profile that is no longer active? Keep note of all profiles to review further and consider which profiles are no longer relevant to your brand and should be deleted or removed.
Define Who Is Responsible for Your Organization’s Social Media Management and Access
When managing your social media, it’s important to consider who is responsible for the task. If your team consists of multiple individuals, it is crucial to ensure that the responsibilities are clearly defined. This includes creating posts, scheduling or publishing them, and responding to comments. In addition to managing the responsibilities, handling access to your social media profiles effectively is equally important. Implementing proper login and password management measures can help prevent unauthorized access and safeguard your accounts.
Ensure All Social Media Profiles and Bios Are Complete and Contain Relevant Service Keywords
A key step in a social media audit is ensuring that your profiles are optimized to include all relevant company details, allowing users to find comprehensive information about your business. Pay attention to your bio as well, ensuring it is complete and includes targeted keywords that accurately represent your product and service offerings.
Conduct An Analysis of Social Media Links
When evaluating your social media presence, assessing the links associated with your profiles is important. Firstly, check if your profiles contain appropriate links that direct users to your website, ensuring easy access for visitors. Secondly, identify broken links that must be fixed or redirected to the correct web pages. It is crucial to maintain a seamless browsing experience for users.
Ensure Your Social Media Profiles Have Been Verified
Are your profiles verified with the necessary badges or checks? If this is something your social media profiles qualify for, this should be applied to your profile. Review the requirements for each platform to ensure your organization is taking advantage of these verification statuses. Some examples include:
- Facebook (Verified Badge)
- Instagram (Blue Checkmark)
- Pinterest (Red Checkmark)
- LinkedIn (Blue Checkmark)
- Twitter (Blue Checkmark)
- TikTok (Blue Checkmark)
- Snapchat (Custom Emoji)
Assess The Content You’re Putting Out
Perform a Social Media Content Audit
To ensure your social media content’s effectiveness, conducting a comprehensive audit is crucial. Start by checking for outdated pinned posts that may no longer be relevant. Utilize the analytics provided by each platform to review the performance of your social media profiles over the past six months. Identify your top-performing posts and determine which content resonates best with your audience.
Assess Your Social Media Branding
When evaluating your social media branding, determine if your organization has clearly defined brand guidelines. It is essential to align your social media profiles with these guidelines. If your organization lacks established brand guidelines, creating an internal document and process is recommended to maintain consistency across all platforms.
Analyze Social Media Photos & Imagery
When evaluating your brand’s presence on social media, consider the quality of imagery being used and whether it aligns with your brand standards. Assess if your brand would benefit from a photo shoot to create a comprehensive library of branded photography that better represents your organization and enhances the personality of your social media profiles across all channels.
Does It Align with Your Audience Strategy?
Review Your Social Media Engagement
Are you setting goals for your social media performance? When assessing your performance, start by setting goals for each platform to help determine your focus and level of activity. Use tools like Google Analytics to measure conversions, website traffic, and lead generation.
Assess Your Social Media Platform Demographics
When aiming to connect with the appropriate audience on social media platforms, reviewing the demographics associated with each platform is crucial. By gaining insights into the overall platform demographics, you can determine if it aligns with your target audience and if it is the right platform to leverage for your goals.
Identify Your Competitors and Perform a Competitive Analysis
Identify 2 to 3 direct competitors and assess your performance against your competitors. Once you’ve fully audited your organization’s social media platforms and presence, it’s important to review your direct competitors to gain insight into industry trends and to locate gaps and opportunities that your organization’s social media presence can fill.
- How often they are posting on different social platforms
- How frequently are they posting
- What type of content are they posting/ are they tailoring their content to each platform and audience?
- Compare your brand against your competitors to gain a perspective of your social media landscape.
- Assess their top-performing posts and what type of posts are driving engagement.
- Develop an opportunity or gap analysis after reviewing your competitors. Are there any opportunities you can leverage, or are there gaps in the industry landscape that you can fill?
- Are they active on social platforms that you might not be using? Are there opportunities to consider using?
Determine Which Channels Are Best Suited for Your Brand and Digital Marketing Goals
After reviewing the above information, you’ll better understand which platforms best suit your digital marketing goals. Think about the audiences of each platform to help further narrow down which social media platforms you will want to focus your efforts on that will support your digital marketing and social media goals.
Develop a Social Media Plan
Once you have fully assessed the above steps, you will be armed with the information to develop a strategic social media plan that will reflect your current goals and allow you to target your social media messaging to the right audience. In addition to creating a targeted social media plan, you should schedule subsequent social media audits to ensure you remain relevant, on-brand and aligned with company goals.
We’re Here to Help.
If you’re looking for strategic support in performing a social media audit of your organization’s various social media platforms, Ontario SEO is here to guide you. Our team of specialized digital marketing experts can audit your current social media profiles and provide valuable insights to develop a social media strategy that aligns with organizational and marketing goals.
Interested in learning more about our services? Get in touch with us for a free consultation.