Social Media Essentials

With social media tools and strategies evolving day-by-day, what might have been working for your brand a few months ago could prove utterly useless today. To complicate matters further, chances are your competitors – who have bigger budgets – are probably ahead of the game, which brings us to our main point: you must audit your company’s social media regularly. A social media audit will not only help you monitor what your competition is doing right, it’ll also help you evaluate what you need to initiate, eliminate and optimize. So, let’s walk you through six steps to conduct a quick social media audit –

1. Create A Spreadsheet

Open up a new spreadsheet in Google Docs that is accessible to only key members of your team. Create a tab for each month, and add the following sections in each one of them –

a) social media handle name
b) social media handle URL
c) login info
d) names of people with access to login info
e) number of followers
f) number of comments
g) number of likes
h) number of shares
i) number of DMs
j) number of posts
k) metrics (i.e. Web traffic)
l) top 5 performing posts
m) insights / analytics
n) ad campaigns
o) other notes
p) competitors

Once you’re done creating these sections, begin filling them out.

2. Check Your Basics

At the same time you’re working on step #1, also double check if all of your social media handles are even up-to-date with the latest information, which could range from bios and URLs to contact information and logos. Most importantly, please do not hesitate to delete any unnecessary accounts. It is better to focus on a handful of relevant platforms than spread yourself thin across any and every space.

3. Review The Data

Once you’ve filled out your spreadsheet’s sections for a few months, you will easily be able to identify the following –

a) are new customers coming in?
b) is Web traffic linked to social media activity?
c) are new followers joining?
d) are old followers leaving?
e) are followers from your target group?
f) are particular posts doing better than others?
g) are ad campaigns offering any impact?
h) are people interacting with your brand?
i) are posts going out consistently?
j) are particular days/timings better for posting?

4. Monitor Your Competition

Monitor the social media handles of at least 2-3 competitors and note down which posts are performing best for them – you might find some interesting information that you can incorporate into your own campaigns, such as content ideas or better hashtags.

5. Revise Your Strategy

Based upon the analysis you draw through answering the above questions from points #3 and #4, spend a few minutes to jot down the following –

* List down immediate goals + metrics to measure success
* List down long-term goals + metrics to measure success
* Build a new editorial calendar that has a specified frequency of posts and a good mix of content buckets that are relevant.
* List down action steps to obtain the necessary images, videos, copy and information to put together content as per your new editorial calendar

6. Monitor Progress

Keep monitoring progress with social media strategy modifications every month to pull the plug on low performing campaigns and allocate more time, energy and funds to campaigns that are drawing real results. Remember, social media auditing is not a one time project – this needs to happen on an ongoing basis.

We hope these six steps help you audit your company’s social media thoroughly so you can improve your strategy to meet your end-goals. If you need help with putting together a tailored social media campaign, contact us here.

Sources –
> https://neilpatel.com/blog/social-media-audit/
> www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-audit/264849/
> www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-is-a-social-media-audit-how-to-do-it/