What are the steps to conduct a social media audit?

To effectively manage your social media presence, start by conducting a comprehensive inventory of your accounts: 1. List All Accounts:Include All Platforms: Document both official and unofficial social media accounts across various platforms. Use Search Tools: Utilize tools like Namechk or KnowEm to find all instances of your brand name and variations. 2. Record Essential Information: URL: Note the web address for each account. Username: Record the usernames associated with each account. Password: Ensure you have secure access information for all accounts.

One thing I've found helpful in conducting a social media audit is to meticulously inventory your accounts. Start by listing all your social media profiles, including those not in regular use. Verify each account's authenticity, ensuring they are official and secure. Check for consistent branding, updated bio information, and contact details across platforms. This foundational step is crucial for understanding your social media footprint, aligning your strategy, and identifying areas for improvement. It sets the stage for a comprehensive audit, guiding effective engagement and growth strategies.

Establish the current standing of your social accounts. Are they very active, gaining engagement, and growing? Or are they stale and in need of a relaunch? Track your social accounts for future use. Then, based on your brand industry establish where your audience is most active and which platform would need the most attention and strategic direction.

Define Objectives: Determine why you're conducting the audit (brand awareness, engagement). Choose Platforms: Identify all social media platforms relevant to your brand. Create Inventory: List all accounts, profiles, pages associated with your brand. Analyze Profiles Evaluate Content: Review posts for relevance, engagement, alignment with brand voice. Audience Analysis: Analyze demographics, engagement patterns Assess Performance: Measure key metrics like reach, engagement, conversions, etc. Competitive Analysis: Evaluate competitors' social media presence and performance. Identify Gaps: Determine areas for improvement and opportunities for growth. Develop Strategy: Use audit insights to refine social media strategy and tactics.

Once you have identified which platforms you will focus on, you need to identify your measurable growth performance metrics. Is the objective to grow your audience (followers), do you want to see more engagement on your content, do you want to see active collaborations with other brands, do you want to see your content being reshared first and foremost? First, identify a baseline for how the platforms are currently performing and then establish an attainable and measured KPI based on the strategic actions you will take. It is important to make sure that these goals are not unattainable.

API Integration tools like Supermetrics or Funnel can be used to pull organic and paid social platform data into a range of data stores, including Google Sheets or even database solutions. Ideally though, you should look to specialist social analytics tools like Sprout or Brandwatch, which feature pre-built analysis views and often include competitor benchmarking.

To analyze metrics in a social media audit, start by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) like reach, engagement, traffic, conversions, sentiment, and customer service for each account. Using native analytics (e.g., Facebook Insights) or third-party tools (like Hootsuite), gather both current and historical data, then compare against industry benchmarks or your own targets. Track trends to see which metrics are growing, declining, or stagnant. This step reveals what’s working, helps diagnose potential issues, and informs adjustments to optimize performance, ensuring each platform aligns with broader marketing goals.

It is important to evaluate your existing content on your social platforms. Does your content portray your brand message and resonate with your audience? Looking at your content can feed your relaunch strategy or share insights into slight changes that need to be made. Do you need to be more consistent? Can you incorporate different mediums in your content to better convey your message? Is your tone correct or can it be adjusted?

Use a reporting tool to sort your posts into the highest and the lowest performers and see what the posts in each group have in common. For example, if you sort your posts using engagement rate as your KPI, you may notice that many of the posts that fall into the higher-performing category are carousels. You could also find out if there is certain imagery that your audience is responding well to or calls to action that they don't care for. This will help you lean into the higher-performing tactics and cut out the lower-performers.

To conduct a content evaluation in a social media audit, examine the alignment between your brand’s identity and the posted content’s style, tone, and frequency. Analyzing audience engagement with each type of content reveals what resonates most, guiding future content strategies. Tools like BuzzSumo or SEMrush can help identify effective keywords, hashtags, and themes, offering insights into audience preferences. Document these findings for each platform, assessing whether the content not only adheres to brand values but also effectively meets audience needs. This approach ensures a consistent, targeted content strategy aligned with both brand and audience.

A competitor audit is helpful to identify how you can insert yourself into the conversation your audience is having without you. Shortlist the companies you want to monitor and measure against. Then, evaluate how active your competitors are on their social platforms. Specifically, what content are they sharing and how are they engaging with their audience? Even more importantly, identify what they are not doing right. Can you add more value to your social platforms by engaging more with your audience, posting more, or sharing interactive content?

When you're conducting your audit, pay attention to tactics that your competitors are using that you may be able to adopt into your own strategy as well as ones that aren't working that you can leave out. Make sure that when you do start using higher-performing tactics, you aren't copying your competitors. Instead, shape them to your brand and make them your own. We had a client who wanted to get more engagement on LinkedIn. We noticed that a competitor had been using polls effectively. We started using polls in our own strategy and created questions that our subject matter experts could also weigh in on. Then, we added a high-performing tactic of our own - carousels - as follow-ups to the polls to keep engagement up.

To conduct a competitor audit on social media, start by identifying your primary competitors and noting which platforms they prioritize. Tools like SimilarWeb and Social Blade can help you assess their follower counts, engagement rates, and content styles. For each competitor, analyze their strengths (e.g., high engagement, unique content), weaknesses (e.g., low follower growth), opportunities (e.g., trending topics they could leverage), and threats (e.g., newer competitors emerging). Use this data to benchmark your own social media performance, identifying areas for improvement and differentiating factors to strengthen your unique positioning.

Now that you have done your competitor audit you can evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and as a result, you can identify ways that you can bring something different to the industry and take advantage of a gap that has been left open. A gap could be a platform that is not being utilized in your industry where you can reach an untapped audience. For example, TikTok may not be popular but you could develop a strategy with content that attracts a new audience

- 🧩 Systematically collect data from all your social media accounts, noting key metrics like engagement, reach, and follower growth. - 📊 Analyze performance by comparing your metrics against your goals and industry benchmarks. - 📈 Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to understand your social media presence. - 📝 Record insights and actionable recommendations for each account, focusing on improvements and new opportunities. - 🚀 Update your strategy using frameworks like SOSTAC or RACE, defining goals, audience, content plan, budget, and timeline. - 🔍 Implement and monitor your updated strategy, tracking progress and adjusting as needed.

Strategy will be the driving force to your success following a social media audit. Evaluate your findings alongside your brand ethos, objectives, and purpose. Identify what your strengths are and how you can capitalize on them to make a difference in your strategy. Map out how you will differentiate your content, how you will engage with your audience and which platforms will be your main focus. Allocate your available resources, set attainable benchmarks and goals and communicate your strategy to get team members on board.

After completing the audit, it's crucial to refine your social media strategy. This includes adjusting goals, targeting, and content plans based on insights. Tools like SOSTAC or RACE can guide you in structuring your strategy. Revising elements like the value proposition, budget, and timeline ensures alignment with your brand's needs. Continually tracking progress and performance after implementation will help in making data-driven decisions and ensure your strategy evolves with audience behavior and trends, ultimately enhancing social media effectiveness.

Revisit your social media audit regularly. Based on your resources and capacity, set a cadence for competitor and social audience. The social media landscape is constantly evolving so it is important to evaluate your industry, your presence on social media and your competitor's activity. Re-run your audits, adjust your strategy and reallocate your resources. It is also important to remain committed to your brand image and determine whether you need to adjust your strategy or if your consistent efforts are paying off.