Social Media Audits 101

Everything you need to know about routine social media audits.

Conducting a social media audit is a crucial part of developing or updating a social media marketing strategy.

Simply put, an audit is a quick check-up for your social media profiles. It uses data to show you what’s working, what’s not working, and what you can do to make it better.

Don’t know how to run a social media audit? Don’t worry, it’s not that difficult – and I’m here for you!

Benefits of Social Media Audits

Listen, the first thing you need to know when going to get a social media audit done – it’s not a one-and-done. One of the benefits of an audit is it can be used over and over again to continue to improve and fine-tune your social media strategy. Here are some more benefits that come along with getting an audit:

• Shows you what needs work and what is working against you.

• Expert feedback from professionals who spend every day studying the latest trends and changes

• Clarifies the activity you see – why you might be losing followers or why followers aren’t converting to sales

• Less expensive than having a professional develop a whole new strategy, rework, or deep dive for you.

• Delivers results fast, and usually budget-friendly.

• You can see what real social media success results look like and figure out how to get them for yourself.

• Get into better habits of working and maintaining a strong, successful social presence.

Cost of Social Media Audits

That’s one of the things I love about social media audits – if you’re budget conscience, you can even do it yourself! While I don’t usually recommend this because it’s better to have an expert run your audit, with a few resources, you can DIY it. As for price, it depends on the size of your accounts and the number of platforms you’re auditing. But social media audits can go from $300 to upwards of $5,000.

Where To Get A Social Media Audit

You can outsource it from any marketing expert (*cough* contact me here *cough*) or do it yourself! Just make sure whoever you trust for a social media audit knows what you want and is a good fit for your brand.

If you’d rather DIY your audit, here’s the template I personally use to track my social media data! And this website provides all the steps you need to know to do it yourself.

Platforms To Audit

The number of platforms you want to audit is entirely up to you, but I always say yes to every platform. A social media audit is a way of assessing your existing social media accounts and their performance, so I recommend including all of them.

However, different industries and brands have different needs, so they will have different social media platforms. For fashion, apparel, and lifestyle brands, Instagram and Pinterest could be the most important platforms, despite not being the largest social networks.

Whichever platforms you use, running an audit will show you if your social media marketing strategy is cohesive across all your platforms and if it’s heading in the right direction.

Also, sometimes if you have a more substantial presence on one platform, the other can collect dust and be neglected without you even realizing what’s happening.

I always encourage a total in-house spring cleaning sweep with platforms and audits because, in the end, you need all your players working with the same team strategy.

Measuring Data With Social Media Audits

If you don’t look at the data social media accounts offer, you’d be surprised how many different numbers and statistics they’ll share with you. And some of it can be confusing or overwhelming. So what data do you want to measure?

Engagement, reach, impressions, impressions by day, profile clicks, story taps forward, literally everything you can think of.  All these numbers give insight into how your audience is engaging with your social media content.

Use those numbers to review what type of content is more successful, and what type of content is the least successful.

Does each platform utilize the recommended photo and video requirements to maximize and show off the content you’re posting? All these things are essential when trying to have one cohesive strategy across platforms. It’s easy for these things to be forgotten and for a strategy to become old quickly.

Social media is continually growing and changing, and whatever you have to do to be successful online is changing. Make sure you’re up to date with an audit! Even if you have an established brand, you should continue to audit your social media strategy regularly. Use your audit to learn from your mistakes and find areas of opportunity for a successful social strategy!

And if you’re looking for someone to do it for you – don’t worry. I’ve got you covered over here.