What Is a Social Platform Audit, and What Should My Business Look For?
Now, I know what you are thinking. “An audit? It isn’t tax season!” Well this is a social media audit, and is way more fun than getting audited by the IRS, I can assure you.
A social media audit is a review of social media profiles and strategies to determine which platforms are optimized in order to reach social channel goals for your business. This audit will help your organization define and showcase its brand awareness.
Projected social users will reach more than 3 billion by 2021. With such an intimidating statistic, you will want to make sure you have your social media outlets in working order for your business in order to produce the best strategic results. Let’s take a closer look at what factors are most important in a social media audit.
Review Every Social Media Profile You Have
First, you need to build a spreadsheet of which social platforms your company is currently using. Put these profiles with their names, URL’s, and password credentials in the spreadsheet so they are organized in one document. From there, you can evaluate which platforms are actually getting posted to on a regular basis.
It is a good idea to Google your business and make sure there aren’t any other sneaky profiles hanging out on the world wide web that you don’t have access to. Users on Facebook have the ability to create business pages based on checking in. If no one has claimed that page, it can still exist in Facebook and show up in search results. This unmanaged page can offer an unflattering portrayal of your brand. If you become conscious of one of these types of pages, claim it and merge it with your current Facebook business page. That way it can be properly managed, and you can control what followers are posting on your profile.
Explore Each Social Channel Profile
Once you review each platform your business is currently using, it is time to then analyze the profiles starting with the engagement metrics. Facebook Business shows many insights for a week or 28 days at a time. Your marketing team can keep an ongoing spreadsheet of month to month Facebook analytics, so you can compare last quarter to this quarter.
When looking at analytics, start with an overview of social reach and user engagement with posts. This will tell you how many people your posts are reaching, and how many of those reached actually engage with your posts. If you’re not sure what qualifies as audience engagement, it includes a like, share, or comment.
Once you analyze the reach and engagement of each post, the next step is for your team to categorize which types of posts are performing the best. Types of posts to categorize include videos, images, educational, or promotional. Once this type of research has been conducted and noted, you can examine which types of posts your audience is best interacting with. Which posts are receiving the most shares, and which the most likes and comments? This is important to determine when creating a social media calendar for the following months and quarters—especially when your business is planning a seasonal campaign.
Are Your Social Posts and Channels Branded?
Each social platform allows your business to upload a thumbnail image, and usually a cover photo as well. This creates consistency across your social profiles. When a user visits your profile, you want to limit brand confusion by sending a unified message across all your social channels. You can accomplish this for your brand’s social profiles by using your organization’s logo in both your profile thumbnail, and your cover photo.
Another way to keep your brand front and center is to use your logo as a watermark in social posts. This strategy will again allow for consistency, while also reinforcing brand recognition when your followers see these posts in their newsfeeds. Also, having your posts branded with a logo will prevent any other brands from stealing or reusing any of your original images.
Who Is Your Audience?
When your marketing team organizes your advertising strategy, their first step is to research the demographics of your target audience. Demographics include gender, age, and geographic location of those you are targeting with your posts. Since Facebook offers great audience metrics, we are going to use this platform as an example again.
Now, while you may already have an idea about who your target audience is, this data will show you exactly who is following your profile and interacting with your posts. It is your job to determine if they are really your focus demographic. If they aren’t, you may need to alter what type of posts you are creating. Your other option is to create ads that specifically target certain people and cities in order to really hit the people you want to interact with your brand.
Determine ROI
Are you utilizing social ads in your strategy? As described above, ads are a great way to aim your brand at specific audiences. Also, ads produce fast results and analytics in order to determine if you are creating and spending marketing dollars in the right place or on the right platform.
Sprout Social provides this equation to calculate social ROI:
(Earnings – Costs) x 100 / Costs
Worth noting, each brand is different and has diverse goals. One company’s goal may be to increase followers this quarter, while another’s is to increase sales. Altering your strategy in order to achieve those goals through social is important.
Is Your Business Meeting Monthly Social Goals?
Now that you have gone through a social audit and calculated an ROI, you can ask your team a few questions. Are all of these current social channels right for your business? Is your department spreading themselves too thin by posting on every single social platform known to man? With this audit you can home in on your efforts. The goal of this audit is to allow your team to work smarter, not harder. Happy Auditing!