Have you recently updated your social media accounts? It’s time to get rid of your cobwebs! Learn how to conduct a performance audit for your social media by focusing on the most relevant elements.
T can be difficult to monitor your social media accounts, especially if, like us, you have several. You can have specific accounts by the market (like Coca-Cola … or Talkwalker) or by location (as is the case with Hilton Hotels), or of course, be present on all social networks, from Ello to Whatsapp.
In a Hootsuite Corporate Social Media Study, 84% of businesses believe their brand’s presence on social media is important to staying competitive. Oh yes, nothing more!
According to their study, organizations are mainly concerned about their ability to combine digital and business objectives (47%), strategy coordination between departments (41%), and brand image protection (32%). It is also significant that 60% of companies do not calculate their social media ROI and that 60% of companies do not measure their community’s ROI.
Whatever the size of your business, it is important to assess how you are doing on social networks to take stock and optimize your strategy in the medium and long term.
Why take the time to audit your social networks
A social media performance audit is a real health check of your brand across all different channels. It’s an assessment of your brand’s digital presence. The idea is to get out of the day-to-day work of managing these different accounts and identify major trends and things that can be easily improved.
Please note: this is not about making a simple list of your accounts with their respective number of subscribers.
Here’s what a good social media audit should accomplish:
- This is the ultimate test of how effective your social media efforts are;
- This is the starting point for starting to develop or improve your strategy as a whole, as well as for each social network;
- It reveals important trends and KPIs to add to your weekly reporting;
- It allows you to analyze your brand from a consumer perspective;
- It allows you to educate internal staff and offer a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the team’s results, goals, and vision.
Keep these goals in mind: you need to quantify your performance on social media and optimize your strategy over the long term for better results.
The more you invest in this process, the more you get out of it. Here is a list of types of audits to consider. Pick the most relevant ones to your brand, which will help you discover areas for improvement.
Who are the people involved in a social media audit?
Before determining which individuals to invite to a pre-audit, it would be a good idea to determine who will be the most important. If this is just your brand, you can skip this step. But in almost all other cases, it is recommended to involve more than one person in the business.
Add to your list:
- Social media or community management teams
- The teams in charge of customer support
- Content creators
- The best brand ambassadors among company employees
Your audit seeks to identify the topics that make your audience react, as well as the reasons that push them to be interested in your content. The people in charge of your company’s social media strategy talk to your customers every day. Still, your content creators and company ambassadors have their reasons for making your strategy successful. Therefore, it is important to involve your children in this process. Before you begin, also ask everyone to question existing processes. “We always did it like that” is not a good explanation.
Make a list of all your accounts: the good, the bad (and the forgotten)
First, take an inventory of your accounts (without forgetting any!).
We’ve all been there: we arrive on a social network full of possibilities with the best intentions, but the hellish pace of our days forces us to focus on priority networks (do not go to Talkwalker’s Pinterest account).
Even if you have enough time for all your social media, that doesn’t mean there aren’t strangers in the battalion. Imagine the following scenario: A year ago, your Reddit-loving team member left the company in a hurry, and the handover wasn’t as complete as expected. Without you knowing it, a deserted Reddit account is slowly wasting away in the dark corners of the internet, much to the chagrin of the people it interacted with regularly.
Okay, that’s unlikely (at least for Reddit), but you know where I’m coming from: your company may have accounts you’ve never heard of, and now is the time to do them. Find and decide on their future.
You probably don’t have time to scour the internet for your business accounts. So here is a little tool to make your job easier: Knowem, which will give you an overview of all your accounts in just a few seconds.
Check your biographies, profile photos, and “about” sections
By making a good first impression, you will earn the admiration of your audience. Someone who does not know your brand will often discover you through your social media accounts.
Make sure all your addresses, phone numbers, and descriptions have been updated. The images on your profiles are also very important: they must be of good quality and in a flexible format to best adapt to all devices (PCs, mobile, tablet, etc.). Were you to adjust the book’s parts based on who you were trying to meet, they would each be so different. If not, be consistent.
Take stock of the growth of your communities
A brand’s community’s growth is one of those declining performance indicators that fewer professionals pay attention to in their monthly reporting process. However, it is interesting to take stock in an audit and see if the trend is rather positive.
You will find this information in a few clicks in your Facebook Insights, or for a more general view of each social network, in your monitoring tool (growth rate, number of followers, etc.).
Their number of subscribers has grown thanks to several tweet exchanges with their direct competitors and some of their consumers exponentially. Based on your growth rate and your most engaging posts, talk to your team about your brand’s “voice” and things you might try in the future.
Analyze your audience
There’s no arguing: you need to know your audience as much as possible to speak to them better. Compare your community’s engagement rate on each platform and try to identify the factors that influence it.
Analyze your demographics (country of origin, professions, interests, gender) and discuss with your team the topics that have made your audience react in recent months. Sometimes an anecdote can help you understand what the data suggests.
Rate your own social media activity
Go to your analytics tool and check your post rate on each platform. How often do you post? It may be time to redirect your communities to your more active accounts on other platforms.
Compare your audience’s peaks of activity with yours to identify new characteristics about your fans.
Analyze the distribution of your posts. Are you posting enough visual content? Which post gets the most engagement on social media? Do you post videos? How many people watch them until the end?
Where do you concern about your competition and your business goals?
You might be tempted to do a full audit of your competition’s activity as well, but keep in mind that vanity metrics like follower count or engagement won’t give you strategic insight. You don’t know how much your competition is spending on social media, so don’t overemphasize these metrics. Do a qualitative analysis: on which platforms are they active? Where are they missing? Why? What is their voice? What is their strategy?
It is very important to link your monthly reporting between your activities and your business objectives, but it is also an important part of an audit. Discuss the results with your team before deciding whether to change the strategy. Are your conversions coming from a single social network? How much time do you invest in it compared to other platforms?
How often should I do a social media performance audit?
Some people recommend a monthly audit, but I don’t think it makes sense. You need to rely on solid data for your monthly reporting, that’s true, but you don’t need to check your bios or your Twitter post rate at this frequency.
You also run the risk of losing your patience if you repeat this process every month without seeing any tangible results. I recommend that you do two audits per year in the first year, then settle for one annual audit.
If you need help with Social Media Marketing in Pakistan, you can always discuss it with one of Talkwalker’s consultants. Every day, we help major brands to optimize their presence on social networks.
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