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Planable is the best client-facing social media tool we’ve ever used and we’ve used a lot.
Not too long ago, everyone was discussing how email marketing is a thing of the past. Then, digital marketing specialists everywhere realized, and I quote, that "Email marketing is not dead." Frankly, I agree. I've seen firsthand how emails, especially newsletters,...
With billions of users worldwide, social media is constantly evolving. It’s changing in the way people use it, it’s changing in the form of algorithms, and it’s changing with each new platform. Social media marketers need to keep up to ensure that their efforts are moving the needle in the right direction.
If you don’t regularly track your social media metrics, you won’t be able to improve your social media strategy. That’s where a social media audit comes in–to see what’s working and what’s not in time to ensure your campaigns succeed.
This article will show you how to conduct a social media audit in seven foolproof steps–and use it as a growth tool to upsell your clients, grow their brand’s social presence, and scale your services.
In this article, we will explore:
Let’s begin.
A social media audit is the process of measuring the key social metrics of your overall strategy, allowing you to make incremental improvements to your campaigns and reassess your overall strategy. It assesses a brand’s presence across all its social media channels and gives actionable insights into achieving social media goals. After all, significant results don’t happen overnight — except in the case of going viral if you’re lucky–so you’ll need to track your metrics periodically to continually optimize your strategy.
Social media use has grown every year over the last decade. And with three-quarters of the world’s population using it, this number is only expected to increase.
But with significant growth comes significant change. And a lot of the time, it’s hard to predict. What might have worked six months ago may not continue to drive the same results for you today, so a social media audit helps you pinpoint what’s working and what isn’t on a regular basis to keep you on track.
Tip: Do a social media audit before planning your next month’s social media calendar! Regular social media audits help you catch onto a good wave or make adjustments to your content if necessary.
While there isn’t a catchall rule to this question, the simple answer is often enough. Social media moves fast, and so should you. You wouldn’t want to wait three to six months and watch your missed opportunities while left scrambling to come up with a new approach.
Some social media managers and agencies do audits on a monthly basis–especially if they have a higher volume of posts–while others conduct social media audits every quarter. Each client might have a different pace, so you’ll be able to establish the cadence of your audits by asking yourself:
Your social media audit should include key social media metrics from every platform you’re on–even the ones you’re not active on. Your audit should include the following five social media analytics:
The information above will give you all the tools you need to make your social media audit worthwhile.
How often you choose to do an audit will help determine your timeframe. If you’re doing a monthly audit, include the last month’s results and compare them to every other month in the past 6-12 months using bar charts. Quarterly audits would take your last quarter’s marketing results and compare it to the past three quarters, for instance. The rule of thumb is to isolate a period of time you switched up your strategy, and then compare it to past periods.
Using live social media dashboards will help you zoom in and out until you gain actionable insights that make your social media audits worthwhile and showcase how your campaigns results are progressing against goals.
Whether you’re a freelance social media manager or a marketing agency managing clients’ social media accounts, these steps will ensure your audits are consistently gathering actionable insights.
This is the time to locate your client’s profiles and handles. Even the ones you don’t regularly use. It’ll be helpful to compile this information into a streamlined platform as opposed to spreadsheets to make it easier to keep track of any noteworthy to-dos.
Planable brings all your social media accounts into one place.
Now that you have all your client’s social media accounts listed, you’ll need to check them out from an outsider’s perspective. This step helps you answer the question: does my social media account make sense to a new visitor? What would they think of our brand based on what they see?
Here’s a list of what to look for when doing this top-level analysis of your client’s social media accounts:
Snippet from AgencyAnalytics’ Guide to Social Media Image Sizes
Now it’s time to measure your results. Does Facebook have a larger audience growth, but Instagram has more engagement?
You’ll look at the Facebook, Instagram audit metrics of the most recent posts in each platform, including:
Instead of listing these out, show the trends and changes using data visualization by transforming raw data into intuitive charts and graphs for easier and faster analysis.
Next, you’ll want to look at your larger strategy–which platforms are performing better? Which would benefit from a budget increase?
A social media dashboard allows you to analyze your client’s results at a glance, show how you’re pacing against goals, and easily compare every social media platform’s performance with one another.
So how did you do? Now that you’ve seen what’s been working and what hasn’t, take a look at your goals. Were they too unrealistic? Can you increase them? What can you do to reach them next month?
Ensure each of your social media profiles has unique goals that reflect your current status on the platform and social media benchmarks. However, larger goals tend to revolve around:
Your goals need to be measurable, trackable, and time-bound in order to retain clients over the long run. Consider combining your social media efforts and tying them to other business metrics such as total ad spend.
Using a client reporting platform makes it easy to keep track of your goals and objectives every step of the way.
Now that your results and goals are all crystal clear, what are your next steps? Should you put more effort into one platform over another? What types of content will perform the best on each platform? Is there a new social media platform you’d like to add to your client’s plate?
It’s better to focus on quality over quantity rather than spread yourself too thin across various platforms. But if you watch your metrics closely and streamline your social media workflow, you’ll be well on your way to optimizing every channel to reap the benefits they have to offer. And with a faster social media approval process, you’ll be able to incorporate the insights from your marketing metrics and efficiently manage multiple social media accounts.
The final step is to summarize your results for your client and show off your results! But with new data coming in every day, it’s a good idea to put your reporting on autopilot and let the latest social media marketing metrics populate for you in real-time.
That way, all that’s left to do is add your personalized commentary for your client on their social media performance as a whole and make your recommendations.
As a marketing agency or marketing manager, it’s essential to streamline your workflows and scale. Each client and platform shouldn’t be an additional workload–and your social media metrics cannot be an afterthought. They need to be an integral part of your social media strategy and day-to-day activities.
Gather all your clients’ key social media metrics from every social media platform they’re all–and pop them into one platform. Otherwise, it’ll take you all day to log in and out of various accounts, and you’ll have less time to do the creative work that makes your social media content stand out.
A social media audit is also a great way to onboard new clients and impress them with a clear plan of action or even upsell your agency’s services by adding another channel to their list!
The possibilities are endless–as long as you track them.
Melody is a marketing manager, writer, and startup consultant. She builds communication bridges thru multichannel storytelling, strategic partnerships, advertising and go-to-market strategy.
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