Conducting a Social Media Audit

We’re one month in to 2019, and now that everything has calmed down it is time to conduct your first Social Media Audit of 2019. Conducting an audit is so important that you shouldn’t only be completing it once per year. Before you can think strategically about your social media usage this year, you need to take a look at what has and has not been working for your brand throughout 2018. Hopefully, you still have your audit from last time (it’s ok if you don’t) as it is nice to look back and see what you made changes to previously, and compare that to what is happening now. You are going to think about your goals for each account, and evaluate if your strategy has been working the way you wanted it to. No matter where your social media is currently going, this audit will help you to create a clear and concise strategy to give your social media a boost in the right direction.

1. Create an organized document to keep track of everything that is going on. The things you will want to include in this document are:

• the link to your profile – http://instagram.com/carmellasocial
• social handle – @carmellasocial
• the internal person or team responsible for managing the account
• the mission statement for the account
• the top three posts in terms of engagement
• three audience metrics such as brand awareness, growth, and reach. Check the social media terms glossary
• key demographic information- where is your audience from? Who are they? Why are they here?

1. Track down ALL accounts. This is important to make sure you don’t have old accounts that are running without your knowledge. Having two or three different accounts for the same brand may be confusing for people, unless they are differentiated by location. (Canada or USA)
2. Make sure all of your accounts are completely on brand. This is the time to pull out your marketing style guide (if you don’t have one, you should consider creating one to ensure whoever is in charge of marketing and branding are on the same page). Look through the posts, profile photo, page title, pinned posts, stories, etc to ensure that you are creating a fluid and cohesive image for your brand. If something looks out of place in your IG grid (for example) you can simply archive it. Contact us at hello@carmellaconsulting.com to request a PDF copy for free.
3. Now is the time to recognize your best overall posts. Which one garnered the most engagement, is on brand, and saw the most reach? Analyze why this post did so well in relation to others, and you can use that information to build your strategy. You can also lump in an overall performance review of the account at this time, as you analyze top posts over underperforming posts.
4. Get to know your audience. What do they like? What do they dislike? Take a look at your top influencers (those who engage with your brand on the regular) and see who else they are following. What do their accounts look like? When do they post? When are they online? Getting to know the 411 on your most valuable influencers will give you insights on creating a strategy that will work for your audience. It doesn’t hurt to also take a look at competitors they may be following, and analyze their relationship with that brand in comparison to yours.
5. Ensure the right people have access to your accounts. Centralize who has the passwords to access the accounts, that way you won’t have to change the passwords every time someone leaves your company.
6. Decide which social media channels are for you. Are all of the channels working in your favour? Or are you putting effort into something that is not offering an ROI.

The biggest thing to remember here is that audits should be completed on a regular basis. Your strategy may work for you in the beginning, but how are you going to know if it is not if you aren’t looking into your brand’s online performance? Take the time, analyze, and re-strategize and you are bound to see results over time.

If you are too busy, and don’t have time to DIY, we are available to complete a social media performance review for you.