In this business landscape where every brand is on social media it's essential to evaluate whether you are doing right on social channels or your strategy and goals are aligned with your business and audience.

In this case, a social media audit is a tool for brands to analyze their performance. Conducting a regular audit after a specific time is a necessity in this social media era.

Today, I will tell you the steps for how to conduct the social media audit and what essential things you need to do. Let’s dive into it.

What is a social media audit?

A social media audit is a thorough analysis, assessment, and investigation of a person's or brand's presence across numerous social media platforms.

It goes beyond a superficial look, going into the complexities of social media profiles and content strategy.

The basic parts of a social media audit include

• Competitor analysis

• Content performance

• The consistency of branding

• Audience engagement analytics

• The amount and quality of social media profiles

The primary purpose is to get useful insights into the effectiveness of current social media efforts and identify areas for improvement.

A social media audit is a strategy-making tool for businesses and any personal brand.

But what do you need to do in this comprehensive examination?

Essentials of Social Media Audit

The essential thing that you must have for a social media audit is a virtual assistant.

Because for audit, whether you are using free tools, relying on default features on different platforms, or investing in paid tools, you just need a digital expert.

Virtual assistants are individuals that by operating on their laptops can manage the complexities and workings of the audit process efficiently.

Their experience and expertise guarantee complete analysis and can extract the insights that can repurpose your brand's strategy and marketing goal.

But to hire a competitive virtual assistant business owner must be familiar with the whole steps of social media audit. So let’s start from scratch.

Learn more: Top 7 trends of virtual assistants in 2024.

1- Gather all your social media accounts

For a social media audit gathering your social media profiles across all channels is the first step.

For example, make a list of social channels on which you have business accounts like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

After making a list, collect all the relevant information like

• What is the purpose of having a business profile on every social media channel?

• Are your profiles optimized with the algorithms of different social media platforms?

• Identify the forgotten profiles that you once made and don’t post there.

• Centralized the management of all accounts for better audit procedures.

• Check the social media buttons and links that are on your apps or website, or check your website buttons or links that you mention on your social profiles.

By collecting all the relevant information across various channels it's easy for you to conduct an audit.

The most important insight you get from this is that you don’t need to be present on every social media platform. It depends on your audience and business.

You can exclude or include any social media channel in your business strategy by having the above-mentioned information.

Also, update your account's info, bio, URLs, and any other things that require updating for more engagement and organic reach.

Learn more: How to increase your social media followers?

2- Tick your branding checklist

Branding is actually how you present your business or company to your audience.

For social media audit checking into your branding is paramount. Evaluate your brand's representation across all social media platforms. Branding must be consistent across all social channels.

Check all the following points related to branding during a social media audit

• Does your profile name reflect your company and business?

• Do your social media accounts have the same profile name across all social platforms?

• Are profile pictures and cover images being same and mirror your brand's personality?

• Are bios across various social channels optimized, engaging, concise, and communicative about your brand’s message?

• Is your company’s contact information being same and accurate on all social media accounts?

• Is your account on any social media platform verified with the blue tick?

• Does your content, visual tone, and messages match your brand’s individuality?

• Are fonts, colors, and imagery in your visual content establishing your brand style and identity?

The most important of all is your brand's identity across all platforms is recognizable and must be connected and cohesive across all channels.

One of the best ways to analyze your profile and branding, view your profile as a follower, not as a business manager.

By auditing these branding elements, you can improve your brand's identity and create a more unified experience for your audience.

Learn more: Benefits of social media marketing

3- Analyze your goals

Analyzing or identifying the marketing goals for social media audit is the most important thing in this whole inspecting procedure.

Your social media goals are the map guiding you toward achieving your desired results. During an audit, you must take care of whether your targeted goal is achieved or not.

Businesses can have different marketing goals like

• Raising awareness across all social media account

• Generating leads through social media platforms

• Engagement and meaningful full conversations on social channels

• Drive sales through social media profile

Bonus tip: Do not establish long-term or unmeasurable goals. Set smart goals instead. Once you set your purpose translate them into smart goals.

Smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Here is a quick review of setting smart goals.

• Specific: Instead of increasing engagement, aim to increase average post comments by 20% in the next quarter.

• Measurable: Numbers speak louder than words, so measure your success with tools like likes, shares, website clicks, and lead generation forms.

• Attainable: Pushing your limits is important, but don't set yourself up for disappointment with unrealistic expectations.

• Time-bound: Define a timeframe for achieving your goals. Deadlines help you stay on track.

Each Social media platform presents unique opportunities. Tailor your goals to each platform's strengths. Social media goals are not static. As you learn and grow, adapt your goals accordingly.

Learn more: How to increase organic reach on Instagram?

4- Analyse your content performance

Your content is a gem in the eyes of your customers. Auditing your content performance can unlock the secrets to social media success.

Remember different platforms have different preferences and posting the same piece of content on all platforms would not generate the required marketing results.

The first thing to consider about a content audit is to inspect your top-performing posts. The matrices for top performance include the number of shares likes or comments.

Analyze each platform to discover what sparks on each channel. For example, observe individually what type and format of content works on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

In addition, video marketing is booming. So, evaluate which platform is based on video marketing.

Remember that social media is a dynamic place and trends change in a blink of an eye. What works today, might not work tomorrow. So always audit or analyze your content and keep an eye on the trending ideas.

Learn more: How to keep the human touch in AI-generated content?

5- Review your competitors

In the battle for social media success, competitor analyses are formidable yet imperative. Gain valuable insights from their success and failures can help you in your social media audit.

Study shows that by analyzing competitor content, brands can increase their engagement by 30%. For social media audit the things that you must review for your competitor are

Examine their mix of content and frequency engagement metrics.

• Check the type of content that resonates most with their audience. You and your competitors have the same audience to target. So what works for them can also work for you.

• Identify which social media platforms they are utilizing. Are there any? platforms they are neglecting and that you capitalize on?

• Look at their customer service and their communication language and tone.

• Identify their gaps, and vulnerabilities and learn from them.

PRO-TIP: Remember always to learn from your competitive analysis not copying. Don’t imitate, instead innovate.

Find your unique proposition and rebuild your strategy if you feel some gaps in yours. This could be a specific niche focus, a unique content format, or a distinct brand personality.

Learn more: What is Content Marketing?

6-Understand your audience

Your brand’s success is based on your audience and to evaluate them is crucial for social media audit. When it comes to inspecting your audience, keep in mind the following elements.

• Which age group of people are you targeting?

• Understanding your audience's interests helps you create content that resonates and inspires

• Knowing the geographic location of the brand's audience helps in understanding culture and allows targeted regional campaigns.

• When your followers are most active and engaged on social media platforms.

• Do they prefer funny videos or informative articles? Adapt your content to their tastes

• Analyze that if your audience is present on any other platform, be there.

It is a necessity in the digital age to be active and topmost on social media platforms. So, whenever your audience decides to buy you pop up in their minds.

Study shows that 78% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they follow on social media.

You're not just connecting with individuals, you're building a community.

By considering all the preferences and interests of your audience you can get the best results of your social media audit that helps you.

Learn more: Benefits of hiring a marketing virtual assistant

7- Getting ready for a new strategy from audit results

Businesses that repurpose their strategy from the social media audit can significantly see the improvement.

Audits provide a comprehensive view of any business's online presence. Businesses can identify weaknesses and strengths and then utilize this data to make an online impact.

Competitor analysis, trending social media platforms, calculating ROI, looking into your customer response services, need to delete or add any other account of your business, which platform generates more results and which least.

All the data inspected from these elements help any brand rebuild its strategy for social media platforms.

But remember it's crucial to learn from your weaknesses and transform your challenges into new opportunities.

All social media platforms provide many prospects that you might not be utilizing at the moment. So, think about them and leverage them strategically.

Learn more: How can a virtual assistant help you in content writing?

Conclusion

Conducting a social media audit appears as an upsurge. It teaches you how to master the art of making strategy from tested and extracted data.

Just like it’s difficult to handle the intricacies of any social media platform for business owners, similarly, it’s way too hard to navigate the platform's evaluations, content performance, insights, and audience understanding.

Social Media experts are the solution to your social media audit. You can find an expert virtual assistant who knows the ins and outs of social media platforms and can analyze the performance of your social media accounts.

After careful evaluation and assessment, they can then identify areas of improvement and opportunities in your current social media marketing strategy.

At Vaforus we have a team of social media experts who can take a deep dive into your social media accounts and then prepare an audit presentation tailored for your business.

If you would like us to conduct a free social media audit for your business, you can schedule it here.