Strategies for a Comprehensive Social Media Audit

Over 80% of online businesses believe that social media marketing plays a significant role in converting visitors into high-paying customers. Social media platforms can considerably influence buyers' purchasing mindset. This is why the right social media marketing strategy is a must if you want to see your business on top.

However, it’s quite an ardent task to curate an effective social media marketing strategy in an ever-changing social media landscape.

Thus, before launching your social media strategy, it’s always a good idea to run a social media audit to evaluate your audience and the current social media platforms you are using. It helps to improve your campaign and drive better results. This article looks into various facets of social media audits and the way they can enhance brand awareness.

What is Social Media Audit?

Social media auditing is the process of optimizing your social media profiles for better reach and engagement. The audit plays a significant role in accomplishing your goals and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your social handles. A comprehensive social media audit is the only way to move your online business forward.

What does a social media audit do

A social media audit unearths several aspects of your social media profiles’ strengths and weaknesses. It helps you to optimize these profiles for better engagement. Some of the social media insights it evaluates are:

Performance Metrics

An audit lets you measure how your social media profiles' key performance indicators are performing. These KPIs include conversions, engagement, followers, and clicks.

Social Listening

You can also have an insight into online conversations going on around your brand on social media platforms. It allows you to protect and monitor your brand reputation.

Content Engagement

An audit also helps to find whether or not the content built is niche-specific and able to engage content to your target audience.

Hashtags

It also helps to discover a lot about hashtags being used. To understand which hashtags are specific enough to increase the reach and engagement of your posts.

You can take the help of many of the free or paid social media tools to conduct an extensive social media audit to find important insights about your social media profiles.

Why is social media audit mandatory?

Although the audit process may seem tedious, complex, and time-consuming, it provides important insights that will help you measure your social media efforts for greater engagement and conversions. Some of the reasons why social media audit is necessary:

• It helps to track brand mentions
• It offers in-depth information on your current social media performance
• It helps to identify new and potential opportunities
• It enables you to understand your competitor’s strategy

Key Steps of a Social Media Audit

There are several ways to conduct an extensive social media audit. We have however covered here a few important steps so that you can audit your social media presence effectively.

Evaluate your existing performance

Before launching the audit, create a list of the social media accounts you currently own. Analyze your profiles on these platforms to ascertain discrepancies and inconsistencies in terms of brand voice, theme, and style.

Now, create a timeline to fix these inconsistencies on social media channels. Optimize each of your social media profiles with a catchy name, brand logo, and an optimized bio.

Look at your competition

Competitor analysis is another major factor that helps in building a more robust social media profile. To start with this, create a list of the competitors whose websites are ranking in top positions for some competitive keywords.

Gather information about your competitors’ strategies which may include their social media profiles and the content they produce and promote. The best way is to monitor their Twitter and Facebook accounts to find the content they’re tweeting and sharing with their audience.

Find suitable social media channels

The success of a social media campaign largely depends upon the social media channels you’re using. Moreover, your target audience is a significant factor in deciding the right social media channels being used.

For instance, if you’re targeting blue-collar executives and top officials in a company, Twitter and LinkedIn could be the right platforms instead of Instagram or Reddit.

These platforms are likely to deliver better engagement. To learn which social media platform you should be using, you can analyze how your audience interacts with your content.

Identify New platforms

Your audit must explore new social media platforms beyond the existing ones. Identify these platforms and find how they can help you to unleash the opportunities further.

For example, platforms like Pinterest can give a boost to your brand if you are selling fashion apparel and accessories. Similarly, platforms like Clubhouse help to engage the audience with real-time audio conversations.

But before zeroing on the platform, you should conduct a thorough analysis to understand user demographics and content types consumed by the users. Furthermore, get ready with the pros and cons of these platforms to find the right one.

Implement Content Strategy

So far, you’re ready with your strategy and a list of social media platforms to launch your campaign. Now, start implementing the content strategy. Start with creating audience-centric highly tailored content for each platform you’re targeting.

Before launching the content, work a bit on your content strategy:

• Identify the purpose of your content
• Organize your content into specific topics
• Create a content calendar
• Develop a content bank

Track and Measure Results

The audit isn’t enough if you don’t track and measure the results. It’s also important to keep an eye on how your social media profiles and content is performing. Some of the insights that you should track here are brand sentiments, brand-specific keywords, audience insights, and engagement rate.

Conclusion

A planned social media audit can give your social media campaigns a mandatory boost. By putting the right strategy in place and goals in mind, you can easily increase your social media presence and ROI. Staying relevant and looking for new social media platforms is the best way to keep your special media presence noticed.

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