Digital Done Better: Social Media Audits
It sounds tedious (maybe even painful), but it’s essential: a social media audit is the process of reviewing your business’ social media metrics to assess growth and engagement opportunities and identify what can be done to improve your social presence and audience connection.
As they say (whoever they are), you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
What Should I Track?
Every brand will have its own priorities (do you want the biggest follower list, or are you more focused on fostering conversation?), but there are a few key metrics that can be measured and tracked to help everyone in the company understand what is “good” and when things just aren’t working.
Metrics to consider include:
- Audience Growth (are you gaining or losing followers?)
- Applause Rate (how many “likes” do your posts get?)
- Amplification Rate (how many “shares” do your posts get?)
- Conversation Rate (how many comments do your posts generate?)
With audits Mud Mile conducts, we calculate the Real rates for these (your actual numbers), but also your Relative rates (what’s your score per 1,000 followers) so you can easily compare your own performance against others brands you’re competing with or use as inspiration.
Based on your own goals for social media, there are other areas you may want to measure periodically that can prompt you to adjust your social media strategy:
- Audience makeup (who is following you, and have the demographics of this group changed over time?)
- How is organic social media driving traffic to your website? (or why isn’t it?)
- What day/time of day drives the best engagement for your brand? (based on the metrics you prioritize)
- How is organic social media driving leads or sales?
How Often Should I Audit?
You should analyze your performance on a consistent basis. Quarterly is a great goal, but if that’s too much, we recommend annually.
Conducting an audit on a regular basis helps you keep your eyes on the prize, but it also affords you an opportunity to make sure non-analytical aspects of your social media presence are up-to-date and reflect your brand consistently:
- Review your brand’s Bio or About section on each platform you use. Is this still accurate? Does the language reflect the voice of your brand?
- Is your profile picture or banner image accurate for the time of year, campaign, or location you want to highlight?
- Do the hashtags you’re using (where applicable) make sense for your brand and the audience you want to connect with?
Where Do I Start?
Start by reviewing your brand’s goals for social media (or getting them committed to paper if they’re not already); these goals will dictate which metrics make the most sense for you to start with.
There are a lot of great guides if you want to do it yourself (SproutSocial, Hubspot, Asana), but if you’re not in the habit of doing this (or your goals are particularly bespoke), it can take up a lot of room on the proverbial plate.
If you’re not sure where to start, or just don’t have the extra time to commit, you can connect with us here at Mud Mile. This is a service we offer and strongly recommend, especially as a foundation to crafting a content strategy that can scale. Give us a call at 402.403.9573 or email us at discover@mudmile.com to get started.