On social media, it’s very easy to get distracted by the ” pink world” of content creation, engagement, and connecting with your audience.

But managing social media is not just about making posts.

It involves a strategy that must inevitably be supported by an audit.

That’s precisely what you’ll understand how to do, step by step in this article, and you’ll also have access to a free checklist to ensure you don’t forget any important data.

Before we dive into the subject, here is a guide to navigate through the article:

Do you really need an audit?

How do you know if you’re working to warm up, or to get results?

Ultimately, this is the question that an audit answers.

Without an audit, you won’t know if your strategy is working, or if it has holes.

And given the high investment of time and resources you make in digital channels, it’s unwise to operate in this medium without understanding how the big picture is looking.

So the answer is yes! You need.

What is a social media audit?

A social media audit is a comprehensive analysis that assesses your brand’s performance and presence on various social media channels.

It is focused on the past and is useful to understand what is happening, identify gaps, improvements, and what went well that deserves to be repeated.

Through this analysis, you can answer questions such as:

  • Which social network is bringing the best results?
  • What does the target audience want to see on each social network?
  • Is our branding and tone of voice consistent across channels?
  • Are we wasting resources on activities that do not bring returns?

How to do a social media audit

Gather all the information you can
This step is where you investigate ALL the social media profiles your brand has.

It doesn’t matter if you created a Pinterest account 5 years ago and never used it again. That account has to go into your calculations.

To do this, search all social networks for your brand name or products, noting details such as:

  • Social network
  • Profile name
  • Handle/Username
  • URL
  • Date of last activity

If you come across fake accounts or test accounts that you have created in the past, you should write down the handle so that you can take appropriate action.

In the case of fake accounts, imagine you discover that there is an account copying your content or products. Perhaps you could involve lawyers to deal with the issue, or create an internal process to deal with the situation.

If you want to have a double confirmation that you have found all the handles related to your brand, you can use a tool like NameCheck.

Finally, at the end of this step, you should have all the social networks where your brand has a profile. With that information, you should choose which social media profiles you want to focus on analyzing.

This is because, as you will probably see, not all of them will be interested in being analyzed, and they may no longer be part of your brand’s current strategy.

If this is the case, you should consider deleting your profiles on those social networks that you do not use, for the simple fact that this way, you do not convey to the public that your brand is inactive or careless with that channel.

Analyze branding and tone of voice

Now that you have chosen the profiles you want to audit, take some time to analyze each one, and compare them with each other, to understand what is the consistency of your brand in terms of tone of voice and branding.

Note that it will not always make sense for a brand to adopt the same tone of voice on all channels, so if there are differences, you don’t necessarily have to change them, but recognize and anticipate this in your future communication strategy.

At this stage it is important to understand if:

  • The brand identity is coherent (logos, colors, designs)
  • There is consistency in the tone of voice (there may be channels where it justifies another type of tone)
  • The business information is up to date among others

Once you have collected all this data, compare it side by side, across all profiles, in order to discover inconsistencies.

If there are any, correct them accordingly. If not, move on to the next step.

Analyze your numbers

This is arguably the most important part of your audit

When and how are different channels contributing to your social media strategy?

To better understand this, note down metrics such as:

  • Total reach
  • Impressions
  • Total interactions received
  • Average interaction per post
  • Among others

Wow, wow, wow. Easy! Don’t give up here.

We know that collecting this data manually is a very difficult, time-consuming, and tedious task.

To avoid this, you can collect these metrics automatically in Swonkie reports.

In the reports menu you can access all the metrics mentioned above (and more as you can see in the image).

To create a report in Swonkie free for 14 days, click here.

In these reports, you will also find information about your audience, which is also important to note such as gender, age, country, age and growth.

Identify the best publications

Content is the currency of exchange in digital, and it is the way your company connects with its audience.

For each social network, you should identify the top 5 posts in terms of interaction.

You don’t need to do this manually either, as in Swonkie’s advanced reports you have access, in list format, to your best content from the time period you select.

Once you know what the top 5 posts are, look for patterns that might indicate why they are the most successful.

With the insights you gain from this, you’ll be able to optimize your social media content strategy.

Update your strategy with these 4 questions

Now that you have all the data about your social media, it’s time to ask yourself these questions and improve according to the answers you get:

  • Is my social media presence achieving its intended goals?
  • Which social networks are bringing the best results?
  • What content is working best now?
  • Is the content reaching the intended audience?

In the checklist below you can find more questions to be able to update your strategy in a complete way.

Repeat everything quarterly. Consistency is key.

Auditing your social media should be an ongoing and regular process.

At least quarterly, your social media should be audited to ensure that you are not working to get warmed up but to get results.

Once you have done this general audit, every 3 months you can choose to audit each social network individually, which will give you a more in-depth analysis of each one.

The main purpose of the audit is to gain a deeper understanding of our social media presence so that we can outline the strategy for the future.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be a complex and tedious process and use tools like Swonkie to streamline your audit.

Do your social media audit without missing a detail

If you’ve read this far then you’ve probably wanted to do your social media audit.

And because we know it can seem like a bit of a daunting task, we’ve created a checklist to make sure you don’t miss any important details.

You can download your free 7-step checklist for doing a social media audit here.