How to Conduct a Social Media Audit to Boost Your Brand and Increase Profitability

July 26, 2021 - Looking for a cost-effective way to really boost your brand awareness or even generate revenue by creating an increased demand for your services? Creating a social media strategy can be the first step towards reaching your goals.

But how do you know where to start? Or how do you identify the holes in your existing strategy? At drop & hook, we like to start each social media project with a social media audit. A social media audit will provide actionable metrics for how your current content is performing, show you how your competitors’ content is performing, help you gather content ideas for your own brand, and give you concrete direction for goals you want to set for your strategy and how to get there. In this blog, we’ll walk you through how to conduct an audit. All you’ll need to get started is the time it takes to complete the audit.

Define your goals

Determine what you’d like to achieve with this audit and the social strategy changes you’ll make as a result. Do you want to increase client inquiries? Just want to improve engagement? Either way, knowing where you want to be will help you get where you’re going. If you want to go beyond broad goals, set clear, measurable objectives and decide when you’ll assess your progress.

Assess your existing brand

Maybe you’re pushing out content regularly but you’re still not meeting your goals. Before you dive into the audit, take the time to consider why this may be the case. What’s your target audience? Are you providing content that’s useful for them, or just using content that is easy to produce? Also, is your brand presence cohesive? You may have added profiles, platforms, a newsletter, etc. over time. Have you considered whether these separate entities represent your brand as a whole? Take a step back and make sure your brand is cohesive and well-represented across channels so that you’re putting your best face forward to clients. This includes consistent, branded color usage, unified images, and coordinated messaging.

Audit yourself

Continue by listing out the platforms on which you have a presence (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) Once you have that list, compile your amount of fans/followers/views, the types of content being posted there, and your posting frequency for each platform. You can choose to stop there or dig in further. Facebook and Instagram offer free insights that allow you to see more details about your content, including hashtag performance, top-performing posts, age, gender, etc. of your followers, and more. This can help you tailor specific content that will better serve your target demographic.

Audit your competitors

Put together a list of competitors. Between five and ten is a good sample size. You’ll gather similar data for their social profiles as you did for your own. We recommend choosing a varied list of direct competitors as well as a few aspirational brands. For instance, maybe there’s a company that you really think executes their social media strategy well. They may not be the same size company as you, and therefore you may not be able to implement all of their methods, but it’s a great opportunity for content inspiration. Next, gather their amount of fans/followers/views, the types of content being posted there, and your posting frequency for each platform. In addition to these metrics it will also be helpful to make a list of any specific posts that stand out, either for their original content or exceptional performance. 

Draw conclusions & determine what’s actionable

Did you learn that one of your social media platforms is under performing significantly compared to others? Maybe you don’t need be maintain that profile. There’s no need to be on a platform just to be there. Make sure you’re making strategic choices for your brand and committing to a social media protocol that not only serves your clients but is achievable by you or whomever manages your social media.

Did you notice that one of your posts (or a competitor post) performed exceptionally well? Maybe you should consider posting more content like that.

Take time with all of the data you gathered to objectively see what you’re doing well, what could be improved, and what competitors are doing that may be worth considering.

And, perhaps most importantly, make a plan! Be sure to put all this good data and hard work to use. Finish off this audit by determining specific changes you’d like to make and developing a timeline for when you can implement these adjustments.

Stay tuned for a follow-up blog post where we’ll dive deeper into using your social media audit to improve your strategy.