How to Conduct a Social Media Audit
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A comprehensive social media plan begins with a thorough social media audit to collect information about your business’ online presence.
An audit helps identify platforms where your presence could be improved, identify your target audience, and determine where you should focus your online marketing efforts.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- How to locate/identify all of your social media accounts
- How to evaluate your social media accounts
- How to set up social media analytics
- How to make the most of social media analytics
The first step toward improving your company’s online presence is determining its current state. What social media accounts does your business currently have? How complete and active are they?
While this may seem like a simple and perhaps unnecessary step, over time it’s fairly common for businesses to lose track of old or abandoned accounts. It’s also possible for imposters to set up similar accounts posing as your business.
Follow these steps to locate all of your business’ social media accounts:
- Compile a list of all accounts you are aware of.
- Google your company. Look for results that may be created by imposters or similarly named fan accounts.
- Search your company’s name on social media networks (including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and TikTok).
Dealing with imposter accounts
If you discover imposter accounts, try sending the account/account owner a direct message. It’s always possible that the account owner wasn’t aware of your business and would consider changing their username.
If the owner doesn’t respond or refuses to comply, consider reporting them for impersonating your brand. The steps to do so vary depending on the platform.
How to evaluate your social media accounts
Once you have identified all social media accounts, it’s time to make sure each of the accounts is complete. Do they have your up-to-date contact information? Are they using the right logo?
To evaluate your social media accounts for completeness, check to see if each has the following:
- An up-to-date profile photo and—for some platforms—a cover photo.
- Accurate bio information.
- Accurate public-facing contact information for your business.
- Accurate account contact information on the social media platform (i.e., the email address you want associated with the account is the one on the account).
- Similar or identical usernames/URLs (learn how to change your social media URLs here).
- Relevant pinned posts (these are posts you select to remain at the top of your profile or account feed, even above the most recent posts).
You may also want to verify your account. A verified account has a checkmark next to the username or on the account profile page, which conveys authenticity to followers and customers. (Learn more about verifying your Instagram or Twitter account.
How to set up social media analytics
Now that you have a list of your social media accounts, it’s time to dive into analytics.
Analytics will help you identify each account’s effectiveness and provide benchmark data to help you set realistic goals, track audience reach, and determine your return on investment (ROI).
Most social media accounts offer analytics. Below, we’ll walk you through how to access your analytics on Facebook for Business, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
Facebook for Business analytics
Facebook offers insights through Facebook for Business (aka/recently renamed Meta for Business), a platform that provides analytics regarding your audience, content, and engagement.
Follow these steps to access analytics on your computer:
- From the left navigation menu of your computer, select “Pages.”
Select “Pages” in the left navigation menu
- Click on the desired page.
- Under “Business Tools,” select “Publishing Suite.” This will take you to the Facebook for Business dashboard.
Under “Business Tools,” select “Publishing Suite”
- Click on the graph icon in the left toolbar to access your page insights.
Click on the graph icon on the left side to view your page insights
- On the insights page, a menu will appear that allows you to navigate between content, audience, and overview analytics.
Use the resulting menu to toggle between content, audience, and overview analytics
It’s worth noting that Facebook Business allows you to link your business’ Instagram account and view both Instagram and Facebook analytics at once.
Related reading
Here’s how to access your Instagram analytics:
- On your profile page, tap “Professional Dashboard” at the top of the screen.
Tap “Professional Dashboard” at the top of the screen
- On the subsequent screen, tap “See all insights.”
On the next screen, tap “See all insights“
Follow these steps to access your Twitter analytics on your computer:
- From within your account’s navigation bar on your computer, select “More.”
Click “More” on your account’s navigation bar
- In the box that appears, click “Analytics.”
Click “Analytics” in the resulting box
Twitter’s analytics dashboard
To access YouTube analytics, follow these steps:
- Log in to studio.youtube.com
- From the left menu, click “Analytics.”
In the left menu, click “Analytics”
The Analytics dashboard of YouTube Studio
Once you access your analytics for each platform, take some time to analyze and interpret your data.
Identify popular content
Locate your top five posts with the most engagement. What is similar about them? Consider the following:
- The image or video (if applicable)
- The caption
- Hashtags
- Tagged accounts
- Day and time posted
Try to identify similarities, and apply these to future posts to see if a resulting engagement trend appears with your followers.
Identify your audience/target demographic
Who are your followers? Knowing your audience (including their gender, age, and location) is key for social media.
This knowledge allows you to develop content that speaks to their needs and interests, and strike the right tone to spur engagement. It can also help you target an audience for paid advertisements.
The “Audience” page of Facebook for Business’ insights dashboard
With built-in dashboards offered by each social media platform, your business’ social media analytics are at your fingertips. However, data spread over multiple sites may leave you wishing for a way to compile that data in one location.
To group your data and analytics from disparate social media platforms, check out marketing analytics software. These tools gather data from multiple sources, filter out unnecessary information, and present you and your team with easy-to-read reports so you can make confident, data-driven decisions.
