How to Conduct a Social Media Audit: The Guide To A Successful Strategy

Developing a social media audit every quarter is how you keep tabs on your social media strategy plan, making sure you adjust it when you need it.

Your social media strategy relies on a list of goals and data. You have to make sure you check your social media analytics when developing a social media audit report.

To make sure you don’t miss a step, we’ll learn together how to conduct a social media audit and why it’s important.

What is a social media audit

A social media audit consists in a report in which you review your social media strategy.

A social media audit relies on reassessing your brand’s social presence while analyzing every detail.

This means that you have to assess social media metrics and try to find new growing opportunities to explore when it comes to your brand’s social media journey.

A social media audit helps you:

• Understand your brand’s social presence impact on its business objectives
• Engage with your audience
• Provide top-notch customer care service
• Find new opportunities to build brand awareness

A social media audit is meant to measure the effectiveness, consistency and alignment with brand goals.

Why it’s important to perform a social media audit

Every marketing manager should include in their monthly to-do list a social media audit to make sure their social media strategy runs smoothly.

The reason why performing a social media audit is important relies on the fact that you can quickly adjust your social strategy as you go, depending on the results.

Your audit should include social listening and social media analytics data. Here are the benefits of performing a social media audit:

• which are the most effective social platforms
• what your audience wants to see on each of them
• what the demographics data says about your audience
• what contributes to your audience’s growth
• how the results from every social platform help you attain your goals
• new emerging ideas that will give you a new perspective

The benefits of conducting a social media audit also include:

• Insightful metrics: understand which platforms and strategies work best for your brand
• Enhanced strategy: adapt and refine your approach based on real data
• Audience engagement: ensure your content resonates with your target audience, leading to increased engagement
• Consistency maintenance: catch inconsistencies in brand messaging across platforms to maintain a unified brand image

Brands perform such audits to ensure their online presence remains relevant and resonates with their audience.

Typically, a thorough social media audit should be conducted semi-annually. However, quarterly checks can catch inconsistencies and emerging opportunities even sooner.

How to conduct a social media audit

Let’s get into the essential steps on how to conduct a social media audit.

From evaluating your online presence to analyzing engagement metrics, learn how to gain valuable insights and refine your social media strategy for optimal results.

#1 Ensure your brand is consistent across platforms

Start by compiling a list of all your social media accounts—be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, or others.

For that, you’ll just need to create a Project and press Add Social Profile in the Socialinsider app.

You’ll now have an overview of all the profiles in one single dashboard.

One that is settled, you’ll need to assess if the profile information (bio, profile picture, cover image) is consistent across platforms.

Make sure your branding elements, such as logos and color schemes, are uniform and aligned with your brand identity.

#2 Analyze your content

Start examining your recent posts.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are they relevant to your audience?
• Are they consistent with your brand message?
• Do they align with current trends & preferences within your industry?

To gain a comprehensive understanding of your audience's preferences, head over to the "Top 3 Posts" section in the dashboard.

Here, you'll not only see the content types that resonate most—whether it's a carousel, Reel, or image—but also the hashtags used for each post and the average number of hashtags per post.

This feature is invaluable, as it allows you to fine-tune both your content and hashtag strategies, ensuring that you maximize audience engagement and relevance.

#3 Learn more about your audience

Remember, it's this audience that fuels and sustains your brand's vitality. Looking at your audience is another important step from your social media audit report.

Thus, if your brand values resonate with your audience, it's a clear indicator that your content is aligning with the interests of those who matter.

Socialinsider provides information on demographic distribution so you can understand if your user persona aligns with your buyer persona.

Moreover, these insights allow you to pinpoint the type of content that actually converts your audience into loyal customers.

#4 Check for posting frequency and consistency

Don’t forget about analyzing your posting frequency.

Are you posting consistently, or is there room for improvement?

Once chosen the profile you wish to review, the app's dashboard will also provide an overview of your posting patterns.

By analyzing trends within a chosen timeframe, you can optimize your content strategy, ensuring that you post at the most effective times and fine-tune the nature of your content to better engage and grow your audience.

This data-driven approach can elevate the impact and reach of what you share, fostering more meaningful interactions and improved outcomes for your online presence.

#5 Check for audience engagement

Besides checking who is most interested in your content, you also need to assess how well you're engaging with your audience.

Are you responding to comments and messages promptly?

Analyze the tone and effectiveness of your interactions.

Engagement is a two-way street, so ensure you're fostering meaningful conversations.

Through this part of your social media audit you make sure that your customers are happy with your products and services, helping them with their queries.

#6 Keep an eye on your metrics and overall performance

When it comes to boosting your brand across various social media channels, periodic performance checks are a must.

To monitor your growth and success on each platform effectively, it's crucial to keep a detailed list of key metrics.

This includes engagement rates, the pace of follower acquisition, reach, impressions, the effectiveness of hashtags, and more.

Luckily, Socialinsider provides an all-encompassing view of your account's performance through a unified dashboard.

Furthermore, the Autoreports feature tailors the presentation of data to align with your specific goals and decision-making patterns.

This makes deriving actionable insights not only intuitive but also more efficient.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use Socialinsider to track performance on each platform, you might want to check out these guides:

• Facebook analytics guide
• Instagram analytics guide
• LinkedIn analytics guide
• Twitter analytics guide
• YouTube analytics guide
• TikTok analytics guide

#7 Establish the channels that bring the most benefits

Don't be afraid to test multiple social media platforms initially.

With time, you might find that not all social media channels yield the same results, despite your best efforts.

If some platforms aren't giving you the engagement you hoped for, it's okay to pivot and focus on the platforms that truly reach your audience.

When your brand offers something visually enticing, platforms that emphasize pictures and videos, such as Instagram, are your best bet.

If you’re looking more towards audience engagement, then TikTok or X (previously known as Twitter) might be the ones for you.

#8 Perform a competitor analysis

Now that you’ve checked your insights, it’s only fair you also peek at competitors and benchmark their results against yours.

Socialinsider provides a comprehensive set of tools designed for detailed competitor analysis.

With its Benchmarks feature, users can effortlessly profile and compare their performance against competitors.

You can look into metrics such as engagement rates, views, top posts, follower counts, and beyond.

By assessing their successes and failures, you can pinpoint opportunities and areas of improvement in your own approach.

Once you’ve gained these insights, consider integrating effective tactics into your strategy.

While many ideas have been explored, you have the unique ability to reframe them with your distinct voice and brand story.

However, always remember to maintain your authenticity.

Your unique voice is what sets you apart, and it’s crucial to let that shine through.

#9 Analyze your findings

Based on your social media audit findings, create a list of actionable recommendations.

These might include refining your content strategy, optimizing posting times, or investing more in platforms that yield better results.

After going through the steps of a social media audit, it's now time to analyze what you've found, draw meaningful conclusions, and craft an actionable plan to improve your brand's social media presence.

Here's a deeper dive into drawing your conclusions and formulating an action plan.

Before diving into recommendations, take a moment to evaluate what the data is really telling you.

For instance:

• Which platforms are driving the most traffic or conversions?
• What types of content are generating the most engagement or shares?
• Are there any noticeable patterns in the posting times that correlate with higher engagement?

Your recommendations should always be in line with your broader business goals.

If your main aim is brand awareness, then growing followers might be a priority.

If it's conversions, then improving the click-through rate from your posts might be the focus.

#10 Adjust your strategy accordingly

Now that you have a list of recommendations, prioritize them and set clear, measurable goals for each.

For instance:

• Increase TikTok engagement by 15% over the next quarter
• Test three new content formats on Instagram within two months
• Reduce posting frequency on Twitter and monitor impact over six weeks

Social media audit template

And sometimes having a look at a step-by-step guide on how to perform a social media audit is nothing without social media audit examples or a social media audit template.

Well, today we’re on a mission to save all marketing managers who run against the clock to fulfil their tasks.

Here is our social media audit template where you can see exactly what KPIs you need to keep an eye on and how to analyze your performance.

It’s important to keep in mind that this template for social media audit cannot be edited. You have to make a copy in order to complete your own data.

How to perform a social media audit with Socialinsider

If you’ve reached this point, you think you have everything you need, packed with data on how to perform a social media audit. However, you may still have some missing puzzle pieces.

We all know that with great power comes an even greater responsibility. If you build a social presence on all social media platforms for your brand, then your social media audit will take a while.

However, in today's world where apps do the work, you can complete a social media audit report in no time by using a social media analytics tool and a social listening tool.

You don’t believe this is as easy as it can get? Well, let me show you.

Socialinsider provides you with a social media analytics & benchmarking tool and also an AI Instagram listening tool.

With these 2 by your side, your social media audit is almost done. You can use the analytics tool to find out more about your social media performance to improve your strategy.

On the other hand, you also need the social listening tool to find out what users say about your brand, products and services on social media.

In what follows, I will show you the part where I use the social media analytics tool to look at Starbucks’ performance.

First, I developed a Brand in the Socialinsider tool, adding there all social media platforms for Starbucks. I included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. This cross-channel analysis will provide a bunch of actionable insights.

In the upper part of the dashboard, there are displayed the main metrics for every platform according to the time frame I selected. I chose to look at Starbucks performance for the last 6 months.

You can see the number of followers, engagement, average engagement rate per post and number of posts during that time period.

Next, you get to see key metrics, also including percentages that show you how much that metric varied during that time frame.

This is useful when you overlook your performance and decide to make adjustments to your social media strategy.

Next, you need to take a look at data about your audience to learn how to target them depending on their behaviour, preferences and upcoming campaigns.

Here you get to see a pie chart that shows your audience split on every social media platform. This is how you will figure out how to focus all your efforts on the social network you want to grow more.

Next, you can see a lot of in-depth metrics on engagement. With these insights you will decide on which platform you have to improve your content to attract more prospects and how to interact more with them to keep them engaged.

If you scroll further, you can see top posts from every social media platform, each post being accompanied by individual key metrics.

Let’s now turn to our social listening tool. I added the hashtag #psl since everyone’s favourite drink from Starbucks in autumn is the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

I decided to download the social listening report to get all the unified data. The key metrics I got for the last six months include the total number of posts, total engagement, total reach and even the total number of creators who used it.

You can also see which KPIs have increased during the selected time frame.

Next, you get to see how many posts using the hashtag #psl have been posted by creators and by individuals.

The important part to check about a branded hashtag is the list of topics in which it is used. Since Starbucks’ PSL refers to Pumpkin Spice Latte, the intent was to use it in Instagram posts about coffee.

It seems that people use the #psl hashtag also in topics related to sports and family.

However, these topics are still related to foods and drinks, since people tend to enjoy their favourite coffee while watching sports or when spending time with their families.

The main topic in which the hashtag is used it’s actually the one intended by the popular coffee brand.

With all this data you can retrieve about your social media platforms’ performance by using the right tool, you can easily comply your social media audit and then adjust your strategy accordingly, while also assessing your goals.

Social media audit tools

Why complicate your work when great people have invented means to make it all easier? You can make use of social media audit tools to prevent making mistakes, especially if you are new at this.

Social media audit tools can provide you all the insights and social media metrics you need to see how your posts perform on every social media platform you own.

We put together a list of social media tools that could really make you feel relieved.

1.Socialinsider - This is your go-to app when it comes to useful metrics and insights on a specific time period. You can even use it to compare your performance to one of your competitor’s.

2.Sprout Social - It’s a social media analytics tool that help you see in-depth data about your posts on several social media channels.

3.Hootsuite - By using this tool, it is easier for you to make up reports including all the data you need for a social media audit.

4.Sociality.io - This app offers you access to reports that can help you see the greater picture when it comes to what your audience likes about the whole industry.

5.Unmetric - This is a social media analytics tool which provides several metrics, more than you can find in the native apps. This way, you will know better what should be your next step to improve your strategy.

Final thoughts

Using the right social media tools can help you easily conduct a social media audit to assess your brand's overall performance on all social media platforms.

It's important to find out on which social media networks to focus more in the future base on your results and KPIs values.

Define your business goals once more after performing the social media audit and establish the changes you need to implement in your strategy to make it work better.