Social media is now used by the majority of marketers as a basic strategy for developing brand awareness and driving traffic. For B2Bs and B2Cs who are not online, they are missing out on a potential 3 billion pairs of eyes using various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Twitter and others.
For those who are making the most of this ability to reach people at little cost and high rate of penetration, it is important to know just what your work is achieving. Auditing your social media effectiveness is an important part of your social media strategy planning. Understanding what is working on various platforms and how your content is connecting with audiences can easily be assessed thanks to the tools offered on social media platforms for business users, but first, you need to plan your audit.
How to prepare your social media audit
While audits can be lengthy, expensive and complex, conducting a social media audit can take as little as 30 minutes. We’ll take a look at each platform and identify a few critical KPI benchmarks to gauge progress.
It is good to practise to perform a social media audit quarterly at the very least, but every week is best if possible.
The first thing you’ll need is a simple spreadsheet to record your information.
You’ll need to create categories that list account information and KPIs, such as:
- The username and URL for each platform you audit
- The number of followers for each account
- Engagement metrics
- Demographic information
- Popular content
Adding dates to your audits will help with tracking monthly changes when you audit again in the future.
As every platform is unique, you might also add columns for network-specific metrics. Let’s take a closer look at what metric each platform provides.
Facebook collects data about your Pages and organizes it in one place. You can access it by visiting the Business Manager section.
Just click the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of Facebook and select your Page under “Business Manager.”
On the following page, Facebook will give you valuable insights into both your ad accounts and the business Page itself.
Facebook displays information about your Page likes, reach, and engagement. You can filter the results for today, yesterday, the last seven days, or the last 28 days.
Next, click the arrow to the left of your Page to see a breakdown of your best-performing posts.
This will tell you what type of content is delivering the most engagement and reach. Logging this information on a regular basis will help you see patterns.
To learn your demographics information, you will need to visit the Facebook Insights Page. This will give you a report on all of the Pages you run. Select the Page you’re auditing and it will take you to an overview.
When you select the “People” tab, it will display your demographic data. This includes your fan demographics along with users you’ve reached and engaged.
Each tab will show you:
- The ratio of genders that follow you
- The number of users in each age group
- Which locations your followers are from
You need to market differently to every target demographic. Take note of which gender, age groups, and locations make up the majority of your fans. You can use this data later for tailoring content.
This simple plan for inputting information on a regular basis will reveal patterns that can inform your strategy.
Pinterest rewards quality infographics and visual content, and its analytics page is a treasure trove of information.
Once you’ve upgraded to the free business account, you can select “Analytics” and “Overview” from the top-left corner. The overview will tell you your average daily impressions, average daily viewers, and most popular content. These first two metrics are convenient for measuring your account’s growth.
Understanding what content performs best will help you offer more of it in the future. This can further increase your engagement and pins.
To uncover the demographics of your Pinterest follower, you can click the arrow beside “People you reach.”
You will find information about their location, gender, and language. Clicking the “Interests” tab shows categories that your followers are most likely to be interested in.
Next, you’ll see your impressions, saves, and clicks on the “Profile” page. Saves and clicks are arguably the most important metrics here. Seeing which posts users save the most will tell you which content to focus on.
Selecting the “All-time” tab shows you which pins received the most shares and ranked the highest in searches. All of this can help inform your campaign planning.
Instagram already has more than 700 million users, and more than 70{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} of US businesses use the platform to advertise.
If you upgrade to a business account, you gain access to Instagram Insights. This is their native analytics tool to aid you in measuring performance. The drawback is that it won’t give you insights into content that you posted before you upgraded. It’s accessible from both your account page and individual posts.
If you visit the Insights homepage, it will give you a general overview of your Instagram account. It first shows follower and post counts for the previous week.
Below this, you can find a graph with information on:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Profile views
In the “Followers” section, you’ll find some basic demographic information about your Instagram followers. If you want more information about your followers, click “See More” at the top-right corner, and it will display two graphs:
- One – the hours when your followers are most active.
- Two – the days your followers are most active.
You can use this to find the most optimal day and hour to post.
Posts
To see how your photos are performing, you can look at two indicators.
- Select an individual post and click “View Insights.”
Likes, comments, and saves will appear at the top. Under the “Actions” section, Instagram tells you how many profile visits, followers, and website clicks you received.
This will also show you which hashtags are attracting the most users.
- Navigate to the posts area of the Insights homepage.
Click “See more,” and Instagram will display every post from the last year and their impressions.
You can further filter it by time, type of content, and measurements such as comments or likes.
Obviously, this information can really help shape the future of your campaign direction, not only for the platform but across other social media as well, especially if your online business is focused on fashion, makeup or other highly visual products or services.
Stories
Instagram Stories are a great way for businesses to take followers behind-the-scenes.
With the Insights tool, you can see how your Stories are performing. Simply open a Story and click the viewers on the bottom-left area of the screen. You will find which users viewed the Story, total impressions, and reach. It also documents actions like replies and clicks.
Use this to determine which content followers respond to the most positively with Instagram Stories.
Twitter advertising is a great way to quickly gain attention because it’s so simple. If you visit the Ads Manager, you will gain access to your account’s analytics.
Start by selecting the “Analytics” drop-down menu and clicking “tweet activity.” This will let you view tweet engagement, impressions, and other metrics.
Twitter also graphs your impressions over the last 28-day period. You can change this to the last seven days or customise the data.
Click the “Top Tweets” tab to see which of your tweets in a selected period are the most popular. Twitter determines this based on engagement and impressions.
By visiting “Audience insights” under the “Analytics” tab on top again, you can learn more about who your audience is and how they are engaging with your content.
You can see information about your followers, such as their:
- Interests
- Consumer buying styles
- Household income categories
- Wireless carrier
- Gender
If you click the “Demographics” tab, you’ll see more detailed information, that when used correctly can help you target your campaign.
The “Lifestyle tab,” will give you a better idea of what interests your followers. This is great information to use for tailoring your content. If you know what they like, you can integrate that into what you post. They will feel much more connected to your brand when they know that you understand them on a deeper level.
For those of you who are involved in eCommerce, you’ll find a special benefit to the next tab, which is the “Consumer Behavior” tab. Twitter shows what kind of consumer buying style followers fall under and what kind of consumer goods they enjoy purchasing.
This metric is invaluable – it literally tells you what your customers are buying and why.
What does your audit mean?
All of this data can be used to improve your social channels and your business as a whole. The first place to begin is content marketing.
What type of content does your audience enjoy? This is what you should be offering, be it blogs, videos or infographics.
Target a more defined audience.
The other valuable information you have gained is an understanding of your demographics. This makes it easier to understand who you are communicating with, and what they want to
You can now set goals for your social accounts, including:
- Follower count
- Engagement numbers such as likes or comments
- Traffic that you drive to your website
When you perform another audit, you should be able to do it faster. You’ll be much more familiar with the process, which will help you streamline the process.
And, when you perform your next audit, you can track changes by comparing your numbers with your previous audits. Over time, you will have a vivid picture of how your social accounts are working.
Calculate budget and ROI.
Ad platforms on Facebook and Pinterest, for example, will record the performance, costs, and other metrics for the ads you run.
Analyze which ad types and creatives are bringing you the best results. You could invest more of your budget into these while dialling back others.
This way, you can avoid spending money on advertisements that don’t deliver the most value.
Final Thoughts
A social media audit can be fast, consistent and valuable. The metrics will enable you to improve your marketing strategies and speak to your audience in their language.
Use your metric to discover patterns and in the long term, you will see your social media working harder and with less ‘hit and miss’ content.
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