Everything you need to know about the importance of a routine social media audit

Audits – you’ve heard us talk about them, but maybe some of you still don’t really know what they are. To put it plainly, an audit is like the oil change/engine check up for your social media accounts. It tells you what’s working, what’s not working, what can you do to make it better, etc.

We’ve done a blog about this with website audits, which you should totally do if you have a website and haven’t done one, so it was only a matter of time until we dived deep into followers, metrics, engagement, and how this factors into an audit for you social accounts.

To start, here are some common questions we see on the internet that are common about social media audits: 

1. What Are The Benefits? 

2. How Much Does it Cost?

3. Who Can I Get One From? 

4. Should I Do All My Platforms? 

5. What is Measured? 

 

All of these are super valid, and we’re here to answer them for you. 

 

The benefits are too good. 

Listen, the first thing you need to know when going to get a social media audit done – it’s not a one and done. One of the beauties of an audit is that it can be used over and over again so you can continue to improve and fine tune all of your social media platforms. That being said, here are some of the other goodies that come along with getting an audit:

• It shows what needs work and what is working against you.
• You get expert feedback from professionals in the field.
• Figuring out why you might be losing followers, or conversion to sales isn’t adding up, and be told when, where, and why you’re losing those crucial numbers.
• It’s not as expensive as having a professional come in and do a whole new strategy, rework, or deep dive for you- it delivers results fast, and usually budget friendly.
• You can see what real social media success results look like and figure out how to obtain them for yourself.
• Get into better habits of working and maintaining a healthy, successful social presence.

 

How much does it cost? 

That’s one of the things we love about social media audits – if you’re budget conscience, you can even do it yourself! While we do advise against this in certain situations because we always say it’s better to have an expert do things like these, if you do your research beforehand, you can totally Martha Stewart your own audit. This website even offers a template! And this one provides all the steps you need to know in order to do it yourself. As for price, it really does depend, but it can go anywhere between $700 to upwards of $5,000.

 

Where or who do I get one from?

You can outsource it from any marketing firm (*cough* contact us here *cough*) or social media experts or do it yourself! Just make sure whoever you decide to go with knows what you want and is a good fit for you.

 

Should I audit all of my platforms?

Completely up to you, but we always say yes. You need to know if the strategy you are trying to implement across all platforms is cohesive and isn’t going in the wrong direction. Also, sometimes if you have a stronger presence on one platform than another, that other one can collect dust and sit on the shelf and not be noticed without you even realizing what’s happening.

We always encourage a total in house spring cleaning sweep with platforms and audits, because in the end you need all your players working with the same team strategy.

 

What get measured?

All the data on all your platforms. Engagement, reach, impressions, impressions by day, profile clicks, story taps forward, literally everything you can possibly think of. What type of content is more successful, what type of content is the least successful. In addition to data, it measures how consistent your branding is across your platforms – is your logo the same on Instagram as it is on Facebook?

Does each platform utilize the niche photo and video requirements to maximize and show off the content that you’re posting? All these things are important when trying to have one cohesive strategy across platforms.

It’s easy for these things to be forgotten and for a strategy to quickly become old. Social media is constantly changing, trends are changing, and whatever you have to do in order to be successful online is changing. Make sure you’re up to date with an audit! And if you’re looking for someone to do it for you – don’t worry. We got you covered over here.