Get ready for 2017: a Social Media Marketing Audit in 40 min

2017 is just around the corner. What does it mean? Firstly, yes, 2016 is over. Secondly, it’s time for a social media audit. Now don’t freak out: it won’t include taxes, paperwork, stress, anxiety, or giving your money away to anyone. On the contrary, you’re expected to gain a lot from the audit, realise where you stand in the social media world, and eventually increase your sales. Excited? Let’s start.

1. What are your social media profiles?

Search the social media for your profiles and make sure you have a single official profile for the social network you want to be on. Delete the forgotten profiles, fake accounts, spam and profiles made by mistake created by the Snapchat-loving interns. Document profiles you want to keep. Fill out this table:

2. Are you covering the right social platforms?

Most likely, your social media strategy covers Facebook and Twitter, and you're idly considering YouTube and/or Google Plus. One problem with this is that social Web goes beyond major social media platforms. There are niche communities, forums, and websites that you might've never heard about, yet they might have a high concentration of your target audience. All you have to do is find these places. To do that:

1. Come up with a list of topics related to your industry (e.g., "handmade jewellery", "handcrafted jewellery").
2. Use a social media monitoring tool to see which major social networks and websites have the most conversations about your list of keywords.
3. Make a plan to create a profile on the websites and niche communities most suited to your brand.

3. Are your profiles complete and your branding consistent?

Check if you have the full, up-to-date information about your brand and URLs on every social media profile. Your bios and brand description don’t have to be identical (it’s better they are not, since every social platform has a bit of a different culture to it) but they have to have consistent messaging, as it is often unclear for the Internet users whether the profile is even official. Look through the branding of your profiles and make sure it’s recognisable and also consistent across profiles.

4. How good is your social media marketing performance?

Remember this point in your life when you’ve decided to start with social media marketing. You must’ve had some goals back then, and it’s important to recall these goals now and see how you’re doing. It’s most likely these goals were some of these:

• Brand awareness (Reach)
• Word of Mouth (Likes, Shares, Retweets)
• Leads (Actions)
• Sales (Conversion)

Evaluate the performance on each of the social media platform according to your goals. The common metrics to measure are:

• Follower growth;
• Engagement, such as direct messaging, likes, shares, etc;
• The number of brand mentions on social media and the Web;
• Clicks on the website/specific campaign/blog post/etc.

All of these metrics are easily calculated with the help of the network’s (Twitter, Facebook) page insights, Google Analytics, and a social media monitoring tool. Depending on your goals, complete an audit table similar to this one:

5. Are you using the right content?

Take a look at how your content is performing. Make notes on things that your most popular articles have in common. It can be something very obvious, for example, if all your most read content is infographics, but it can also be something that you need to figure out. Check if your best content has more or less images, what kind of images these are (gifs, stats, memes), check if these articles are shorter or longer, if they are more useful or more entertaining, aimed at professionals or noobs, and so on.

Once you know what underlines your best content, move to that of your competitors. Not only will that give you a hint of whether you're moving in the right direction, it will also give you new ideas for the future articles. You can use Buzzsumo or a similar tool to see how many shares any of their content got on the most popular social media platforms, and you can use a social media monitoring tool to dig deeper and see how popular is a specific blog post/campaign/ebook/etc across all of the Internet. To get new ideas, look at the topics they have covered successfully, but not as fully as you could; look at topics they have covered from a different perspective than you would; or simply write an article similar in terms of content to their.

6. Are you making use of influencers?

Influencers are active social media users with a large following that are considered to be experts in your industry. Using a social media monitoring tool (or your own knowledge), find influencers in your niche, and analyze their profile. Observe their imagery, branding, and take a note of what you can improve in your own strategy next year.

If you're using influencer marketing (which, most likely, you should be doing) take a note on what kind of content your influencers write and share. Firstly, that might give you more ideas for your own new content, and secondly, that will help you build relationships with them for the future cooperation.

That's about it! Hopefully, it didn't take you much time (I did mine in 40 minutes, but to be honest I practice a lot). If you've got any questions or suggestions for a quick and fruitful social media audit, comment below!