A Social media audit measures a social media account or campaign’s success by comparing content and performance metrics. The audit is an objective, data-driven analysis that provides insights about the strengths, weaknesses and potential opportunities for improvement of an account or campaign. The social media audit aims to allow an organization to improve its campaign’s success by assessing its performance with a full view of the entire social media landscape and its various elements.
Auditing a social media account is a process of using this data to immediately impact decision-making, create better campaigns or inform how future campaigns will be designed and executed. Auditing allows for real-time strategic planning with the ability to react quickly and effectively in analyzing any problems that may arise.
Guidelines for Completing a Social Media Audit
1. Evaluate the Goals of the Audience
The audience’s goals are exactly what they sound like; they measure the success of the account or campaign. Their success depends on the goals the audience has set out to achieve with their social media campaigns. The goals of an audience will influence what kind of content is used in a campaign and how that content is distributed within social media.
2. Determine the Audience’s Needs
The audience’s needs are what they want the social media campaign to deliver to them. The needs are influenced by the audience’s goals and how they want those goals achieved. We can create a social media plan to meet them best by understanding their needs.
3. Identify the Audience’s Needs Through Research
Research is integral to social media auditing. Before analyzing any data and drawing conclusions, research needs to be completed to identify the audience’s needs, their goals and how best to reach those goals. Audience research should be based on previous work done on the topic or industry of your social campaign, as well as other campaigns being done by similar audiences. Research can take many forms depending on what is available for you to use: surveys, qualitative interviews or quantitative analytics can all help you create an effective social media network audit.
4. Identify the Performance of Your Campaigns
Performance measures can take several forms depending on what you are measuring and the campaign’s goals. There are four performance measures: reach, audience, sharing and feedback. The type of measure implemented should be based on the understanding gained from previous research and how you believe it will best fulfil its intended purpose while also meeting the target audience’s needs.
5. Evaluate Social Media’s Effectiveness
Effectiveness is the degree to which social media can effectively meet the needs of its audience. As previous research and performance metrics demonstrated, social media is either meeting those needs or not. The effectiveness can also be complemented by the level of satisfaction with how the audience perceives your campaign.
How often a Company Should Perform the Audit
The answer to this question will vary depending on the audience’s goals, needs and current level of satisfaction. A social media audit should be conducted following any changes or updates to the account or campaign’s content, design and overall strategy. The audit can also be performed at regular intervals depending on the audience’s needs.
How to Analyze the Results
Analyzing results is as easy as taking the data gathered through the social media audit. By looking at all of the information gathered above and comparing it to past campaign trends, we can better understand what has worked and what has not met our audience’s needs while also gauging their level of satisfaction.
Deciding when to Complete Re-strategize
The evaluation of social media performance metrics and the audience’s needs can give a better understanding of what needs to change in the campaign to achieve more success. Based on the performance metrics and audience needs, the objectives must be updated, and a new campaign plan must be created. This planning will lead to re-strategizing, which is when social media has been deemed successful or not successful.
