But not every platform works the same for every business. In this post, I’ll show you how to perform a social media audit in just 30 minutes. So, how often should you perform an audit? From the drop-down menu, click “Google Sheets.” Now, you’ll have a fresh spreadsheet to work with. Here are some ideas: The username and URL for each platform that you’ll audit The number of followers for each account Engagement metrics Demographic information Popular content These create a nice base to work off of. Select the Page you’re auditing and it will take you to an overview. This includes your fan demographics along with users you’ve reached and engaged. This contains some basic demographic information about your Instagram followers. What type of content does your audience like the most? Every social media platform offers analytics and insights that you need to take advantage of.
The number of worldwide social media users will surpass 3 billion by 2021.
That’s more than a third of the Earth’s population!
That creates an incredible opportunity to reach online users, and you shouldn’t pass it up.
But not every platform works the same for every business. That’s why it’s important to review what’s working and what isn’t.
Otherwise, you risk wasting time, energy, and money on flawed campaigns.
But don’t worry. That’s where social media audits can help.
In this post, I’ll show you how to perform a social media audit in just 30 minutes.
The result will tell you if you’re on track to hit it big or if you’re at risk of flushing more dollars down the drain.
But before we get to that, let’s talk about preparing your audit.
How to prepare your social media audit
“Auditing” can sound intimidating.
I’ve worked with agencies that charge tens of thousands of dollars and take months to complete a single audit.
In this case, though, yours will actually be pretty simple. We’ll take a look at each platform and identify a few critical KPI benchmarks to gauge progress.
So, how often should you perform an audit?
Ultimately, you can do them as often as you’d like to. I recommend quarterly at the very least, but every week is best if possible.
The point is that you do it consistently and in a way that works for you.
I recommend creating a spreadsheet to maintain all of the information you’ll be recording. Google Drive is a great place to do so since it’s free. Here’s how to do a simple one.
Pull up Google Drive and select the “New” button.
From the drop-down menu, click “Google Sheets.”
Now, you’ll have a fresh spreadsheet to work with. I like using Google Drive because you can share them with your team, partners, and other vendors.
Next, you’ll want to label the columns.
These will be categories that list account information and key performance indicators.
What exactly should your columns contain? Here are some ideas:
- The username and URL for each platform that you’ll audit
- The number of followers for each account
- Engagement metrics
- Demographic information
- Popular content
These create a nice base to work off of. Here’s what my spreadsheet looks like now.
It seems a bit empty, huh? Let’s fix that by entering our account information.
I’d suggest that you date your audits or add monthly sections to them. This helps track monthly changes when you audit again in the future.
Since every platform is unique, you could also add columns for network-specific metrics.
With this basic template, you’re ready to use your auditing spreadsheet. Now, it’s time to get to work.
I’ll walk you through analyzing Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
Facebook collects tons of useful 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.”
For this example, I will use the account of a friend’s small startup I am currently advising.
On the following page, Facebook will give you valuable insights into both your ad accounts and the business Page itself.
Since we’re focusing on general social media today, let’s first take a glance at the overview.
Right away, Facebook displays information about your Page likes, reach, and the engagement you’ve accumulated. 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. With this information, let’s go back to our spreadsheet and fill it in.
It should look similar to this:
As you can see, I’ve entered how many new followers I’ve gained, how much my engagement has improved, and what content performed the best.
What about demographics?
For that, 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.
As you can see from Megalytic’s perspective, selecting the “People” tab will display demographic data. This includes your fan demographics along with users you’ve reached and engaged.
Each tab will show you:
- The ratio of men versus women that follow you
- The number of users in each age group
- Which countries and cities your followers are from
You have 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. But first, let’s input some of this data into our spreadsheet.
With that simple Facebook audit, you should now have a good idea of who your target audience is and what content they enjoy the most.
When you decide to audit your Page again, you can compare these metrics to the updated ones to see how your content is performing.
Pinterest is a goldmine for marketers.
It’s a platform that heavily rewards quality infographics and visual content. It also offers an awesome analytics page to boot.
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.
As we saw with Facebook, understanding what content performs best will help you offer more of it in the future. This can further increase your engagement and pins.
What kind of content do you notice performs well for your page?
To dig into 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.
Record these in your spreadsheet. In the future, you could publish more content in these categories to see if your followers enjoy them.
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 and which to dial back.
It also reveals which types of pins are driving the most traffic to your website.
Selecting the “All-time” tab shows you which pins received the most shares and ranked the highest in searches.
Do you notice any similarities between the pins that are receiving the best feedback? Note this in your spreadsheet.
Record any important data in your spreadsheet. By now, your spreadsheet should be filling out quite nicely.
Instagram is the go-to social media platform for fashion, beauty, and health brands.
Instagram already has over 700 million users. And more than 70% of US businesses are now using it to reach customers, too.
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.
It won’t give you insights into content that you posted before you upgraded, but it will give you information about your posts from then on.
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