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A social media audit is a great way to take a look at your association’s social media strategy while keeping it a quick and easy process. There are no complicated steps, and your association can get right to the bottom of its engagement rates.
Is your association looking for a way to further develop its social media strategy? If the answer is yes, then you’re in luck. While it’s essential for all organizations to have a social media strategy, often times if not properly taken care of, those strategies can lose their effectiveness, even doing more harm than good when it comes to audience engagement. You don’t want all of your hard work on social media marketing going to waste.
So, if you’re an association who’s noticed lackluster results from its social media platforms, it could be time to conduct a social media audit. With a social media audit, your association will be able to get down to the roots of its social media strategy and determine exactly what works and what might need to be workshopped more. But how is this done?
For those associations looking to learn more about a social media audit and how it can help increase your marketing and engagement efforts, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to give you more insight on what a social media audit is and how you can take a closer look at the success of your own social media strategy. Let’s get started.
Typically, when people think of the word “audit” and the activity behind it, anxiety can ensue. But a social media audit doesn’t have to be a stressful, negative process. In fact, it can be quite cut and dry. According to Big Commerce, a social media audit combines a series of evaluative steps together in order to analyze and optimize a business’s social media strategy. In essence, it’s a way to break down every single move made on social media and see where gaps and mistakes are to fix and strengthen. But what do these steps consist of?
Well, much like any audit, a social media audit should be conducted using either an audit document or an audit template of your choice. This way, you can record all of your social media activity and view how each function of your social media strategy works. Once you have a set audit template going and you can identify specific challenges, your association can then get to work putting the pieces together. With you audit document, the social media plugins can be put together much like a puzzle. However, there may be pieces to this puzzle that just don’t belong. An audit allows you to figure out those wrong pieces and switch them out for pieces that fit better in terms of marketing and engagement. So, how exactly should your association use its social media audit to make changes?
Let’s break down an easy process for your associations can follow to conduct a social media audit of their own.
Your first step to a proper social media audit is simple: You need to have all of your social media outlets accounted for. If your association is one who tends to put its hands in multiple pies, this process can be a bit more tedious than others. After all, you’re trying to reach a wide audience in hopes to increase your association’s engagement. So, putting out feelers on as many social media channels as possible is a strategy to do so. For this, it’s important to work with your association’s marketing team or social media managers and be sure to cover every platform ever used.
For example, let’s say your association has a solid social media marketing strategy spread out on just a few platforms. However, you might have experimented with other platforms when you were first developing that solid strategy. With a social media audit, you want to collect even those first experimental attempts to cover all of your bases and leave no stone unturned. Once you have all of your social media platforms ever used, you can move on to the next step.
With information to now record, it’s time to create a place to organize all of those findings. To start, you need to find a format that works best for your association. Whether that’s a spreadsheet, a report, an automated template, etc. Select a format that your association finds best for organizing and keeping track of this information. Within your document, there are a few key point that any social media audit should hold.
You always want to record any links to your social media profiles or social media handles that you have. This way, you have easy access to any of your channels and can save your association the time of having to search for them later down the line. There are also some other metrics that should be recorded, such as engagement numbers, demographic information, and any quantitative data that can help you assess your strategy.
It’s a good idea to focus on your social media engagement from the get go. How many followers do your accounts have? What are your top three posts in terms of likes, comments, and shares? Does your engagement steadily increase, or does it bounce around? This is all important to record in your document. With all of this information in place, you can then begin to break down any changes you need to make.
When reviewing your content audit, you may notice that your social media efforts may not be as vigilant as you expected. This is where it comes time to fill in any blanks that you might have left behind when establishing your social media presence. For example, you might notice your association’s Twitter page could use some work. You may have broken links, zero bio text, outdated header images, or anything in between. With this type of maintenance, you want to make sure your association pays attention to detail. Your social media profiles should always have up to date photos and images. Your header and profile photo should be well-branded, letting everyone know what it is you bring to the table.
As for social media bios, this can get tricky. There is a limited amount of space for text, so you have to make sure your bio is short and sweet. Come up with something that will get your audience’s attention, and you’ll be sure to improve your social media engagement. There are many other ways to tie up loose ends on your social media accounts. If you can figure out the best way to fill gaps, you’re on your way to better social media marketing.
Once you’ve filled in gaps and taken care of any missing information, it’s time to analyze pre-existing content. You can analyze your social media posts based on engagement and whether or not that content best represents your association’s mission. You can also dispose of any content and/or social media profiles that don’t directly line up with the brand your association is trying to promote. With your audit, you should also be able to set realistic goals for the future of your association’s content. Look to content that has proved successful in the past and call forward similar content to put out in the future. If you can repeat that success, you should be able to come up with a foolproof formula that works a majority of the time.
A social media audit is a great way to take a magnifying glass to your association’s social media strategy while keeping it a quick and easy process. There’s no complicated steps, no need to outsource for your social media audit, and your association can get right to the bottom of its engagement rates.
