What Brands Learn from a Social Media Audit

The internet has exploded with social forums and platforms; there is no lack of online avenues to advertise to the masses. But with your brand spread out between Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, and more–how do you effectively and sufficiently track your marketing efforts? A social media audit plays the superhero in your measuring and tracking efforts by gathering all your intel into one place to reveal where your business is winning and losing.

In this blog, we aim to explore what brands can learn from a social media audit, including the following:

• What a social media audit template is, and why you need one
• What to include in your audit template
• Essential KPIs to pay attention to
• How to use a social media audit template (plus a free template for you to use)

And there’s never been a more dire time to understand these metrics as social media grows and expands. Over 4.26 billion people are using social media globally, which is projected to increase to almost six billion by 2027. These social media usage stats reveal more about how critical it is for brands to audit their social media:

• 50% of Instagram users say they have visited a brand’s website after viewing their stories.

• 68% of users watch YouTube videos to help them make purchasing decisions.
• More brands are jumping on the social media train–According to Statista, “Ad spending in the Social Media Advertising segment is projected to reach US$268.70bn in 2023.” And it is expected to show an AGR worldwide of 9.40% through 2027.

Additionally, social video advertising is expected to surpass $79 billion by 2024.

More marketers are jumping on social media to advertise, and more consumers search social media for products and services. Brands will need a social media audit to help them make sense of all their online efforts and help them stand out in an ever-increasing crowd.

So, what is a social media audit?

A social media audit allows brands to analyze their social media data to assess performance and provide a baseline for future endeavors. It provides a platform to explore new growth tactics and reveals ways to improve their social strategies.

Additionally, it acts as a roadmap to consumers’ hearts by revealing what is relevant and poignant to various audiences—this helps brands develop targeted messaging, create new products or services, or improve upon old ones.

In short, a social media audit provides better audience understanding to improve brand awareness and engagement and to move consumers through your purchase funnel.

And the first step in this process is your social media audit template.

What is a Social Media Auditing Template?

A social media auditing template is an analytical tool that analyzes your brand’s performance.

Regularly updated, a social media audit will immediately reveal what is working, what is not, and what should be improved. A monthly social media audit spreadsheet that pulls audience data from your brand’s social media pages and monthly accounts will also track success over time. It provides an overview of your presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and any other sites you include in the audit. And it’s priceless.

And there will be key metrics you’ll want to include in your audit; we’ll explore those next!

What To Include in a Social Media Auditing Template

When you look at all the channels and data, it can be overwhelming. And that’s where having a template helps. You can organize all your social channels and connected efforts into one place. Generally, a social media auditing template will have three stages:

• Current state: Where you stand currently, what campaigns and efforts are happening now, and on which social channels.
• Performance: How well your social media efforts are working? How is brand engagement? What about sentiment? How are these metrics contributing to actual business results?
• Opportunities: The most crucial part of any social media audit. Is there an emerging trend you can get ahead of and become the leader in? What about whitespace opportunities?

By assessing the above, the template will help you track specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze performance on any channels your brand has a presence on, such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.

So, what are social media KPIs? These are metrics used to determine whether your brand’s social media marketing strategy is winning over the crowd. They can include:

• Impressions: This is how many times your post was visible in someone’s feed or timeline.
• Potential Impressions: How far your post may have traveled and its possible audience
• Follower Count: How many followers your social channel has at a set time.
• Reach: This is the number of people who have seen a post since it went live. Reach varies based on when your audience is online and the quality of your material. It offers you a sense of what your target audience values and finds fascinating.
• Trending content: Which posts are performing the best?
• Campaign performance: How your most recent campaign is performing.
• Click Through Rate (CTR). This is the percentage of people who viewed your post and clicked on the call to action. This data provides insights into what content is relevant for your audience.

These KPIs are the basics and are what every brand should measure; however, there are other key indicators that brands should also be tracking. We’ll dig into those now.

Other Key Performance Indicators to Pay Attention To and Include

While the metrics above are critical to understanding your reach and how well a particular post performs, other metrics further your understanding of your brand’s overall performance. Things like demographics, which are crucial to understanding your audience and how to tailor messaging, as well as sentiment, which reveals how consumers feel about you, are critical to getting it right as a brand. And then there is share of voice and hashtags to consider—let’s explore!

Demographics

Demographics will vary from platform to platform. And a solid understanding of your audience via a social media audit will help you decipher why one post performs well on Facebook while it falls flat on Reddit.

For example, 29% of Facebook’s US audience is between 50 and 64. On Instagram, most users are aged 18 to 29, accounting for a third of all users. Understanding age demographics is vital to tailoring your posts toward specific audiences. For example, Gen Z won’t be interested in the same things as Millennials-so, marketing the same electric toothbrush may look very different when trying to reach these two audiences.

And it goes beyond age. A tool worth its weight will also include demographics that reveal professions, interests, and bio terms—and this data can be used to create even more specific and targeted messages.

Additionally, audience demographics are essential when partnering with influencers to help sell your product. You need to understand what audiences they attract. After all, it is them who will be helping you spread the word about your brand and product. For example, if you sell a menopausal supplement, you need an influencer with an audience that reaches that demographic. A social media audit can help you determine what social channel will be best for you to market your product, as well as find the right influencer to spread the word.

Social Sentiment

And there’s always Social Sentiment to consider. This critical metric reveals consumers’ feelings about you as a brand or your products and services. As an example, below, we have a top food delivery brand. Over the past month, they’ve hit some turbulence, resulting in a negative -8% out of -100 to 100.

Any shift in sentiment is something to look at. If you’re updating your audit regularly, you can anticipate more significant sentiment dips and get ahead of them before they do too much damage. And since emotion plays an important role in purchase decisions, a sentiment analysis is vital to your brand’s heartbeat.

Social Share of Voice

How are you doing when benchmarked against your competitors? Your social share of voice (SOV) tracks how many people mentioned your brand compared to the number of people mentioning your competitors. It shows how relevant your brand is within your industry.

SOV helps identify what your competitors are doing right so you can copy their successful moves. But it also highlights where they may be losing ground, allowing you to position your brand in a way that offers their unhappy consumers a better alternative.

Rival IQ’s competitive intelligence does a great job of helping brands visualize performance between brands. They offer head-to-head comparisons for many top social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.

Hashtag Analysis

A social media audit should include an analysis of your hashtags. Hashtags are a valuable tool for drawing attention to your posts and brand. Hashtags can increase your engagement on Twitter by 100%, and on Instagram, if you use just one hashtag on a post, it will receive 29% more engagement. Clearly, hashtags are winning, and this is reason enough to track your hashtagging efforts.

Once again, Rival IQ has an excellent tool for comparing your hashtags on social media. It reveals the success of the hashtags you’ve been using and locates trending hashtags you can use in future posts for greater engagement.

Each of these KPIs are critical in understanding how your brand is performing and how to improve your performance so you can better usher consumers through the purchase funnel.

Now let’s discuss how to use a social media audit template.

How to Use an Auditing Template. Plus, a Free Social Media Audit Template!

You need a plan of attack! So, to help get you started, here’s a checklist of how to go about auditing your social media:

• Gather a list of your social accounts (pretty obvious, right?)
• Use a social media audit tool for your purposes, including a social media audit template (more on this below). You’ll want an analytical tool to track numerous parts of your business and audience. And don’t just think about the here and now; you want a tool that will develop with you.
• Keep track of your metrics! Gather information on your target audience’s demographics and engagement, then post it on each social channel you utilize.
• Visualize your goal and what needs improvement.
• Use your insights to better your future. Everything can be improved; use what you’ve learned and apply it to your strategy.
• Compare your brand to other successful brands that are dominating the market.

It is simple to use an auditing template. And NetBase Quid® makes it really easy with this free social media audit template. It has individual pages dedicated to your various social media platforms. On each page, there are areas allotted explicitly for:

• Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement rates and YoY changes.
• Audience data such as the number of followers, demographics, and YoY changes.
• Account details such as hashtags used, links in profile, mission statement, etc.
• Goals and SWOT Analysis detailing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

 

Additionally, a summary page gives you an overview of all your accounts for a quick comparison of one another. Use this template and a social analytic tool to discover what is gaining traction, what users are engaging with the most, and how to position your brand for success.

Having a separate team to conduct a social media audit would be ideal, but there is no set rule on who should handle it, just as long as it is done well and regularly. Today, consumers’ interests and habits change virtually every day. For example, simple Instagram posts and videos were sufficient for most brands in the past. However, Instagram Reels have entirely transformed the game. As a result, it is critical to understand these changes, how they impact your audiences, and what you can do to increase your performance. A solid social media presence might be the difference between winning and losing in today’s fast-paced market—and a social media audit can get you there!

If you need help with your social media audit, take advantage of our free social media audit template, and then reach out for a demo!