How to do Social Media Marketing Audit: Boost Your Social ROI “The Complete Guide to Auditing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy”
How to do Social Media Marketing Audit? Follow Our Step By Step Guide on How to Conduct a Comprehensive Social Media Marketing Audit For Your Brand
Learn How to do Your Own Social Media Marketing Audit.
If you want to learn How to do Social Media Marketing Audits you have come to the right page.
Our expert level and in-depth article here will walk you through all of the moving parts. If you follow them you will have audited your social media marketing – hurrah!
Yes, following this step-by-step guide on conducting Social Media Marketing Audits will require significant time investment. In-depth research takes time and no doubt will give you several migraines and possibly a nervous breakdown…
If you simply can’t fit that in before lunch don’t worry, help is at hand!
Yes our PPC Experts are on hand to provide you with a free social ads audit. Simply reach out and we will discuss your requirements.
If you want to try your own audit, check out our guide on Social Media Marketing Auditing.
How to do Social Media Marketing Audits
In today’s digital world, social media is a crucial part of any successful marketing strategy. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more allow brands to directly engage with customers and build meaningful relationships. But how can you tell if your social media efforts are actually working?
This is where conducting a social media audit comes in. But a question we often get is how can I do a social media audit for free, the simple answer is you can try and do it yourself or get you could get an team of PPC experts to do it for you by ordering a free PPC audit.
A social media audit is a thorough, systematic evaluation of your existing social media accounts and strategy. It helps you identify what works, uncover problem areas like the Six Key Areas of a Social Media Audit, and enhance your social media presence…
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through how to audit your social channels step-by-step. We’ll explore metrics, tools, and key questions to gain a comprehensive picture of your Social Media Advertising Performance. Whether managed in-house or with an PPC agency, auditing social media gains insights for current & future success. Let’s dive in!
Perform regular audits
Regular audits of your social media marketing are crucial for maximising results and aligning strategies with your business objectives. A comprehensive social media marketing audit involves analysing various aspects of your online presence. Let’s delve deeper into each of the key elements mentioned in the guide:
- Social Media Goals, Objectives, and KPIs: Start by revisiting your social media marketing goals and objectives. Are they aligned with your overall business objectives? Assess the relevance and specificity of these goals. Identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are crucial to measuring success, such as reach, engagement, conversions, or customer satisfaction.
- Audience Growth and Engagement: Examine how your social media following has evolved over time. Analyse the growth rate, demographic data, and user engagement metrics. Determine which content resonates best with your audience and drives higher engagement. Understand what attracts new followers and retain existing ones.
- Social Content Performance: Evaluate the performance of your content across various platforms. Assess the type of content that receives the most engagement, comments, shares, and clicks. Analyse the frequency and timing of your posts and their impact on audience response.
- Social Advertising Efforts: If you run Paid Social Media Ads campaigns, assess their effectiveness. Analyse ad performance, click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI). Determine which ads generated the best results and whether you reached the desired target audience.
- Social Listening and Monitoring: Evaluate your social listening and monitoring efforts. Are you effectively tracking mentions, hashtags, and conversations relevant to your brand? Monitor customer sentiment and address any issues or inquiries promptly.
Strategy Evaluation
- Website Traffic and Conversions: Measure the impact of your social media efforts on website traffic. Analyse referral traffic from different social media channels and the corresponding conversion rates. Determine which platforms are driving the most valuable traffic.
- Competitor Benchmarking: Conduct a competitive analysis to see how your social media presence compares to your competitors’. Identify their strengths and weaknesses, and draw insights from their successful strategies.
- Platform Strengths and Weaknesses: Assess the performance of each social media platform you’re active on. Different platforms have unique strengths and audience demographics. Determine which platforms align best with your goals and focus your efforts accordingly.
- Overall Strategy Evaluation: Step back and evaluate your overall social media strategy. Determine if it aligns with your brand identity and resonates with your target audience. Identify any gaps or areas that need improvement.
- Identifying Optimisation Opportunities: Based on your Social Media PPC Audit findings, identify actionable insights and areas for improvement. Develop a roadmap for optimising your social media marketing efforts, aligning them more effectively with your business objectives.
To refine and improve social media marketing performance, holistically analyse these facets for valuable insights. Track trends, make data-driven decisions, and boost your online presence to add real value to your business.
Define Goals, Objectives and KPIs
Defining clear and specific goals, objectives, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is the foundation of an effective social media marketing strategy. Let’s expand on each aspect mentioned in the guide:
Goals and Objectives
- Social Media Goals and Objectives: When learning how to do social media marketing audits start revisiting and refining your core goals and objectives.. These goals should align with your overall business objectives and serve as the driving force behind your social media efforts. Typical social media goals include:
a. Increasing Brand Awareness and Reach: This goal focuses on expanding your brand’s visibility and recognition among your target audience. It involves increasing your social media following, improving brand mentions, and boosting share ability of your content.
b. Driving Website Traffic and Conversions: Here, the aim is to direct social media users to your website and convert them into leads or customers. This goal requires tracking the number of visitors referred from social media and the corresponding conversion rates.
c. Generating and Nurturing Leads: Social media can be an excellent platform for lead generation and nurturing. Your objective may involve capturing leads through forms or lead magnets and implementing lead nurturing strategies on social channels.
d. Building Online Community and Engagement: This goal focuses on fostering a loyal and engaged community around your brand. Metrics may include the number of active community members, user-generated content, and the frequency of interactions.
e. Promoting Products, Content, and Events: Social media is an ideal space to showcase your products, share valuable content, and promote events. Measure the effectiveness of these promotional efforts through engagement, click-through rates, and event registrations.
f. Providing Customer Service and Support: Social media is often used by customers to seek support and voice concerns. Evaluate your response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction levels.
KPIs
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): For each social media goal, define specific KPIs that will help you measure progress and success. Some common KPIs include:
a. Social Followers and Community Growth Rates: Monitor the growth rate of your social media followers and community members. Analyse which content or campaigns contributed to significant growth spurts.
b. Social Post Reach and Engagement: Track the reach and engagement metrics of your social media posts. Identify high-performing content and themes that resonate well with your audience.
c. Website Referral Traffic from Social: Measure the amount of website traffic originating from your social media channels. Determine which platforms drive the most valuable traffic.
d. Lead Conversion Rates from Social: If lead generation is a key goal, track the conversion rates of social media-generated leads. Assess which platforms or campaigns yield the highest-quality leads.
e. Social Engagement Rates Benchmarked to Competitors: Compare your social media engagement rates with those of your competitors. This benchmarking will provide insights into your performance relative to industry peers.
Clear goals and success metrics focus the audit, revealing strengths and areas for improvement. Follow this guide to learn How Do You Do a Social Audit? Regularly monitoring KPIs leads to effective social media marketing and improved results for what are social ads in marketing.
Evaluate Audience Growth and Engagement Metrics
To gauge the impact of your social media efforts and online community growth, evaluating audience growth and engagement is crucial. Let’s expand on the key metrics to assess in this process:
- Follower Counts on Each Network and Net New Followers: Track your social media followers and analyse new followers gained over time periods like a month or quarter. Analysing follower growth reveals platform traction and the effectiveness of content strategies for attracting new audiences.
- Overall Audience Size and Growth Trends by Platform: Besides monitoring follower counts, evaluate your social media audience’s overall size. Identify the platforms where your audience is most concentrated and observe growth trends over time. This analysis will reveal which networks have the most potential for engaging with your target demographic.
- Engagement Rates on Owned Social Content: Engagement is a crucial metric that gauges audience interaction with your content. Track the number of likes, comments, shares, and other interactions on your social media posts. This data will help you identify which content types and topics resonate best with your audience.
Demographics and Interests
- Click-Through Rate on Social Content to Website or Promotions: Measure how effective your posts are in directing traffic to your website or promotions. Track CTR to gauge the effectiveness of CTAs and assess audience engagement with your website and promotions.
- Comment and Share Activity Overall and by Post Types: Analysing comments and shares provides insights into engagement and content virality. Identify the post types with the most comments and shares. This data can help shape your content strategy to encourage more active participation from your audience.
- Audience Demographics and Interests: Utilise analytics tools to understand the interests of your audience. This information will help you tailor your content and marketing strategies to better cater to your target market.
Valuable insights
By evaluating what is included in a social ads audit you gain insights into your community’s preferences. This platform prioritisation, content creation, and audience engagement will see results improve. Monitor these metrics to stay agile & adapt social media marketing for continued growth & engagement.
Audit Social Content Performance (How to do Social Media Marketing Audit)
Auditing the performance of your social media content is a crucial step in optimising your social media marketing efforts. Analysing content types and themes helps you understand what resonates with your audience. Use data-driven decisions to boost engagement and reach. Let’s delve into the key aspects and examine what are examples of social media audits to help better consider when auditing your social content performance:
Performance
- Engagement Rates by Content Type: Evaluate how different content formats perform in terms of engagement. This includes analysing the performance of video posts, images, articles, live videos, infographics, and other content types you regularly use. Identify which formats receive higher levels of likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates.
- Performance of Different Topics and Themes: Assess the performance of content based on various topics and themes. Determine which subjects generate the most interest and engagement from your audience. This analysis can help you identify popular content themes and tailor your content strategy accordingly.
- Call-to-Action Testing Results: Review the effectiveness of different calls-to-action (CTAs) used in your social media posts. Compare CTR or conversion rates for each CTA to understand which ones drive desired actions from your audience. Experiment with different CTAs to optimise engagement and conversions.
- Content Freshness and Renewal Rates: Evaluate the frequency with which you refresh your content. Are you consistently posting new and relevant content? Avoid stale or outdated content, and aim to keep your audience engaged with fresh and valuable updates.
- Performance by Network and Placement: Analyse how your content performs on different social media platforms. Understand which platforms are more suitable for specific content types or themes. Additionally, assess how content performs on different placements within each platform, such as Instagram feed posts versus Instagram Stories.
- Optimal Posting Frequency and Engagement Dropoff: Determine the ideal posting frequency for each social media platform. Be mindful of engagement dropoff; posting too frequently might lead to diminishing returns in terms of audience interaction. Find the right balance for each platform.
Insights
Using these insights gathered from your content social media ad performance audit, you can shape your content strategies effectively:
- Content Strategy Refinement: Tailor your content strategy to focus on the most engaging content types, themes, and topics. Create content that aligns with your audience’s preferences and interests.
- Content Creation Prioritisation: Focus content creation on types and themes that yield high engagement and results.
- A/B Testing and Experimentation: Continuously experiment with different CTAs, content formats, and themes to optimise engagement and conversions. Use A/B testing to refine your content strategies.
- Platform-Specific Optimisation: Customise your content for each social media platform to maximise its impact on specific audiences and optimise engagement.
Conducting a social content performance audit and leveraging the insights gained can enhance your social media marketing efforts. Your audit will identify areas to enhance audience connection and drive better results for your brand.
Examine Social Advertising Efforts
How to do social media marketing audit? Analysing your social ads is crucial to maximise ad spend and achieve tangible brand results. Here’s an expansion on the key aspects to assess when auditing your social advertising performance:
- Social Ad Spend Levels Across Networks and Campaigns: Review your social media ad spend across different platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn) and individual campaigns. Understanding How to do Facebook ads Audits is the first step and will help you allocate budget to each platform and campaign. This analysis will help you identify which platforms and campaigns are the most cost-effective and where adjustments might be needed.
- Ad Reach, Engagement Rates, Click-Through Rates: Evaluate the reach of your social ads and how many users have been exposed to them. Assess engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates. Understanding the level of engagement gives insights into the effectiveness of your posts and Social Media Ad Targeting.
- Cost per Conversion or Acquisition: Calculate the cost per conversion or acquisition from your social media ads. This metric indicates how much you are spending to acquire a lead, customer, or desired action. Compare these costs across different campaigns and platforms to identify areas where you can optimise your ad spend.
Converting Audiences and Placements
- Return on Social Ad Spend Benchmarks: Determine the return on investment (ROI) or return on ad spend (ROAS) for your social media campaigns. Compare these benchmarks to your predetermined goals and industry standards. This assessment will reveal which campaigns are delivering the most significant return on investment.
- Standout High and Low Performing Creatives: Identify the best-performing ad creatives that have generated high engagement rates and conversions. Understand what elements make them successful, such as visuals, messaging, or call-to-action. Conversely, identify low-performing creatives and learn from them to avoid repeating ineffective strategies.
- Top Converting Audiences and Placements: Analyse which target audiences and ad placements deliver the highest conversion rates. Determine which audience segments respond best to your ads and optimise your targeting accordingly. Also, assess which ad placements within social media platforms yield the best results.
Optimisation opportunities
By conducting regular audits of your social advertising efforts, you can discover valuable optimisation opportunities:
- Budget Allocation Refinement: Adjust your ad spend allocation based on the performance of different campaigns and platforms. Invest more in high-performing campaigns and reduce spending on underperforming ones.
- Creative Optimisation: Use insights from high-performing creatives to refine and optimise your ad designs, messaging, and calls-to-action to improve overall engagement and conversion rates.
- Targeting and Audience Refinement: Optimise your target audience based on data from top converting audiences. Tailor your ad messaging to better resonate with these audiences.
- Ad Placement Strategy: Focus on the ad placements that drive the best results for your goals. Allocate your budget strategically to maximise the impact of your social ads.
By continually auditing your social media and optimising your campaigns. You can enhance effectiveness, reach target audiences, and achieve better returns on ad spend.
Conduct Social Listening and Monitoring
Conducting social listening and monitoring is an integral part of any comprehensive social media strategy so you don’t wind up following these common Social Media Advertising Mistakes. It involves actively tracking and analysing brand mentions, conversations, and sentiment across various social channels. Gain insights into social media marketing audits, brand perception, audience sentiments, and engagement opportunities to manage reputation effectively. Let’s delve into the key aspects to consider when conducting social listening and monitoring:
Share of Voice
- Brand Mention Volumes, Sentiment, and Topics: Monitor the volume of brand mentions on social media platforms. Analyse the sentiment associated with these mentions to gauge whether the overall sentiment is positive, negative, or neutral. Identify the topics and themes linked to your brand to better grasp what resonates with your audience.
- Trends and Spikes around Events, Issues, and Product Launches: Observe any significant trends or spikes in social media conversations related to your brand. Pay attention to events, issues, or product launches that may trigger increased discussion or engagement. Identifying these patterns can help you seize opportunities or address potential challenges.
- Share of Voice Compared to Competitors: Compare your brand’s share of voice (the percentage of overall brand mentions in your industry) with that of your competitors. Understanding your share of voice provides context to your brand’s social media performance relative to others in the market.
- Influential Advocates and Critics of Your Brand: Identify key influencers and brand advocates who actively mention and engage with your brand. These individuals can significantly impact your brand’s perception and reach. Similarly, pay attention to critics and detractors, as their sentiments may warrant addressing reputation management concerns.
- What Perceptions Reveal About Brand Positioning: Examine the insights gathered through social listening to understand how your brand is positioned in the minds of consumers. Assess whether your brand’s image aligns with the intended brand positioning and values.
Social listening
The insights obtained from social listening and monitoring offer several benefits to your brand:
- Reputation Management: By understanding how your brand is perceived and proactively addressing negative sentiments, you can effectively manage your brand’s reputation on social media.
- Crisis Monitoring and Response: Social listening helps you detect potential crises early on. This enables you to respond promptly, mitigate damage, and communicate effectively with your audience during critical situations.
- Identifying Influencer Engagement Opportunities: Identifying influential advocates allows you to build relationships with them, tap into their networks, and leverage their support to amplify your brand’s message.
- Content and Messaging Strategy: Insights from social listening can inform your content and messaging strategy. By understanding what topics resonate with your audience, you can create more relevant and engaging content.
- Competitive Analysis: Comparing your share of voice to competitors provides valuable data. Competitive analysis will help you identify market gaps and opportunities.
To stay attuned to your audience’s preferences, sentiment, and conversations, social listening and monitoring are crucial. They empower you to make informed decisions and maintain a positive brand image in the digital space.
Evaluate Website Traffic and Conversions
Understanding the true impact of marketing efforts on your business requires analysing website traffic and social media conversions. Gaining as many social media advertising insights as possible will help you build the roadmap of what needs to happen with conversions being the end destination for many of these digital trips. Here’s an expansion on the key aspects to assess when evaluating website traffic and conversions:
User Experience
- Website Sessions, Pages per Session, and Bounce Rates from Social Referrals: Monitor the number of sessions (visits) to your website that originate from social media referrals. Analyse how engaged these visitors are by assessing the average number of pages they view per session. Additionally, track the bounce rate, which represents the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. Lower bounce rates and higher pages per session suggest that social media traffic is finding your content relevant and engaging.
- Website Goal Completions from Social Channels: Identify and track the specific goals you have set for your website, such as completing a purchase, filling out a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading a resource. Measure the number of goal completions that can be attributed to social media referrals. This data allows you to understand how effective your social media marketing is at driving desired actions on your website.
- Landing Page Experience for Social Referrals: Evaluate the user experience of visitors who arrive on your website through social media links. Assess the relevance and alignment between your social media content and the landing pages they are directed to. Ensure that your landing pages provide the information visitors expect based on your social media promotions.
On-Site Conversion Trends
- Web Traffic Growth Driven by Social Initiatives and Campaigns: Examine the overall growth of website traffic attributed to your social media initiatives and campaigns over time. By measuring the increase in social media-driven traffic, you can gauge the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts.
- Social Commerce and On-Site Conversion Trends: If you are involved in social commerce (selling products directly on social media platforms) or have on-site conversion points, analyse the trends in conversion rates from these sources. Track how well social media contributes to your overall conversion funnel and revenue generation.
The business impact
By quantifying the business impact of your social media and PPC management presence and activities, you gain several benefits:
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Data-Driven Decision Making: Analysing website traffic and conversions helps you make data-driven decisions regarding your social media strategy. You can allocate resources to platforms and campaigns that generate the most significant results.
- ROI Assessment: By connecting social media efforts to website traffic and conversions, you can assess the return on investment (ROI) of your social media marketing.
- Performance Optimisation: Understanding the impact of social media on website traffic and conversions allows you to optimise your content, campaigns, and social media posts for better results.
- Understanding Customer Behaviour: Analysing website traffic and on-site conversions provides insights into customer behaviour and preferences, helping you refine your marketing efforts to better meet their needs.
To gauge the impact on business goals, assess traffic and conversions driven by these efforts. Analysing this data helps fine-tune strategies, allocate resources effectively, and improve overall results from social media initiatives.
Benchmark Against Competitors
Benchmarking against competitors is a critical aspect when Auditing Your Social Media Ads for a successful social media strategy. It involves comparing your social media metrics and performance with those of your competitors to gain valuable insights and identify areas for improvement. Here’s a more in-depth discussion of the key aspects to consider when benchmarking against competitors:
Content Engagement
- Community Size and Growth Rates: Analyse the size of your social media community (number of followers) and compare it with your competitors’ communities. Evaluate the growth rates of your social media following and those of your competitors over a specific period. A larger and faster-growing community could indicate a higher level of brand awareness and engagement.
- Social Content Engagement and Response Rates: Examine how your social media content performs in terms of engagement (likes, comments, shares) and compare it with your competitors’ content. Assess response rates to audience inquiries and comments to determine how effectively your brand engages with followers. Comparing your engagement metrics to competitors can reveal ways to enhance your content strategy.
- Social Advertising Reach and Engagement: Evaluate the reach and engagement metrics of your social media advertising efforts and compare them to your competitors’ advertising performance. This includes assessing metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and ad engagement. Understanding how your social ads perform relative to your competitors’ ads can guide your advertising strategy and optimisation efforts.
- Website Traffic Referred from Social Platforms: Track the amount of website traffic generated from your social media channels and compare it with your competitors. Analyse the quality of traffic (e.g., bounce rates, time spent on site) to determine how engaged social media users are when they land on your website. This data can inform your content and website optimisation to improve the effectiveness of social media referrals.
- Search Impression Share for Branded Keywords: Assess the search impression share for branded keywords associated with your brand and your competitors. This metric indicates how frequently your brand appears in search results compared to your competitors when users search for your brand name. A higher impression share suggests stronger brand visibility and awareness.
Competition encourages innovation
Benchmarking against competitors provides several benefits:
- Identifying Competitive Advantages and Opportunities: Understanding where your competitors outperform you can reveal areas where you can improve your strategies. It also highlights your competitive advantages, allowing you to capitalise on them.
- Learning from Best Practices: Analysing successful strategies used by competitors can provide valuable insights and ideas for your own social media initiatives.
- Setting Realistic Goals: Benchmarking helps you set realistic and achievable social media goals based on industry standards and your competitors’ performance.
- Staying Agile and Adaptable: Regularly monitoring competitor performance keeps you informed about industry trends and best practices. This enables you to adapt your social media strategies in response to changing market dynamics.
- Fostering Innovation: Competition encourages innovation. Analysing competitor performance can spark creativity and prompt you to explore new approaches in your social media marketing.
However, it’s essential to remember that while benchmarking against competitors is valuable, it should not be the sole focus of your social media strategy. Ultimately, your primary aim should be to align your social media efforts with your business objectives and provide value to your target audience. By striking a balance between competitive analysis and audience-centric content, you can build a strong and effective social media presence for your brand.
Identify Platform Strengths and Weaknesses
Identifying platform strengths and weaknesses is just one of the benefits of a free social media pay per click audit but a crucial one for optimising your social media marketing efforts and allocating resources effectively. Each social media platform has unique features, audience demographics, and engagement patterns. By assessing the performance of your brand on different platforms, you can determine which ones are driving the strongest results and where you should focus your efforts. Let’s explore each aspect in more detail:
Performance and Spend
- Follower Growth and Engagement Rates: Evaluate the follower growth rate on each social media platform your brand is active on. Compare the growth rates to understand which platforms are attracting a larger and more engaged audience. High follower growth combined with strong engagement rates indicates a platform where your content resonates well with your target audience.
- Content Response and Clicks: Analyse how your audience responds to the content you post on each platform. Look at metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates. Identify which types of content and topics generate the most engagement and clicks on each platform.
- Website Referral Traffic: Track the amount of website traffic referred from each social media platform. Analyse the quality of traffic and the conversion rates of visitors coming from different platforms. This data helps you understand which platforms are effective at driving relevant traffic to your website.
- Ad Performance and Spend Efficiency: If you run social media advertising campaigns, assess the performance of your ads on each platform. Analyse metrics such as reach, engagement, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Evaluate the efficiency of your ad spend on each platform to optimise your advertising budget.
- Audience Demographics and Interests: Utilise social media analytics tools and platform insights to understand the demographics and interests of your audience on each platform. This data helps you tailor your content and messaging to better resonate with specific audiences.
- Qualitative Brand Sentiment and Conversations: Monitor brand sentiment and conversations about your brand on each platform. Pay attention to both positive and negative sentiment to gauge overall brand perception. Engage with your audience in conversations to build a positive brand image and address any concerns.
Gain advantages
By identifying platform strengths and weaknesses, you gain several advantages:
- Efficient Resource Allocation: Invest more resources, time, and effort into platforms that deliver the strongest results and engagement with your audience.
- Content Optimisation: Tailor your content strategies for each platform based on the content types and themes that perform well on each one.
- Advertising Strategy Refinement: Optimise your social media advertising efforts by focusing on platforms where your ads perform best and deliver the highest return on investment.
- Audience Targeting: Use audience insights to refine your targeting and reach the most relevant audience on each platform.
- Reputation Management: Monitor brand sentiment and conversations to maintain a positive brand image and promptly address any negative feedback or issues.
By taking a data-driven approach and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each social media platform, you can maximise your brand’s impact, engage effectively with your audience, and drive better results from your social media marketing initiatives.
Conduct an Overall Strategy Evaluation
Let’s dive into conducting an overall strategy evaluation for your social media efforts as this is an elementary part of how to do social media marketing audits:
An overall strategy evaluation is a critical step in ensuring that your social media marketing aligns with your business objectives and drives meaningful results. By stepping back and analysing the big picture, you can gain valuable insights into your strategy’s effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Here’s a deeper exploration of the key factors to consider during this evaluation:
Coordination with other marketing channels
- Target Audience Alignment to Growth and Engagement Performance: Assess how well your social media strategy aligns with your target audience. Analyse the growth and engagement performance of your social media channels in relation to your intended audience. Ensure that your content and messaging resonate with your ideal customers and that your follower base reflects your target demographics.
- Content Mix and Themes Resonating Strongly with Audiences: Evaluate the effectiveness of your content mix and the themes that receive the most engagement and positive responses from your audience. Identify the content types, topics, and formats that drive the highest levels of engagement and adjust your content strategy accordingly.
- Resource Allocation Across Platforms and Initiatives: Examine how you allocate resources, including time, budget, and manpower, across various social media platforms and initiatives. Ensure that your resource allocation is aligned with the platforms that deliver the best results and align with your business goals.
- Integrated Coordination with SEO, Email, Digital Ads, PR, and Other Efforts: Assess the level of integration and synergy between your social media efforts and other marketing initiatives, such as search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing, digital advertising, and public relations. A cohesive approach across all marketing channels can amplify your brand’s reach and impact.
- Campaign Performance Against KPIs and Organisational Goals: Evaluate the performance of individual social media campaigns against the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and organisational goals you established. Analyse whether campaigns effectively contributed to overall business objectives and whether adjustments are needed for future initiatives.
- Competitive Positioning and Differentiation of Social Presence: Compare your social media presence and strategies with those of your competitors. Identify areas where you stand out and areas where you can differentiate yourself. Understand how your social media efforts contribute to your brand’s unique positioning in the market.
Stay agile and adapt to the changing market
An overall strategy evaluation provides several valuable benefits:
- Strategic Alignment: By assessing your strategy’s alignment with your target audience, goals, and resources, you can ensure that your efforts are focused on what truly matters to your business.
- Continuous Improvement: Identifying areas for improvement allows you to refine your social media strategy and optimise your marketing efforts for better results.
- Effective Resource Allocation: Understanding how resources are allocated across platforms and initiatives helps you prioritise and allocate resources more efficiently.
- Consistent Messaging and Branding: Integrated coordination with other marketing efforts ensures that your messaging and branding are consistent across all channels, reinforcing your brand identity.
- Competitive Advantage: Recognising your competitive positioning in the market helps you capitalise on your strengths and differentiate your brand from competitors.
- By regularly conducting an overall strategy evaluation, you can stay agile, adapt to changing market dynamics, and continuously improve your social media marketing to achieve long-term success and meaningful business impact.
Identify Areas for Optimisation When Following this How to do Social Media Marketing Audit
Identifying areas for optimisation is a crucial outcome of conducting a social media marketing audit. It allows you to take concrete actions to improve the effectiveness of your social media efforts and achieve better results. Here’s a more in-depth expansion on the actionable opportunities that can be uncovered during the audit:
- Increased Focus and Investment into Strong-Performing Platforms and Content Types: Based on the audit findings, allocate more focus and resources to platforms that have shown strong performance in terms of follower growth, engagement, and conversions. Similarly, invest in content types and themes that have resonated well with your audience and yielded higher engagement rates.
- Tactics and Creative Content Renewals Needed to Boost Stagnating Engagement: Identify platforms, campaigns, or content that are experiencing stagnating or declining engagement. Develop new tactics and creative approaches to reinvigorate interest and reignite engagement from your audience.
- Refined Audience Targeting Strategies Based on Highs and Lows Uncovered: Use audience insights from the audit to refine your targeting strategies. Tailor your content and messaging to better resonate with the demographics, interests, and preferences of your high-performing audience segments.
- Fixes for Platform Challenges Dragging on Performance: Address any platform-specific challenges or issues that have been affecting your social media performance. This may include resolving technical issues, improving response times, or optimising your presence on specific platforms.
Successful Initiatives
- Increased Staffing or Budget for Successful Initiatives Warranting More Resources: If certain social media initiatives have demonstrated exceptional results, consider increasing staffing or budget allocation to support and scale those successful efforts.
- New Tools Needed to Manage Efforts at Scale: Identify areas where new social media management or analytics tools could enhance your ability to track and optimise your performance, manage content, and engage with your audience effectively.
- Further Integration Opportunities with Complementary Marketing Initiatives: Look for opportunities to further integrate your social media marketing with other complementary marketing initiatives, such as SEO, email marketing, or influencer partnerships. Creating cohesive campaigns across channels can amplify your brand’s impact.
Implement actionable opportunities
By implementing these actionable opportunities, you can achieve the following benefits:
- Optimised Resource Allocation: Channel your resources, time, and budget more efficiently to areas that yield the highest returns and drive meaningful results.
- Improved Engagement and Conversions: Renewed content and targeting strategies can boost engagement and conversions, leading to increased brand growth and loyalty.
- Enhanced Performance Tracking: New tools and platforms improve your ability to measure and track your social media efforts, enabling data-driven decision-making.
- Consistent and Cohesive Marketing: Integration with complementary marketing initiatives fosters a unified brand message, reinforcing your brand identity and value proposition.
- Continual Optimisation: By consistently conducting social media audits and implementing optimisation opportunities, you can continually refine and improve your social media marketing efforts over time.
In conclusion, social media marketing audits provide valuable insights that fuel continual optimisation and improvement of your social media strategies. By acting on the opportunities uncovered, you can enhance your brand’s presence, engagement, and overall success on social media platforms. Regularly conducting these audits will ensure that your social media efforts remain aligned with your business objectives and deliver meaningful results for your brand.
Conclusion: How to Conduct a Social Media Marketing Audit
In conclusion, conducting a social media marketing audit is a crucial practice for businesses and marketers that should be set in stone for their Facebook Ad Strategy to gain valuable insights into the performance of their social media efforts. By following a systematic approach, brands can identify strengths, weaknesses, and optimisation opportunities, leading to more effective strategies and better results. Here’s a summary of the key steps to conduct a comprehensive social media marketing audit:
- Define Goals, Objectives, and KPIs: Begin by revisiting your social media goals and align them with specific, measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track your progress.
- Evaluate Audience Growth and Engagement Metrics: Assess your audience growth and engagement metrics to understand how well your social media content resonates with your target audience.
- Audit Social Content Performance: Analyse the performance of different content types and themes to identify what engages your audience the most.
- Examine Social Advertising Efforts: Assess the performance of your social media advertising to optimise ad spend and improve return on investment.
- Conduct Social Listening and Monitoring: Monitor brand mentions, sentiment, and conversations on social media to manage reputation, address issues, and identify influencer opportunities.
- Evaluate Website Traffic and Conversions: Measure the impact of your social media efforts on website traffic and conversions to assess overall business impact.
- Benchmark Against Competitors: Compare your social media metrics and performance against competitors to identify areas for improvement and gain a competitive advantage.
- Conduct an Overall Strategy Evaluation: Step back and assess the effectiveness of your overall social media strategy, ensuring it aligns with your business objectives.
- Identify Areas for Optimisation: Uncover actionable opportunities for improvement, such as focusing on strong-performing platforms, refining audience targeting, and integrating marketing efforts.
How Much Does A Social Media Marketing Audit Cost?
A social media audit’s cost is justified by its ability to uncover inefficiencies in your current strategy. Pinpointing areas where resources may be misallocated allows you to reallocate them effectively, optimising your budget for maximum impact.
A single experienced marketing consultant may charge between £100-£150 per hour to conduct a social media audit for your business. But agencies often charge flat rates starting around £1,000 and exceeding £5,000 for comprehensive audits.
Check out our guide on How Much Does a Social Media Audit Cost for more info, we will explain all.
Professional social media PPC marketing
By consistently conducting social media marketing audits, businesses can stay agile, make data-driven decisions, and continually optimise their strategies for maximum success. Regular audits enable brands to adapt to changing market dynamics, engage effectively with their audience, and maintain a positive brand image in the digital space. Remember, a well-executed social media marketing audit is an essential tool for driving meaningful business results and fostering long-term success in the competitive world of social media marketing.
In conclusion, conducting a social media marketing audit is a fundamental process that empowers businesses to optimise their social media strategies effectively. By carefully evaluating audience engagement, content performance, advertising efforts, website traffic, and competitive positioning, brands can identify areas for improvement and capitalise on opportunities for growth.
However, this process can be time-consuming and complex. If you’re looking to save countless hours and receive actionable advice on your social media marketing, the PPC experts at PPC Geeks are here to help. With their expertise, you can gain valuable insights and a comprehensive audit that will drive your social media efforts towards even greater success.
Hopefully by now and if you follow each step on this expert guide we have answered your question on How to do social media marketing audit. We would love to know your thoughts so please reach out with any questions as we really do want to provide you with the best advice possible!
Don’t hesitate to reach out to PPC Geeks for a professional social media PPC marketing audit, so you can focus on your business while ensuring your social media strategies thrive.
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