Social media has become one of the best ways for brands to connect with their audience and presents the perfect platform on which to blend direct marketing activity with behind the scenes insight, business updates, and industry trends.

More than that, social media is an incredibly visual touchpoint for brands to use and allows brand posts to be mixed with user comments, messages, and more. As such, social media can be used effectively as a way of not only shouting about your brand in the direct eye-line of captive customers, but also allowing your customer and audience to engage and reach you directly via comments, direct messages, and tagged posts.

And it doesn’t end there. Social media is also largely responsible for the rise in UGC (User Generated Content) which has become such an integral part of the most successful brand’s online campaigns and creates the perfect platform on which to launch influencer marketing content which connects brands with social media personalities.

To cut a long story short, social media has become a critical tool in the business marketing armoury and - when used effectively and efficiently - can be incredibly powerful in boosting brand recognition and conversion. Here’s how to check that your social media is up to scratch.

What is a social media audit and why is it important?

A social media audit is a way of assessing and measuring how effective your social media presence is against your core business goals. It allows you to identify the most effective platforms that you are active on and determine the types of posts which garner the most engagement. It also lets you understand more about your audience of followers, understand how your platforms contribute towards your business growth, and consider what you can do to continue to grow in the right direction.

Why is this important? Well, it basically lets you see how effective your social media is as it currently stands, and what changes you can make to enhance its success rate further. It can tell you things like which platforms you are performing best on and why - and which platforms need adjustment in order to thrive. Finally, it can help you to build a strategy for the upcoming months and years, to ensure that you are maximising the potential of this incredibly powerful and ever-growing marketing tool.

How to perform your own social media audit

In order to perform a comprehensive social media audit, you first need to find and compile a list of all your social accounts - including any old ones which you have since replaced, but which are still in some way connected to your brand. Part of this includes thinking about accounts you don’t yet have but should make in order to thrive in the ever-changing digital landscape. For example, should you finally think about branching into YouTube content or TikTok? Are you holding onto a Twitter account you don’t use but should pick back up?

From there, work through each and every one of these profiles and look at how your branding is presented. Firstly, is the branding up to date? Secondly, is the presentation of your logo optimised across each platform? Finally, are all links up to date with the right webpages and landing pages, and is your bio relevant?

From there, your audit should deep dive into the effectiveness of your content, how different content types perform, and which channels garner the best interaction and engagement. The more you know about where you are active, who you are interacting with on each platform, and what you want to achieve on each platform, the better your content can and will be.

That means that your audit should cover not only where you are active in the social sphere, but also…

• Who your audience are on the different channels
• What you want to achieve on each channel / platform
• How users on the different platforms engage with your brand
• How important each channel is to your website traffic and conversion rate

Armed with this information, and with expert support, you can start to build out a plan for ongoing optimisation and improvement.

Looking for social media support?

Here at Social Loop, we offer social media support including a full audit on your behalf - empowering you with the information and insight that you need to build a cohesive and successful strategy for the upcoming year.

Whether you need a simple audit or complete social media management and content creation support, our team of social media experts are here to help and offer advice.