SOP 043:
Performing a Social Media Audit

Goal: Analyzing your and your competitors’ social media profiles, strategies, and performance.

Ideal Outcome: You will gain a better understanding of what’s working on your social media profiles, as well as what they are not so great at. Further on, you will gain the same understanding when it comes to your competitor’s social media pages as well – and this will help you improve your presence on social networks.

Prerequisites or requirements:

At least one social media account (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), with at least one month of activity on them.

Why this is important: Social media is a crucial aspect of your digital marketing strategy, and running an in-depth audit is essential if you want to make the most out of your social media presence.

Where this is done: In your web browser, on different social media profiles, on Buzzsumo, and in a spreadsheet.

When this is done: Before you start designing your social media strategy.Who does this: You, your social media manager, or a digital marketing agency you have hired.

Environment setup

1. Open our Social Media Audit Worksheet and make a copy. Use your copy as you move along the entire process.

Create your social media audit report

1. Open your copy of the aforementioned worksheet.
2. Go to the “Social Media Audit Report”.
3. Repeat the following steps for each of your business’ social media accounts.
   1. Fill in the “Basic Information” section of the worksheet:
      1. Account URL. Self-explanatory – copy and paste your account URL (e.g: we pasted “https://twitter.com/theitcrowdmktng” for our Twitter account).
      2. Handle/Name/Title. Again, self-explanatory – copy and paste your account handle (for Twitter) or your account name or title (for other social media channels).
      3. Description. Copy and paste your profile description or bio. You will find it right under the handle on Twitter, in the “About” section on Facebook, and so on.
      4. Listed URL. This is the website you have listed on your social media. Copy and paste it into the spreadsheet.
      5. Profile Image. Save your profile image unto your computer, then add it to the spreadsheet in this cell.
      6. Cover Image. Follow the same instructions as those given for the “Profile image” cell. Not all social media websites have a cover image feature (e.g. Instagram doesn’t), so you will only have to go through this step where it’s applicable.
         
         
   2. Fill in the “Audience” section of the worksheet. Remember, you will have to update this every month!
      1. Following. Enter the number of accounts you are following.
      2. Followers. Enter the number of accounts that are following your page.
      3. Follower Monthly Growth. Enter the number of people that have joined your followers’ list in the past month. For reference, don’t delete the past month’s growth – keep it on file and just keep adding a new row within the cell.
         
         
   3. Fill in the “Content/ Engagement” part of the worksheet:
      1. Objective. Enter here the overall objective of your social media page. Is it broadcasting news, tips, or offers about your product? Is it entertaining and engaging the already-built fanbase? Think of it and add it to this cell, in a couple of words.
      2. Last Post. Enter the date of the last post.
      3. Posting Frequency. Enter the posting frequency on this channel (Rare, Often, Very Often, etc.). Make sure you scroll down to take into account past posts as well!
      4. Average Post Engagement. Look at the posts and enter the average Likes, Retweets/ Shares, and Replies/ Comments per post. You don’t have to take out your calculator for these numbers – just write down an approximate.
      5. Sentiment Notes. Enter the overall sentiment you get when you look at this channel. Is it a positive one – are people liking the posts, sharing them, commenting nice things? Is it a negative one – are users bombarding you with customer service questions and complaints that are not necessarily relevant to those particular tweets?
         
         
   4. Fill in the “Performance/ Value” part of the worksheet (extract this data from Google Analytics.)
      1. Organic Referral Traffic. Enter the number of visitors organic posts have attracted to your website, from each social channel.
      2. Paid Referral Traffic. Enter the number of visitors brought to your website by paid advertising on each particular social media channel.
      3. Organic Conversions. Enter the number of conversions you have gotten from organic social media traffic. So, of all the users that landed on your website via organic social media links, how many of them purchased your product(s)?
      4. Organic Conversion Rate. Enter the rate between the organic referral traffic and the organic conversions.
      5. Paid Conversions. Enter the number of conversions you have gotten from your paid social media traffic. Of all the users that came to your website via paid social media ads, how many of them have purchased your product(s)?
      6. Paid Conversion Rate. Enter the rate between the Paid Referral Traffic and Paid Conversions.
      7. Conversion Value. Are you getting real value out of your conversions? It may be dollar value, but you might have other “triggers” as well – such as new sign-ups, for example. Enter the approximate value (e.g. the earnings you get if that’s the value you’re drawing from this social media account).
      8. Notes. Add here any other miscellaneous notes you would like to put on record.
         
         

Perform a Competitive Analysis

Analyzing your own social media channels is very important – but so is analyzing what your competition is doing. More specifically, knowing what they are doing right and what they are missing will help you fortify your own social media strategies and grow your engagement on the social channels you have chosen to represent your business.

1. Open your Social Media Audit Worksheet .
2. Go to the “Competitive Analysis” sheet.
3. Go through each of the cells just like you did with your own social media channels, but this time analyze your competitions’ pages. You don’t need to analyze more than 5 competitors – pick the ones that are most relevant to you, the ones that offer products that are highly similar to you.
4. Likewise, you don’t have to look up your competitors on all social media channels. Go to their website and see which social media pages they link there (at the bottom of the homepage, usually).
5. You will notice the “Performance/ Value” section is missing from this version of the spreadsheet because you don’t have access to your competitors’ Google Analytics.
6. You will also notice a “Most Popular Content on Social Media” column in the “Activity/ Content” section of the spreadsheet. To see which are some of your competitors’ most popular posts, we recommend using BuzzSumo:
   1. Go to BuzzSumo.com. This is a tool to research content ideas and viral stories. This is a paid product but they offer a 30-day free trial, which you can use for the purpose of this SOP.
   2. Copy and paste your competitor’s URL in the search bar.
   3. Look at the column representing the social media channel you’re working on right now and open the piece of content that has the most engagement/shares according to BuzzSumo.
      
      
   4. Copy and paste the link to this piece of content into your spreadsheet.
      
      

You’re done! Analyzing the data you’ve gathered will help you make better decisions about your social strategy, boost your engagement and, ultimately, increase your conversion rates as well – so take your time when filling in the worksheet we have provided and think things through! It’s all to your advantage!