8 Steps to Social Media Content that Delivers Real Results
In today’s digital world, social media isn’t a “nice to have,” but is a “must have” if you want your brand to succeed. If your social media game is starting to feel stale, don’t worry. It’s probably just time for a refresh. In this article, we take a look at the benefits of and how to perform a social media audit.
What is a Social Media Audit and What are the Benefits?
You can’t just leave your company on autopilot all the time. It’s important to analyze your online performance to understand whether your content is hitting the mark or not. An audit simply evaluates your brand’s digital footprint. In essence, it helps you analyze performance, uncover problems, set realistic goals, and align future content planning with those goals.
Social media audits generally look at the following areas:
- Performance: looking at how effective your strategy is on achieving KPIs (key performance indicators).
- Branding Consistency: seeing how uniform your tone, messaging, and visuals are across all platforms.
- Audience Behavior: understanding your audience demographics, behavior patterns, and preferences to create more targeted content.
- Traffic Flow: tracking the effectiveness of your sales funnel.
- Content Effectiveness: determining which formats and platforms perform better and which ones are taking up resources with little results.
By identifying hang-ups and low-performing content in an audit, you’ll be able to optimize your content to really work for you, maximizing your efforts.
How to Perform a Social Media Audit
These are the steps you should take to perform a successful social media audit.
1 | Take Inventory of Active and Inactive Profiles
- Create a centralized list of all your social media accounts, including inactive or infrequently used accounts.
- Make note of platforms you are not on that you could be on.
- Search each platform for unofficial accounts that use your brand name; these could be imposters or a coincidence, but they could be hurting your brand reputation by misleading consumers.
- Report any accounts that infringe on your intellectual property to maintain control of your brand’s online footprint.
2 | Define Specific Goals for Each Platform
Determining your overall business goals will help you define platform-specific goals. Set your overall goals and think about the types of posts that will help you achieve those goals. Remember, each platform offers different opportunities. Understanding each platform’s strengths is key to helping you plan better content that meets your brand goals.
Here’s each platform’s strengths:
- YouTube: long-form video that can educate your audience in an entertaining way.
- X (formerly Twitter): brief posts that allow you to put out real-time updates.
- Instagram: Reels, Stories, and carousels offer countless changes for engagement.
- LinkedIn: posts bring brand awareness to professional audiences; great for B2B content.
- TikTok: Short form video that can be used to inform or entertain audiences; virality on this platform can lead to free brand visibility, but it’s hard to go viral.
- Facebook: a social media staple that is excellent for building community and fostering customer loyalty.
- Threads: can drive conversations and traffic to other pages/sites.
- Pinterest: a place for ideas, inspiration, and shopping; it can even help you identify future trends!
- SnapChat: ability to engage with younger audiences through creative and interactive content.
So if your goal is to build community, it might be worth focusing more of your efforts into your Facebook account. However, if your goal is to inform and educate your audience, YouTube and Threads might get more of your efforts.
3 | Check for Brand Consistency
While each platform is unique, your brand should still appear consistent across all platforms. Are you using the same tone, messaging, and visuals across all platforms you are on? Having a set brand style you use across all platforms creates a consistent and seamless consumer experience that builds trust with customers.
4| Analyze the Data and Identify Top-Performing Content
The best way to understand how posts are performing on the different platforms is to open up the analytics tool. Going through the data will help you pinpoint what types of posts are working and which ones aren’t, so you can maximize your efforts.
Some KPIs to take note of include:
- Impressions
- Engagement Rate
- Reach
- Click-Through Rate
- Vanity Metrics (shares, likes, comments, views)
Determine which of these metrics are most important to achieving your goals and base your top performers on those metrics.
5 | Map Out Your Traffic Funnel
Coordinating your social media strategy can help you build a more effective marketing funnel. Take a look at the journey a customer takes from brand awareness to purchase. Are there places where people are dropping off more than they should be in that process? Are you just not generating enough leads? Finding the holes can help you craft more effective messaging and a better customer journey process that plugs up a leaky funnel.
6 | Analyze Demographics
You may be surprised to learn that each platform has different user demographics. Facebook attracts a lot of Millennials and Boomers. Instagram is the Millennial hub while TikTok is where Gen Z hangs out. Understanding who you are speaking to on each platform is crucial. Look at metrics such as age, region, interests, and the behaviors of users on each platform. While your messaging and tone should be broadly consistent across platforms, it’s also good to tailor specific messaging to each platform’s demographics.
7 | Identify New Opportunities
New platforms are constantly being developed, and you never know which one will be popular in the future. Getting in earlier on a new platform can help you take advantage of a less saturated market. It also allows you to reserve your username before someone else takes it. So be open minded when looking for new platform opportunities. Evaluate each one, considering whether it aligns with your overall goals and fits the type of content you produce.
8 | Update Your Strategies
With insight into your current strengths and weaknesses, you can now begin updating your social media strategies or crafting new ones. Strategies based on actionable insights are what drive real brand growth!
Let the Professionals do the Audit!
Does all of this sound overwhelming? Maybe you just don’t have the time to dig into the data. Let the professionals at Tintero Creative do the social media audit for you! Our expertise in social media and marketing means we can perform a social media audit that delivers actionable insights. Then, together we can help you craft a brand story that works for your industry while still taking advantage of digital trends and meeting marketing best practices. Let our innovative team help your brand grow and succeed online by scheduling a consultation call today!