Social media are the key to growing any business these days. It seems like there is no way of having success without social media accounts online. It has been growing for years, but it is the time and place to be there and optimize your business accordingly. It’s a dynamic digital world, and social media are often called a compass that helps users navigate between companies that want to sell their products to them.

In this article, we will go over some key elements when it comes to growing your social media presence, enhancing the brand awareness of your business, and overall – optimizing your social media platforms through a thorough social media audit. Of course, it will not be easy, but we will guide you through this process, presenting you with some benefits and free social media audit templates. If it’s something that you may be interested in, let’s dive into the topic!

Social media audits are usually considered a comprehensive evaluation of all the company’s social media accounts and activities. This usually pairs with creating a social media strategy to find out how those elements align with the goals and objectives of the company or an individual. The main goal is to enhance an individual's or company's social media efforts to get to the target audience, grow on social media platforms, provide customer service at the best possible rate, and overall enhance current social media presence.

With the proper social media audit tools, you will gain some interesting insights into how effectively the social media is being run, creating a social media marketing strategy. It can also help you develop social channels further, find weaknesses and opportunities for development, and bump all the essential social media metrics in this situation. All of those elements of social media analytics should help you to measure the impact of social media efforts for the individual or a company and determine if the return on investment is worth developing social media channels.

Of course, every social media account will have a different perspective on this topic, so to run an effective social media audit, you will have to create an extra bracket for each new social media platform you will be analyzing. It’s good to develop a social media audit checklist and put all the social accounts on one page to compare them. You can see that in the free template we have provided for you.

Regarding finding software for this project, we cannot recommend Microsoft Office enough as it stands out as the best choice. It is renowned for being the most widely used office-related software worldwide, as it proves to be highly versatile for various business purposes.

And, it has become more affordable nowadays, contrary to common perception. You can get Microsoft Office Key for a reasonable price at Royal CD Keys.

Additionally, the key provides a lifetime subscription to utilize the software whenever and however you need.

Microsoft Office comprises a powerful program suite that caters to all office-related activities. It empowers users to accomplish a wide range of tasks with ease.

Moreover, its functionality can be further enhanced with the clever utilization of templates, which we have provided you for free. So, if you need to find a solution to your audit-related needs – Microsoft Office is the right path forward. And now, let’s go over each social media audit spreadsheet so that you will have a clear understanding of what is that we are proposing.

Social Media Audit Template #1

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The first of our social media audit examples is a pretty basic template, with all the social platforms on one page. This will be a perfect tool for you if you want to ensure your social media success and get excellent community engagement. Here, you can see the most crucial elements of each social media channel, with clicks per post, basic information like the number of followers, and monthly referral traffic on each social media platform.

It’s a great social media management tool that gives you insight into the audience data, top-performing posts on different social media pages, and how to enhance your social strategy on all your accounts. It may not be as advanced as Google Analytics, but this should be fine if you want measurable social media goals.

Social Media Audit Template #2

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Next, we have something more descriptive with a detailed step-by-step guide on each element of the social media audit. If you don’t know what to do with your social network but need to enhance your social media profiles, this will help you keep up to date with the latest trends and present all the data about your socials.

It is usually not used by marketing teams, as it is a tutorial for creating a social media strategy. Still, it can help get better metrics on all your platforms. Of course, it will probably not help you eliminate imposter accounts, but if you want to find your best-performing posts and why, this is the way to go!

Social Media Audit Template #3

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And finally, we have a simple social media audit that will help you to grow brand awareness while giving you some deep insight into audience demographics. With this template, you can implement your social strategies based on the social account demographic data, engagement metrics, audience growth rate, and other vital metrics necessary for competitive analysis.

It’s great to grow your channels and get engagement data about one platform and multiple ones simultaneously. Getting to target audiences is not an easy task, but with this template, it can be done quickly. So, this is the way to go if you want to perform your social audit and get to your target demographic with no issues.

So, now that we know all about the auditing process, let’s go over some benefits it can bring to your company. Of course, it will all depend on your approach to the topic. There are plenty of ways you can go about it. Maybe you want to find out your social data on different platforms; perhaps you wish to test accounts for conversion rate; maybe it’s part of more extraordinary social marketing efforts to align social media strategy with the company’s goals. 

You may have plenty of reasons that can benefit you in finding new platforms, new audiences, and fighting direct competitors where they’re at. With that in mind, let’s review some of the critical social media audit benefits you can expect.

Better Performance

It’s a pretty obvious thing, but with the data-driven approach that this analysis can provide you with, you will be able to enhance your social media presence, be active on social networks, identify the relevant problems with your approach, and regularly conduct improvements to your social media accounts. With analysis like this, you will get ahead of the competition quickly and progress your business’s presence. If you analyze your situation and take measures to evaluate what works and what does not, you will have better results in general.

Return on Investment (ROI)

The following essential element is the return on the investment aspect of your social media marketing efforts. As we know, setting up all those campaigns on social media to engage the audience with different hashtags, and creating PPC ads to have higher follower numbers, all of those examples cost a lot of money. Marketing is not free, and you must allocate your resources responsibly, especially in this digital space. If you conduct a social media audit, you will clearly understand what works in your particular situation and what should be improved upon.

Know Your Audience

If you perform a social media audit correctly, you will see a lot of demographic information on different audiences. Increasing traffic is one thing, but understanding who you are advertising to is another. With a more profound understanding of your target audience, you will be able to quickly identify ways to improve your communication and cater to those people more effectively.

Get in Front of Your Competitors

The next thing you must remember about social media audits is that they will allow you to get ahead of your competitors. You can do it only because they are already doing it. With this kind of benchmarking effort, you will see your social media presence and how it compares to your competitors and industry rivals. 

Additionally, with the right tools, your social media accounts will have a much higher conversion rate, perform better than your competitors, and grow your business overall. Nowadays, getting a digital media presence is vital in increasing your company and getting even better results.

Brand Recognition

Additionally, with the social media audit, you will be able to create a consistent image of your brand across many different platforms. If you are inactive in a particular space, your company's idea will be made by the users’ opinions or troll accounts. So, to combat that issues and regain control of what is being spoken about you or your company, you will need to find ways of inserting yourself into those conversations. And that is precisely what the social media audit can help you with. Not only is it a great way of getting rid of negative comments, but it can also help build trust and recognition with your target audience.

Moreover, you will be able to react when inappropriate content about you or your company surfaces on those platforms, maybe taking care of some security issues and other measures. This will help in protecting your reputation and brand.

Social Media Optimization

Also, with the social media audit, you can find your business's best social platform. Whether this would mean creating new and improved social media accounts or just optimizing your existing ones – it can be quite a game-changer for your company. You will quickly see that utilizing social media the right way can bring you clients or revenue and grow your company from manufacturing, customer service, and many other perspectives. You just need to find a platform to do so.

Content Optimization

Moreover, a well-planned social media audit can help you optimize your content. Suppose you can analyze how it performs among many old and new social media platforms or even within just one of them. In that case, you will quickly notice trends and ways to improve the overall performance of your marketing/content efforts. In many cases, focusing on what works and quitting the activities which don’t bring expected results

is a springboard for success. With valuable insight into social media audit, you can refine your strategy and create better materials for you and your clients.

Influencer Marketing

Another big thing about social media is the ability to work with influencers. Collaborating with them can get you pretty far regarding growing your socials. It works wonders for long-term planning, setting realistic goals for your future, and just overall – having a good understanding of how your collaborations are performing.

Now that we know what a social media audit can provide, let’s go over some essential elements to include in such a document. Of course, what will be there, in the end, will depend on your needs, goals, and why you created such an audit in the first place.

Evaluating your social media presence is not hard, but it takes some time, so it’s good to have a framework in mind when creating such an audit. You can modify it according to your needs, but it is an essential boilerplate you can use in most circumstances. With that in mind, let’s review some key metrics in that regard. 

Goals and Objectives

In this part, it’s essential to establish all the goals and objectives you have for your social media. It can be anything you want to work on. In most cases, people focus on increasing traffic to their website, growing conversion rate, generating some leads, boosting engagement, or increasing their brand awareness in general or about a particular product or service. Whatever it is, be sure to state it as clearly as it is possible.

Find Your Socials

The next thing to keep in mind is that you should definitely find the best social media for you to grow on. You may think that the more, the better, but as a construction company, you may not have too much luck on TikTok. Or, on the other hand – who knows? Maybe your creative marketing team will come up with some great advertising ways for that platform. Nevertheless, it should be a data-driven decision made by a thorough evaluation process that will show you the platform that is best for you.

Create a Profile

The next thing to keep in mind is that your profile should be fully completed and consistent with what the audiences can see on different platforms. Whether it’s the logo, graphics design, or maybe colors – it should be all in the same style, as creating something more advanced could prevent you from growing. Check such elements as profiles, pictures, and bios, and if the contact information is in the right place. Whatever it is, analyze and optimize it!

Content Optimization

After that, you will need to have an evaluation of the content you are creating and the relevance of it on each platform. Whether it’s a text, video, or image, there are plenty of ways of making it better. Additionally, be sure to look at factors like post frequency and the time of day when you are posting. Even small changes like that can enhance your online presence and get you an even greater level of engagement on each post.

Target Audience

The next way of analyzing your social media presence is to perform an audience analysis. Be sure to see all the data on their demographics and behavior on various social media platforms. If done the right way, you will be able to see exactly who you should be targeting and catering to. Similarly to the content you are posting, even small changes can make a great impact when it comes to growing your brand, so be sure to keep that in mind.

Competitor Analysis

Next, create a separate space for the analysis of your competitor's social media presence. By doing so, you will be able to see who you are against in this particular space, what are their strong and weak points, and how you can optimize your content in order to challenge their approach. You can even learn a thing or two after analyzing their way of doing business and implementing some changes to your own content strategy. It’s a win-win situation, so be sure not to omit this one.

SWOT Analysis

The next thing to do is to conduct a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. If done the right way, this analysis will help you to see not only where you can improve upon but also – what strong suits you can further develop. With the right approach, it can completely change your outlook on your online activity.

Measurable Results

And finally, the most important thing when it comes to growing your business from the point of view of social media is to have measurable results. You need to have key social media metrics in check. The most important ones are: 

• the amount of followers you have on different social media with their engagement factors, likes, comments, and shares

• click-through rate analysis

• The reach of your posts and your page as a whole

• Impressions

And all other site-specific factors that can be measured. The analysis is as good as you can measure it, so be sure to perform it in the best way possible.

Conducting a social media audit is not an easy task, but it’s an important part of growing your business if you want to have a great social media presence. If you run a comprehensive audit, you will be able to gain some great insights into your social media strengths and weaknesses and optimize them in order to grow your business or individual page.

There are plenty of benefits that can come from optimizing your social media accounts. From such simple things as enhancing the performance of your posts, maybe getting a little higher ROI, or finding more and more ways of improving your brand awareness – whatever it may be, there are plenty of ways that you can ensure your social media success.

With a better content strategy and even greater audience engagement and targeting, you will be able to reach heights you have never imagined. The data-driven approach in marketing is essential for creating a successful online presence.

Thanks for checking out this article! We hope that you enjoyed our deep dive into the world of social-media audits. If you liked this one, be sure to check out our great library of different texts on gaming/social media/office/software-related topics. We are sure that you will find something to your liking. That’s it for today; we will see you at the next one!