We bet, if you had to count on your hands how many different social media accounts you have, you’d run out of fingers, and for some of you, toes too. And that is part of the problem when it comes to social for business. Because we are spoilt for choice when it comes to social channels, many companies feel that they need to have a presence on every single one of them. If you have an audience on every single one of them, then great, but unless you’re a global brand such as Coca-Cola, spreading yourself too thinly is often the wrong tactic for your social media marketing.
But, knowing what channels to spread yourselves across is a hurdle not many know how to jump over, especially if social media is more of a side line activity than your daily focus. But as the phenomenon continues to grow, the importance of your presence on social will run parallel, so now is the moment for you to grasp hold of what your social channels are doing and act upon it.
The ultimate way to do this is the creation of a strategy for your social channels, but to do this, you need to know what channels you should be on, and to understand that, you need to carry out three different activities, the first being a social media audit.
“A social media audit is a detailed examination of your current social profiles to analyse your current performance and set a benchmark for future campaigns.”
Investing time into a social audit may be hard to get past the boss, but we can promise you it will be worth every second, and in the long run, the results will speak for themselves. Convinced? So where do you start? Think of it a little like a crime scene, stick with us it will make sense. You have three main elements as a detective, preparing, collating and investigating.
1. Create a spreadsheet
If excel wasn’t your best friend before, then it certainly is going to be now. Carrying out a social audit is a hell of a lot easier if you have already created the template to input the data into. Create different tabs for all of your different social channels, then create tables for the key metrics such as followers/likes, posting frequency, target audience, engagement etc. We know excel isn’t the most visual of software’s, but you can make it look pretty once you have all your information. {FYI, our social audits look outta this world.}
2. Gather the data
Once you’ve prepared your templates, the time has come to fill them. Start with the account you’re most active on and work in a logical order. Look for elements such as page descriptions and visuals – are they consistent across all channels and in line with the brand? Record the numerical data you can attain from the platforms such as page likes, and make the most of all the analytical tools the channels have to offer, you might be surprised as to what they throw out.
3. Analyse the findings
Now comes the fun part: the investigation. All the information you’ve collated will mean nothing unless you actually do something with it. Identify any similarities or differences. Make a note of types of content that are working better than others. Pinpoint if one channel is doing better than the rest. This will all help you to understand why.
Once you’ve got the why, you can be truly confident that those social channels are the ones that are right for you. Now all you’ve gotta do is get to know your target audience, create a competitor analysis and craft a social strategy and you’ll be on your way to becoming a social superstar.