How to carry out an effective social media audit

The frustrating nature of social media, particularly organic, means you can often only see your time, effort and investment without any clear understanding of its impact.

And I can't be the only one who's been handed the reins to social media channels without any plan or clear strategy.

Together, these are a problem.

As I got more experienced, I knew this had to change, which is why social media strategy is so important. But the challenge for senior marketing leaders or social media teams is knowing where to start – then finding the time to do so!

That's where a social media audit can help.

What is a social media audit?

A social media audit provides an unbiased, honest and actionable review of all your channels (and your competition). Fundamentally, it's a 'sanity check' that highlights what’s working and what could change.

Why do you need a social media audit? And what are the benefits?

These two questions are connected. And, the easiest way to describe why you might need one is to show you these statements:

1. You feel busy on social media but lack confidence in its effectiveness.
   

2. You can’t confidently explain what social contributes to the business.
   

3. Engagement exists, but impact feels unclear.
   

4. You’re about to increase investment and want to get the foundations right.
   

5. You’ve inherited channels and don’t know what’s working.
   

6. Your social team is sharing numbers and reports but you want a second opinion.

Do any of these statements feel relevant to you?

There will be more, but these scenarios are some of the most common reasons why marketing teams want to sanity check their social media output. Particularly if the content doesn't feel like it's connected to wider business objectives.

And that becomes the primary benefit of any audit; making sure the activity on social is relevant and connected to your overall marketing strategy, and the business as a whole.

This is perfectly summed up in a recent article The Drum all about the 'death' of the traditional marketing funnel:

Social ain’t a support channel. It’s the front door. Attention ain’t the goal. Relevance is. Clicks matter less than saves, shares, comments, and time spent. The customer journey is a loop, not a line. The Drum: The marketing funnel is dead. Social media ate it

This means social media effectiveness matters more than ever, so understanding how effective your channels are, or could be, starts with an audit.

Step-by-step guide to conducting your own social media audit

There's a lot you could do as part of a social media audit, but you don't need to invest in expensive software to do so.

If you have those tools already – e.g. social media scheduling and analytics platforms – it can make life easier, but they're not essential.

Here's how you do it:

1. Identify all of your social media channels

Build a list of all of your channels and their handles, but don't limit it to those you use everyday.

It is important to include any channels you might have experimented with before, or stopped posting on , or just created an account to secure the username.

List them all and identify which ones you'll be using.

2. Understand the overall marketing strategy and wider business goals

Before you kick off the big audit of all of those channels you've just found, you need to know the overall direction of the business.

Work with your CMO/director of marketing to get to grips with the marketing plan, in the context of the organisation's short-term and long-term business goals. Without these, your social media strategy will be as about as effective as a boat without a rudder.

Terrible analogy aside, if you want senior leaders to buy-in and support your new direction for social following this audit, you'll need to put everything in context.

(When you get to the point of presenting your new strategy to the board or SLT, my video on securing senior buy-in may help).

3. Review your content (in the context of your target audience)

Once you know the overall direction your marketing should be heading, it's time to review your social media content with that thinking in mind.

Now, every approach is different, but here are the main questions I keep in mind when auditing any client's social media channels:

• What's it trying to achieve?

• Is it clear who's it trying to talk to?

• What actions is it asking them to take?

• Does the content get any engagement?

• If not, why? Is it the message, format or something else?

• Which content is most effective? Why?

• Does it follow general best practice (by channel)?

• Does it consider the 95/5 rule? Or is it just selling?

• What do the numbers tell you?

You can use these questions (and more), as well as the various platform analytics – plus any external tools you already use – to dive into your channels and dig out the good, the bad and the ugly. If you're regularly reporting on social anyway, this will make life much easier.

4. Analyse the competition

It's vital you understand your content in the context of the market you operate in. This is why competitor analysis is such as an important part of a social media audit – but one that can be overlooked.

You're not trying to copy them (although you will learn a thing or two) but instead to understand their own approach to social. By doing so, you'll get a much better sense of their own social media ambitions – and how you can do something different.

Competitor analysis largely follows a similar approach to the questions I posed above, but don't get too bogged down in trying to work out their own strategy. You will go mad!

Instead, look at the overall message they're trying to convey and analyse the content from an engagement perspective. Is that message landing? Does the content make sure in the context of everything else you know about them?

If engagement is poor across all of your competitors, what can you do differently to buck that trend?

5. Learnings and opportunities

After all this work, your audit will be taking shape, but there are few things left to do before you present it to your manager, SLT, or board of directors...

Identifying learnings and opportunities is the big one!

This is where you combine your findings from your own channel audits, and the competition, into an easy to understand summary of what you've found and what opportunities this provides the business. This should be everything you've found – not just the priorities.

(That's the next bit).

Ideally, you should present learnings and opportunities side-by-side to demonstrate your thinking. This can include everything from recommendations on content format style to identifying themes or patterns you've spotted in the content (good and bad).

Most importantly, show how these learnings inform the various opportunities available to the business on social.

6. Recommend next steps in order of priority (and include an executive summary)

This is where you refine those opportunities into actionable next steps and recommendations, specifically linking them to business goals.

In doing so remember one thing: many senior leaders, particularly executives, don't have time to read to read your beautifully crafted 100+ slide presentation.

They may want to of course, so that shouldn't stop you producing it, but you need to think brevity first – so use an executive summary. This will demonstrate clearly and concisely what you're recommending and – most importantly – the impact this will have on the business.

Crucially, if someone can say "so what" to any recommendation you make, you've not explained it clearly enough. Go back and critique it yourself – or a colleague – if it's as robust a recommendation as it can be.

I speak from experience that us marketers can often get wrapped up in the possibilities rather than how we're going to achieve them. Make sure anything you do is actionable, with explanations of how you're going to do it.

7. Bonus tip: include a mood board

When demonstrating any recommendations and opportunities, particularly if you're suggesting a new strategic approach to social, include a mood board.

I'm not talking about an OTT A2 board of chaos that you might have produced to convince your parents to get you a dog when you were younger.

Instead, a few slides from brands that inspire your thinking.

This is about showing how other brands (regardless of sector) might be implementing something similar to what you want to do on your sociial channels. For instance, I'm a big believer in the importance of community on social, so I would include visuals of the approaches taken by Asda, Monzo, People Function and more, to demonstrate my point.

As I did recently for a client:

Should you invest in any external tools to help with your social media audit?

One final thought...

Anytime you read a similar article to this one – usually from social media scheduling and analytics tools – each one recommends how you can use their tools to perform your audit.

That's fine if you already pay to use one of those tools as they can definitely make the process a bit easier, but buying them just for an audit is an expensive short-term investment.

You will mostly use them to assist you with the numbers – either your own or competitors – but they won't help with the nuances of the content itself, such as understanding strategic aims or objectives.

Aside from the analytics inside social media platforms themselves, you don't need to spend more money to carry out an effective audit.

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About Dave Endsor and Chapter

I'm Dave, a social media strategist and founder of Chapter. I have over 15+ years of agency and in-house experience, helping hundreds of people and businesses use social media more confidently, strategically, and purposefully.

I've worked with well-known brands including Blue Light Card, Miller Homes, Bayer, The Access Group and many more.

Fun fact: I led the social media team that helped Game of Thrones star, Emilia Clarke, launch her charity SameYou.