Social media has become an increasingly important part of the digital marketing landscape. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc., are poised to become more powerful marketing stages for businesses and offer powerful ways to engage with their target audience. It has propelled online marketers to have a plan & strategy for marketing on social networks. As of 2023, there are 4.9 billion social media users worldwide and is expected to reach 5.85 billion users by 2027. Online marketers must focus on digital marketing trends and target social media platforms to ensure that none of the customers on these platforms are left untouched. Whether running PPC campaigns or SEO campaigns on social media platforms, it becomes essential to conduct a social media audit for your marketing campaigns to know what’s working and what social media metrics need to be optimized. You can read our social media marketing blog to learn more about the marketing tactics to target users on these networks. In this blog, let us dive deep to understand how to conduct social media audits that help in lead generation, increasing website traffic, increasing online sales, etc.
Why perform a social media audit?
A social media audit reviews the social media campaigns running on social media platforms. Whether you are running paid ad campaigns, SEO campaigns, etc., it is necessary to have a clear idea of how the campaigns are performing. Similarly, with social media campaigns, it is necessary to have an overview of how your marketing efforts are performing.
With the help of a social media audit for your campaigns, you can have insights and opportunities about the changes needed to achieve the desired results. Social media platforms always have multiple trends evolving and your plans & strategy need to be made accordingly. It is quite essential to perform this audit to know how the essential KPIs are performing. A white label social media marketing company can be contacted for this as they present the performance of the crucial social media marketing metrics at the front and help grow your audience. The white label social media agency knows well what needs to be monitored for increased ROI with social media campaigns.
How to conduct a social media audit?
1. Identify top performing social media post - The next essential point that you need to focus on performing a social media audit is to identify top-performing social media posts. There are multiple social media platforms and you must identify which social media platform is performing the best for you. After analysing the best-performing platform, you must identify the top-performing social media post.
Be it search engine optimization, running paid ad campaigns, email marketing, content marketing, etc., different businesses have different goals. So, it is better to hire content specialists to write content as per the demand of the business. In the same way, social media platforms require special attention to write social media posts that engage the target audience into clicking on the posts. When you perform a social media audit, you get to know which social media post has more likes, comments, has higher engagement rate, drives more traffic, etc.
In today’s online world, you have the most impatient users to target. When running paid ad campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Instagram Ads, etc., you must ensure that your ads do not take long to load. You also need to ensure that your landing page loads quickly so the user does not leave the page. As these are paid ads, you need to pay an amount to the social media platform where you run ads. Similarly, you need to write great content and have engaging social media posts to ensure achieve the desired results.
2. Prepare a social media report - After analyzing the social media posts that bring in more traffic, you need to prepare a social media report. A data-driven social media marketing report is essential for businesses as it helps to know what essential KPIs need to be optimized to achieve the desired results. When a report is prepared for social media campaigns, it helps to make changes in a defined direction and avoid any guesswork.
As in PPC ad campaigns, you perform a PPC audit to determine how the paid ad campaigns are performing and prepare a PPC report that informs the performance of the crucial PPC metrics. Similarly, with social media campaigns, it is crucial to prepare a social media report that highlights how the social media campaign is performing. There are a vast number of users on social media platforms and it is vital to target these users. With the help of social media audit tools, you can have an SEO report highlighting the performance of crucial social media KPIs. As in search engine optimization, you focus on optimizing the performance of SEO campaigns with a data-driven SEO report and present a clear idea of the necessary SEO metrics to focus on for the desired result. Similarly, a perfect social media report can be prepared with the social media audit tool.
3. Choose the best performing social media platform - As there are multiple social media platforms to run social campaigns, choosing the best-performing platform for your business is crucial. Not every social platform yields the desired results and so you must choose the best ones that help in lead generation, increase website traffic, increase brand awareness on social media platforms, boost user engagement, enhance brand reputation, increase user engagement rate, increases conversion rate, etc.
As in a Google Ads campaign, you focus on choosing the best-performing ad campaign for your business; similarly, you need to choose the best-performing social media platform for desired results. A pay-per-click campaign audit helps to determine which ad format, like search ads, video ads, mobile ads, performance max campaigns, text ads, etc., drives more results and helps in choosing the relevant ads for your business. In the same way, with multiple social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, etc., it is vital to choose the best-performing one for your business. With the assistance of social media marketing professionals from a white label social media marketing agency, you can have an idea of the relevant social media platforms that help achieve the desired results.
The white label social media marketing professionals work with different businesses and have industry-oriented knowledge in determining the best social platforms as per business speculations. As Facebook is used mostly by family & friends, running campaigns that these users are looking for is essential. YouTube has nearly 377 million adult-age users, so it is quite essential that these prospects are presented with relevant content that creates a sense of urgency among them to convert. As of 2022, 20.2% of YouTube’s advertising audience is aged between 25 and 34, while 15.5% is aged between 35 and 44. So, it is quite vital to focus on audience segmentation for these social media platforms and ensure that the prospects are not left behind. Another way we can understand this is that LinkedIn is used by professionals, business owners, job seekers, c-level executives, etc. So, businesses running paid ad campaigns or SEO campaigns for these prospects must ensure that this social media platform is not left untouched.
4. Analyze social media analytics - When performing social media audits, you must analyze your business's social media analytics. Social media analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing audience data on social media networks. It helps businesses to work on marketing strategies to achieve the desired goals. Social media platforms can help businesses to identify consumer trends and work on offering products or services accordingly.
With the increase in technology, there has been a drastic change in user behavior. Today, users do not wait long when looking to buy products or avail of services and in no time choose their competitor's business offerings. When your business has established brand awareness, there are chances that they will wait for your products or services as the users trust these brand offerings. However, as this digital era presents before you the most impatient users, it is critical that you closely monitor social media analytics to determine the user behavior, buying activity, time spent on the page, etc. When you have a clear idea of these crucial analytics, you can take the necessary steps to achieve the desired results.
Like you connect Google Ads with a Google Analytics account, in the same way, you can connect social media accounts to Google Analytics using the Google Tag Manager tool. Some of the crucial social media analytics to track in Google Analytics for your business are:
a. Performance metrics
b. Audience analytics
c. Competitor analytics
d. Paid social analytics
5. Ensure being consistent on best platforms - The essential point in a social media audit is that you need to focus on consistency. As there are multiple social media platforms, it is hard to be present on all these platforms simultaneously. However, with the help of social media reports, you get to know which platform drives more traffic, has a better user engagement rate, etc. So, you must ensure to be present on these platforms that pertain to the core of your social media marketing strategy.
It is hard for businesses to be present on all the platforms simultaneously. So, it is quite vital to be present on those that matter the most. As in SEO campaigns, you focus on omnichannel marketing. In the same way, you can choose the relevant social media platforms that have better performance. You need to ensure that whichever platforms you are active on, you need to be consistent. When you post content on these platforms regularly, the users' trust in your business increases. The users feel that the business can be relied upon for the products or services they are looking for. You need to grab the users' attention into making clicks on your social media post for the keywords or search terms entered.
6. Determine how you’re funnelling social media traffic - The next essential point that to focus on in social media audit is to determine how you are funnelling social media traffic. Many users are present on social networks, and not all are relevant to your business. So, it is important to measure the relationship between your social media presence and the traffic to your website.
With the organic traffic that reaches your webpage, navigate through different sections on the website and do not take any desired action, you do not suffer any monetary loss. But, with the PPC ad campaign, like running Facebook Ad campaigns, running YouTube Ad campaigns, running LinkedIn Ad campaigns, etc., advertisers have to pay an amount to the social platforms and if irrelevant traffic reaches the landing page, then you may see the ad budget getting drained. So, to ensure that the relevant traffic reaches the webpage, you need to determine the users that have a high chance of taking the desired action. E.g., For PPC ads, you can add negative keywords, perform ad scheduling, etc., to ensure only relevant users reach the page. For SEO campaigns, you can add schema markup and add XML sitemap to inform Google which pages you want to show for the keywords or search terms entered. The pages that you do not add XML sitemap means that they are having some issues or are still being created and are therefore lacking the sitemap and schema.
With social media campaigns, it is essential to determine how you are filtering your traffic. There may be users that reach the website, look for the desired products or services and then take the desired action. There also may be users that just do window shopping and leave the page without taking any action. So, it is essential to determine which users have a high chance of taking the desired action. Also, to lure these users into choosing your business, you must focus on writing great content that attracts the users to click on your posts. You can also avail of white label social media management services that helps in streamlining the best platforms and helps drive quality traffic to your business.
7. Dig into demographic data - The next essential point to focus on in social media audit is to know about the demographic data. The social media platform has users of different ages, different locations, etc. So, you need to know most of the demographic data that are important for your business. When you have the details of these demographics, you can run a social media campaign accordingly that entices the target audience into clicking on the post.
As in SEO campaigns or PPC campaigns, it is vital to focus on demographic data so that the website visibility or ad visibility increases and the relevant users take the desired action. In the same way, it is vital to dig into demographic data for social media posts so that you can plan your strategies accordingly to attract users to click on the ad. Also, there may be e-commerce PPC or e-commerce SEOcampaigns active on social media platforms, so you need to segregate the audiences based on the demographic data. When you have the details of demographic data, you can focus on targeting the users based on their search intent on these platforms.
As in social media ads, like Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, etc., you run Facebook remarketing ads, YouTube remarketing ads to target the users to take the desired action. In this ad format, you focus on writing ad copies, ad descriptions, etc., based on the user's interest so that they click on the ad. Even with email marketing campaigns, content marketing campaigns, etc., you hire content specialists that write great content based on the demographic data that helps optimize the conversion rate. With the help of white label social media services, you can hire marketing professionals to help dig into demographic data to drive quality traffic to the webpage.
8. Measure return on investment - The next essential point that you need to focus on in social media audit is to measure ROI. A lot of effort is put into writing great content for social media posts, running paid ad campaigns on social media platforms, etc. So, measuring the ROI of these social media campaigns is vital to have a clear idea of how much is being spent.
Whether you are running paid ad campaigns, SEO campaigns, email marketing campaigns, etc., it is vital to measure return on investment. It is necessary to have a clear ROI highlighting the marketing efforts minutes. In the same way, with social media platforms, it is vital to measure the ROI to know whether the plan & strategy yield the desired results. To target the relevant users into clicking on the social posts, there are multiple efforts put in by social media marketers. This includes performing SEO keyword research or PPC keyword research, performing competition analysis, performing market research, focusing on go-to-market strategy, etc. All these efforts must be analyzed to check whether they yield a positive result.
Conclusion
No matter which type of business you deal with, having a web presence is becoming the need of the hour. Moreso, with social media platforms catching the users' attention, many online users spend time on social networks. It thus becomes vital for online businesses to run businesses on social platforms. However, just like you monitor and analyze paid ad campaigns, SEO campaigns, email marketing campaigns, content marketing campaigns, etc., it is vital to perform a social media audit to see the results of your marketing efforts. As you avail of white label SEO services for SEO analytics, link building, backlink analysis, SEO copywriting and many other digital marketing services, similarly, you can outsource social media marketing services to a digital marketing company. The white label social media marketing company would help you prepare a social media report and highlight the necessary metrics to optimize. Avail of white label social media marketing services and hire marketing managers with experience in increasing website traffic, boosting online sales, etc.
References:
• How to conduct a social media audit
• How to conduct a social media audit in just 30 minutes