Digital Content Marketing Blog

Social media has become an essential part of every business’s marketing strategy, offering a platform for visibility, engagement, promotion, brand-building, lead generation and closing more sales. However, many businesses lack a clear understanding of their current social media presence, how it aligns with their overall goals and for some they don’t even know where to start. 

Conducting a social media audit is a straightforward way to familiarize yourself with how you are showing up online, figuring out what to do next and optimizing your approach to generate more of the results you’re looking for. Doing a social audit can provide valuable insights and is easier than you might think!

What Exactly Is A Social Media Audit?

A social media audit is basically reviewing all your social media accounts to assess their performance and consistency. This means checking which accounts exist, how frequently they’ve been updated, and whether critical business information is accurately displayed. 

To simplify this process, we’ve put together a checklist below to help you easily evaluate your social media presence and strategy.

The Social Media Audit Checklist

If you’re serious about doing a social media audit, then you must follow the steps we’ve outlined below! We’ve broken down the step-by-step process for you to easily follow and execute on. 

1. Collect and Inventory All of Your Existing Social Media Profiles

First, take inventory of your social profiles.

What platforms are you currently on…

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (formerly Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• Snapchat
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• YouTube

Do you have access to each of those social profiles?

Are there multiple profiles on any of the platforms?

Are all of the accounts complete? (logo, header, copy, address, phone number, etc.)

You need to focus on a good foundation going into your social media audit, so get these basics out of the way.

2. Make Sure Your Branding and Identity are Consistent

Consistent branding on social media is important. But some details are easy to overlook. As you audit your social presence, make a point to double-check that your profiles “match.”

Each platform has its own unique set of assets and areas that can be updated.

Sizes of images differ, character limits in descriptive areas, etc. are all different across each of the social media platforms. And unfortunately these will change from time to time, so you always have to refer back to the knowledgebase articles for each platform when it comes to the exact details.

Some of the assets for social media profiles to consider are…

• Profile Photo and Logo
• Header, Banner, Cover Art
• About Us Section
• Website URL (this could be your website or linktree URL)
• Location

For instagram and Pinterest you can also address the Hashtags / Tags you are including, which can be a strategy of its own.

3. Define Specific Goals for Each Network

Technically you should define an overarching goal or goals for social and then work on how you’ll achieve that or those for each of the social media platforms.

Social Media Goals

• Increasing brand awareness, brand recognition & brand recall
• Generating more traffic online and offline 
• Generating more leads and sales
• Increasing social engagement
• Growing your audience (likes & followers)

Goal-setting will guide your strategy and inform you of which metrics to track for each platform. For example, you might be growing your Instagram followers faster than Facebook. But the latter is resulting in more paying customers. When it comes to your metrics, the context of your goals matters.

Another example may be that LinkedIn message responses lead to a higher sales close rate from leads generated.

You have to track results to ensure your metrics are aligned with your goals and play to the strengths of each network.

Common Metrics to Track for Social Media Performance

Here’s a quick list of social media metrics you could be tracking when doing an audit and optimizing your profiles moving forward. Some of these will look familiar from other channels such as ad platforms.

• Impressions
• Reach
• Video Views
• Followers / Connections
• Audience Growth Rate
• Comments
• Likes
• Shares
• Reactions
• Engagement Rate
• Clicks
• Click Through Rate
• Cost Per Click
• Conversion Rate
• Direct Revenue
• Assisted Revenue
• **Saves (we added this one because all the big platforms say to pay attention to it, but unless you’re a huge brand this one won’t really be that high and isn’t very important.)

4. Social Media Analytics

This ties back to your goals and the metrics and KPIs we mentioned in point 3 of this list.

To keep things simple here we suggest you open up the analytics section of each platform for your social profile and document the KPIs you are going to track. This will serve as a baseline for your measurement moving forward. Additionally you can compare your numbers to what others have shared online.

Each platform is different when it comes to how they report so you’ll need to account for that when saving down your data. 

One thing you can do to make this easier is use a social media analytics / analysis tool. These vary in the amount of data they share and in price.

Short List of Social Media Audit Tools

• Buffer
• Sprout Social
• Hootsuite
• Sendible
• Zoho Social
• Keyhole
• Rival IQ
• Emplifi
• Iconosquare
• Izea
• BuzzSumo
• FollowerWonk
• Tailwind

This is not an exhaustive list of tools and some of these are also social media publishing tools, but they all have their strengths and weaknesses.

5. Identify Your Top-Performing Social Media Posts

Drilling down on individual posts can uncover the content you should be creating. For example, does your audience like short-form video or static posts with images better? Question-based posts or Action-oriented? Your native analytics or social analytics tool like we discussed in point 4 can help you figure this out. 

For each platform, look at what any given piece of content is receiving in terms of:

• Impressions (or views)
• Engagements (comments, “Likes”, shares, etc)
• Reach

This will give you a clear picture of exactly which type of content is working on each channel. From there, it’s a matter of fitting more of that content into your social media calendar more frequently to capitalize on its popularity.

6. Assess Your Demographic Data

What you post and the language you use largely depends on your audience demographics. For example, messaging for Gen Z and millennials versus Gen X and baby boomers is apples and oranges.

As such, age and gender should be included as part of your social media audit when looking at your audience. Some networks, such as LinkedIn, X/Twitter and Facebook, highlight this information. 

Ideally, your audience data should be similar across all your platforms. If not, reconsider your messaging and content strategy for outlying networks. Conversely it may just be that your audience skews on each platform so you may need to message differently on each platform.

Does your demographic data in your social media analysis match what you believe your target audience profile is?

7. Assess Opportunities from New Social Media Platforms

New social media platforms enter the space every so often and of course, not all of them stick around, but sometimes being an early adopter of a social network can pay off big. Most of the time though it either feels unnecessary or is just a new shiny toy. Either end of this spectrum isn’t the way to think about it, you need to check them out to see if there is opportunity, but at a minimum you should create a profile to ensure you secure your brand on that platform just in case.

Think about how TikTok exploded after being dismissed as a secondary network. Likewise, look at all of the buzz around Threads. It pays to keep an open mind.  And we agree these new social networks will not make or break your business in the short term, but you could miss out in the mid or long term if they are dismissed too early.

8. Create New Objectives and Action Items

The purpose of a social media audit is to give you a better understanding of where you are currently and to make plans for the future so you can “do better”.

So once you’ve collected all of the data for your social media audit you need to run a version of a SWOT analysis to identify where your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are which will be the foundation for your new social media strategy.

This strategy should include tactics that will be used to achieve the goals you are setting for your business to achieve.

9. Share Your Audit with Your Team

The only way to make something happen is to share the plan and delegate. Additionally you can benefit from stress testing your strategy and plan before going 100%. That’s why it’s so important to share the results of your audit with your team to…

• Get additional buy-in or resources from managers and key stakeholders
• Develop new marketing content that matches your top-performing post and channels
• Uncover opportunities to align your social presence across departments (think: sales)

No matter what your goals are, having your numbers available can be a huge help to move forward. This again drives home the value of social media reporting as an ongoing process.

Why are Social Media Audits so Important?

Social media audits are crucial because they provide a comprehensive overview of your social media performance and alignment with business goals. They help identify what’s working and what’s not, enabling you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy. Regular audits ensure consistent branding and messaging across all platforms, which is vital for maintaining a professional online presence. Additionally, audits uncover new opportunities for engagement and growth, ensuring you stay ahead in the ever-evolving social media landscape.

How Long Does it Take to Do a Social Media Audit?

The time required to conduct a social media audit varies depending on the depth of the audit and the experience of the person performing it. A basic audit could take as little as 30 minutes, focusing on essential metrics and a quick review of profiles. However, a more comprehensive audit involving detailed analysis, pattern recognition, and strategic planning could take multiple days to complete. The key is to balance thoroughness with efficiency, ensuring that all critical aspects of your social media presence are evaluated.

How Often Should I Do a Social Media Audit?

Social media audits should be conducted regularly to ensure that your strategies remain effective and aligned with your business goals. Ideally, you should perform an audit quarterly to stay updated with trends and make timely adjustments. However, at a minimum, conducting an audit annually is essential to capture significant shifts in your social media landscape. Regular audits help maintain consistency, track progress, and refine strategies to enhance overall performance.

What Should You Do Next?

After completing your social media audit, it’s time to get to work implementing the optimizations based on your findings. Start by addressing any inconsistencies or outdated information across your profiles to ensure uniform branding. Focus on replicating successful content strategies and improving areas where performance was lacking. Set new goals based on your insights, and develop a strategic plan to achieve them, leveraging the data you’ve gathered to drive your social media efforts forward.

If You Are Looking to Focus on Getting More Visibility, Traffic, Leads, Sales or Have Questions, Call Us at 866-357-7422

Or Submit your information below

There are many reasons that your organization, company or firm would need to hire a marketing agency. Even when getting more specific and looking for a digital marketing agency there are still a good number of reasons why you’d need one. But finding an agency that will meet your needs and deliver on your goals can be difficult, and one of the decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not you should use a local digital marketing agency or an agency based somewhere else in the US or even an international option.

In this article we are going to share with you why it is a BAD IDEA to hire a local digital marketing agency in most cases.

And we realize that your gut reaction may be to think the opposite, but after reading through why this is a bad idea, we’re confident that you’ll be in full agreement with us.

So read on to see exactly Why You Should Not Hire a Local Digital Marketing Agency.

Local Agency vs National Agency

This subhead is a little misleading because when we talk about a local digital marketing agency vs a national digital marketing agency we aren’t classifying the national agency as some giant behemoth of a company. We simply mean an agency that is not in your local market, but serves clients nationally.

Why is this Topic Even Worth Writing About?

The thing is when companies start looking for digital marketing agency options they go to the search engines and start searching in a macro way to find their options. And when you search for something like… “digital marketing agency”, the results are going to be filled with local digital marketing agencies. And while, yes, they may be able to do digital marketing there are reasons why most of them are not going to be a good fit.

And we also realize there are many factors that will determine fit, we’re going to focus on the local vs national agency component solely, because we feel it’s a fairly common and hard to break problem.

Still with us?

Let’s keep going!

Benefits of a Local Digital Marketing Agency

While we are sharing why it’s not a good idea to go with a local marketing agency there are still benefits of working with them which we’ll list here.

Cheaper

What you’ll find is that many of the agencies who solely focus on serving their own market have lower pricing. This is great if you have a small budget and is less of a risk financially if you want to try them out.

But remember you get what you pay for in most cases

Local Pride

Many companies want to support their local community and love to work with other companies in their community. Agencies that are local only typically have this characteristic and really have a deep pride in working with local businesses.

Trustworthy References

When looking for a local digital marketing agency you can easily find and talk to their current and past customers to get a good understanding of if you should work with them as well. In many cases you’ll find that they have worked with people you know and trust who will give you an accurate representation of the local agency.

Benefits of a National Digital Marketing Agency

Alternatively there are a number of benefits that come when working with a national digital marketing agency that also need to be pointed out in order to balance to pros of both local vs national. Below we’ve listed a few of those benefits.

Nationally operating digital marketing agencies don’t have the luxury of the local bias that can draw an emotional connection for them so they rely more on the work and the service.

Focused on Results

National digital agencies are more focused on getting results for their clients & customers because they don’t have personal ties to the relationship in most cases. They have to prove themselves by delivering on what they claim they can do.

Typically Specialized

You will also find that these agencies specialize by focusing on an industry, a digital marketing channel or a set of specific tactics that they have a high level of expertise in or have created through research, practice and integration.

Better at the Work

Again since these agencies don’t have local clout, they rely more on their own work to prove they are a good fit and to get found nationally, such as doing digital marketing for themselves in the way they do it for their customers. They have to be good to be picked.

Why Most Companies Go With Local Digital Marketing Agencies

The truth is that a large majority of companies will choose to use a local digital marketing agency for a number of reasons that we are sharing below. But be warned, in most cases this is likely not the best move for your company.

Proximal Relationships

The thing is we have a cognitive bias when it comes to how close someone or something is to us and that includes businesses. We have this innate belief that someone who is close in proximity (distance) to us, is a safer option because we can “see them”, “touch them”, show up if we feel we need to, that they somehow “get us” better, and other similar reasoning.

It’s essentially an irrational trust and belief that you are in more control over your situation.

Local Pride

This is a big factor in many cases, where a business simply wants to keep the money in their community. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this at all. But it can be very limiting depending on what your goals are.

Price

Lastly, most local agencies are cheaper than national agencies, because they in many cases aren’t as skilled so they charge less, or they are simply less complex as an organization with lower overhead and ask for less money.

Why You Shouldn’t Go With the Local Agency

The biggest reason to not use a local digital marketing agency is due to the cognitive bias tied to the proximal relationship. We fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve made a better choice, but in reality we are settling and letting our emotions make the decisions. Your bias is a self sabotaging effort.

The fact that most choose to go with a local agency because of this false sense of control is the root of the problem itself. Much of the control you want to have is detrimental to getting the results you want. If the goal is to get more traffic, leads and sales, but you want to control every aspect of that process then the results will suffer, because you are not the expert at getting more traffic, leads and sales.

This may come off as harsh, but it’s the harsh reality. Personal taste, overinflated sense of technical ability and the need for control by the person working directly with the agency, makes it 10x more difficult for a digital marketing agency to do their job well due to the intrusion on their strategy.

If you find a specialized agency in your local market that can meet your needs then you are lucky and this rule may not apply, but this is rare, so be careful out there when deciding on a digital marketing agency that can actually do what you need them to do and that your pick will be one that allows you to let the agency do their job well.

If You Are Looking to Focus on Getting More Visibility, Traffic, Leads, Sales or Have Questions, Call Us at 866-357-7422

Or Submit your information below

LinkedIn is an excellent tool to generate leads especially for B2B businesses. On LinkedIn, you’re able to use hyper specific targeting criteria to get in front of your customers including company industry, job title, company size, job seniority and more. It allows you to get in front of the exact customers you want to work with. 

One of the most effective ad types available in LinkedIn are Lead Ads that allow you to capture lead info without the person ever having to leave the LinkedIn interface. But since you’re not sending leads to your website, LinkedIn is cracking down on their privacy policies when it comes to these lead gen forms.

What Are LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms & Do They Work?

LinkedIn Lead Gen forms are pre-filled forms that appear directly within LinkedIn ads. They allow users to submit their information, such as name and email address, with just a few clicks, without leaving LinkedIn. This streamlined process increases conversion rates significantly because it reduces friction for the user.

LinkedIn Lead Ad Privacy Policy

LinkedIn’s Lead Ad Privacy Policy governs how advertisers collect and use data through Lead Gen forms. Recently, LinkedIn has tightened its policies to enhance user privacy and data protection. Advertisers now face stricter guidelines on how they can store, process, and utilize the data collected through these forms. This change aims to align LinkedIn’s practices with evolving global privacy standards and reassure users about the safety of their personal information.

While LinkedIn Lead Ads remain an effective tool for B2B lead generation, advertisers must adapt to LinkedIn’s updated privacy policies. By ensuring compliance and respecting user privacy, businesses can continue to leverage LinkedIn effectively to reach and engage their target audience.

If You Are Looking to Focus on Getting More Visibility, Traffic, Leads, Sales or Have Questions, Call Us at 866-357-7422

Or Submit your information below