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SMTLive Recap: Social Media Auditing 101

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If editing is the most important part of writing, then reporting and auditing is the most important part of social media marketing.

Just like editing, analyzing your content’s performance on social is the only way to optimize. How else would you know how to improve your content if you don’t take some time to think critically about what you’ve created already?

Because social media auditing is obviously so crucial to this industry, we wanted to open up the metaphorical floor to our #SMTLive audience on the topic. Reporting and auditing is a complicated and technical part of the job for anyone in social media, so we wanted to hear how our community on Twitter gets it done.

#AuditGoals

So, what motivates our community to keep tabs on their content?

Hi Emma,

A1 – The strengths and weaknesses of current content, as well as opportunities for adjustment of strategy/direction to boost performance and engagement.

— Momentum Social (@MomentumSocial_) February 11, 2020

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@MomentumSocial put it best: It’s important to audit your social content to see where it’s strong, where it’s weak, and how to adjust accordingly as a result.

A. 1 in short, you can learn how to effectively leverage your social media. It gives you insights into the audience you have and the audience you want to have. Constant evaluation of tactics and strategy is key in the evolving social media landscape.

— Gabriella Taekema (@Gabriella_Taeke) February 11, 2020

@Gabriella_Taeke knows that auditing is a goal-oriented process. Choosing specific strategies and metrics (such as audience engagement and demographics) is essential.

To audit or not to audit?

Just to get a better understanding of you all…

POLL: Q2 – Do you already conduct regular (monthly, yearly, etc.) social media audits? #SMTLive

— Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) February 11, 2020

The answer was, unsurprisingly, almost unanimously “to audit.” As we said before, keeping track of performance is essential to any job in the social media industry.

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In question three, we wanted to get into the nitty-gritty details and ask everyone what their favorite metrics to report on are. What’s important, and what’s not important here obviously depends on your industry, but we saw some overlap across the board.

A3: The key here is working backward from established objectives to find the right KPIs. Is the focus on conversions or brand awareness? Here are a few that we start with:

• CTR
• Engagement/messages sent
• Website sessions from social#SMTLive

— BrandExtract (@BrandExtract) February 11, 2020

Many of you in our #SMTLive community mentioned that tracking engagement rates is important in almost any social media report.

Love this. Too many organizations blanket their KPIs across everything, but program objectives should drive measurement (and it’s key to set expectations up front!). #SMTLive

— ee (@erininmilwaukee) February 11, 2020

Engagement + knowing what your goals were before and after your audit = the first steps to success in reporting.

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This 100 percent depends on the objectives of the company and WHY you are on social media or why you want to be on social media. But, if you don’t know engagement is always a great place to start tracking. #SMTlive

— Erin (@ErinHindalong) February 11, 2020

Lifehacking your reports

The question I get asked most is how to streamline this process…

Q4 – What tools do you use to make social media reporting easier? And what specifically do you use each tool for when auditing? #SMTLive pic.twitter.com/RKjoFG1IkO

— Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) February 11, 2020

We wanted to know which tools make the complicated and often tedious process of social media reporting easier for our #SMTLive community. We received some great suggestions for reporting platforms, as well as some other tips of the trade.

While there is no one-size-fits-all tool for reporting, it’s important to test out different platforms and ask around within the industry to find out which one could work best for your current goals.

Sprinklr got two shout outs in the chat.

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Why report?

There are a million reasons why tracking your content’s performance on social is an essential part of the job, but we wanted to hear how those on #SMTLive were using their reporting results lately.

Look at the time of day, day of the week, content topics that resonate, and channels that are hitting your objectives best. One example of a past shift I had was we noticed in our audit Saturday content was performing best so we started testing that on multiple channels. #SMTLive

— Erin (@ErinHindalong) February 11, 2020

@ErinHindalong clearly gets a lot out of her social media reports, such as suggested ways to alter her content. Erin’s comment also brought up a common question in the social media world: What do you do about weekends?

Do you have a team that engages with inbound comments on weekends? I find that it’s so valuable to have your brand ready to reply when a post goes out. #SMTLive

— ee (@erininmilwaukee) February 11, 2020

How do you solve a problem like a weekend? Well, according to @erininmilwaukee, it’s valuable to have staffers available seven days a week.

For that client we did. If it’s a big enough brand and global we made sure we had community managers available if needed. But…that’s also why I don’t work at an agency anymore. ???? #SMTLive

— Erin (@ErinHindalong) February 11, 2020

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But according to @ErinHindalong, there’s a time and place for weekend work.

Thank you so much for recapping our social media auditing and reporting chat with us, we hope you learned a little more about the topic than you knew before – and be sure to tune into our next #SMTLive Twitter chat on Tuesday 2/25 at 12pm EST.

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