Before you or you company is join a new social media network or launch a social media marketing campaign, it is a good idea to do a social media audit. So what is a social media audit? Despite the intimidating name, the social media audit process is basically just taking stock of all of your social media properties and assessing how well you are doing on each of them. Here are 5 easy steps to get you well on your way to completing a social media audit.

1. Take stock of all of your social media accounts

The first step is to create a spreadsheet with all of your social media accounts, their URLs, the last date you have posted, the frequency of posting, and the number of followers. You may also include other columns related to metrics you may be tracking on each platform, like referrals to your website, or changes in followers over time. You can create your own custom spreadsheet, but you can also find examples of social media audit templates online. Buffer has shared a great Google Doc that you can copy for your own audit, as seen below. This step of the process is also a good time to consolidate all of your passwords for every social media account, and if you are working with a team, verify who has access to each platform and who is responsible for updating each account.

2. Perform a search on social media and Google.

Though you probably will be up to date with the social media accounts that you are updating regularly, there may be some accounts that have fallen by the wayside over the years (Tumblr, Flickr, etc.). During a social media audit, it is important to do a search on social media networks to check to see if you are missing any accounts that may have gone dormant or have been started before you joined the team. If you have a larger company, others (both affiliated with the company or not) may have even started unofficial pages, or these may have been automatically created.

3. Check your branding

It is important at this stage to make sure that your visual and content branding is consistent across all social media networks. Make sure you have the most current logo and brand identity on each page. It's also important to make sure you have appropriately sized backgrounds and headers for each social media network - since these sizes actually change pretty often. Sprout Social has an always-updated guide to these social media picture sizes. Beyond images, it is useful to make sure your contact information and biography are up-to-date and that your tone is consistent across platforms.

4. Assess how these sites are reaching your desired targets

This part is a bit more qualitative and requires that you engage with your current social media strategy. Example questions you and your team may want to ask are:

What is the target market for each of these sites?
Who are we hoping to reach? Are we reaching them?
How will we know if we are successful?
What are our goals on each platform?

You can check how you are doing on your goals, by checking your metrics for each of the social media networks you are active on. Twitter and Facebook, for example offer detailed, downloadable analytics from within their own dashboards.

5. Revise your plan...or not

At this stage you may find that some of your social media platforms could use some work, or perhaps you may be able to identify a gap that would be filled by joining another social media network. Through this audit process you will be able to make more informed decisions on next steps for your current networks, as well as when it is time to expand or consolidate your social media efforts. There is also no singular way to conduct an audit, and a lot of the process depends on your specific objectives and goals.

Developing a social media audit may seem like an involved process, especially depending on how detailed you want to get with metrics - but it is manageable! And it is worth it for the added peace of mind before making any big social media decisions. If you or your company needs any help conducting a full social media audit - New Median can help!