Social Media AuditMeasuring your marketing performance on social media can be tricky. If you really want to know how your social media marketing efforts are performing, it’s essential that you conduct a social media audit regularly. Without regular audits, you’re flying blind. An in-depth audit will allow you to see exactly where you’re committing your effort and your money and determine which channels are providing the best return on those investments.

Organizing Your Social Media Audit

To get started, first create a spreadsheet to organize the overall site data you’ll be collecting. The easiest way to do this is to create a list in the first column of all the social media sites where you maintain a presence — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

For each site on your list, you’ll then want to create a column to track the average for engagement metrics such as:

  • Followers
  • Shares
  • Likes
  • Comments
  • Clicks
  • Video Views
  • Post Reach
  • Ad Spend

Looking at these number together will give you a clear picture of which sites are performing better and dispell any illusions you might have. For example, you may think Facebook is your big winner because it delivers a lot of traffic, but the numbers might reveal that LinkedIn or Twitter actually generate more traffic per post and deserve more attention.

The main thing you want to do at this point is to figure out which networks are performing the best, and what types of content do the best on each network. This knowledge will help you maximize results for every post.

Analyze Your Audience on Each Platform

Most of the social media sites will provide you with information and demographics about your audience. What you’re looking for here is to see if the audience you’re actually reaching is the audience that you want to reach. A large following will always look good, but if that following is made up of the wrong people, it’s not worth much.

If you find that your audience is missing a key demographic on one or more platforms, you’ll need to investigate why. Is there a problem with your content? Does the demographic you’re after use this platform regularly?

Analyze Your Branding and Voice

It’s not uncommon for viewers to jump from one social platform to another to see what else you have to say. How do your profiles look on the platforms where your law firm maintains a presence? Is branding consistent? Is the overall tone of posts consistent? If there are differences, are these intentional, or something that needs to be corrected?

It’s important to make sure that the “face” of your law firm is coming across the way you want it to on social media, especially if more than one person manages your profile(s). Unintentional inconsistencies can confuse viewers.

Compare Costs and Returns

Finally, you want to look at the bottom line. How much are you spending on social media, and what kind of return are you seeing?

It’s important to make sure you include everything you’re using to maintain your social media presence. What you actually spend goes well beyond the cost of ads. You may need to include numbers like:

  • Consulting fees
  • Cost of third-party analytics tools
  • Salary of dedicated personnel
  • Cost of image creation software
  • Cost of video creation software/hardware
  • Costs for miscellaneous apps and tools

From there you can compare what you’re spending to what your social media profiles are producing. What constitutes a good result here is going to depend on what your goals are. It may be worth it to spend more on social media campaigns that produce lots of email subscriptions which eventually convert into clients at a good rate. On the other hand, if your firm is looking for more direct business from social media campaigns, you’ll need to look closely at your costs versus direct conversions.

By making social media audits a regular part of your marketing strategy your law firm will always be on top of what is working and what is not. This will allow you to take advantage of things that are working well and help you avoid wasting time — and money — on things that aren’t.

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