New Year, New You…Social Media Edition
Does your social media feed need a bit of a refresh but you need help figuring out where to start? If so, it’s time for a social media audit.
A new year calls for a new look! Before you dive in to planning new content and keeping up with this year’s social media trends. Take a moment to give your existing feed a little TLC.
We are going to let you in on some of our tips and tricks for performing an in-depth social media audit so that you can start this year off strong.
How to Conduct a Social Media Audit
Step 1: Review Your Content
First things first, you should take note of what content has performed the best over the past 12 months. To do this you’ll need to go into your analytics and take a look at your top-reaching and most-liked posts.
From your Instagram Profile:
- Click into the Professional Dashboard
- Tap “Content You Shared”
- Change “Last 30 Days” to “Last Year”
- Choose the Sort & Filter Icon to Sort By Highest & Metric to Accounts Reached
If you want to distinguish between Top Performing Posts vs Reels, change the content type from All to “Posts” or “Reels”
Really examine these posts and take note of commonalities as well as unique features that make them stand out as top performers. For instance, is it content with people in it, was it an informational carousel post, was it a personal post or a milestone moment? Finding common traits of your top performing content allows for you to take notes on which content topics to expand upon in the coming year.
What about the content that did NOT perform well?
Now that you have examined the posts that are thriving on your page, it’s time to address the elephant in the room: your lowest performing content
This one can sting a bit, but you have to take a deeper look at your lowest performing posts of the year to get a clear idea on what topics in your current content strategy are not resonating with your ideal target audience.
To do this, you’ll repeat the steps above – only instead of Sorting by Highest you’ll change to Sort By Lowest.
Handle this exercise the same way you did with identifying your top performing content. The more detailed you can get in your analysis of what’s not working, the more efficiently you can spend time expounding upon what is working.
Step #2: Analyze Your Followers
What if I told you that a quality following is more valuable to your growth than the number of followers?
Let’s get real for a second, having a large following that is full of spam & inactive accounts is going to do absolutely nothing for your post’s success. Having spam & inactive accounts following you and not interacting with your posts is going to make your engagement rate plummet.
As part of the auditing process, you will need to go through your followers and remove anyone who is not aligned with your ideal audience.
Here are a few signs you need to remove a follower:
- No profile photo on their account
- No bio or content posted
- A long handle that is a random string of letters and numbers
- Their account appears inactive – no post activity in the last 6 months
Though seeing your following count go down, just know that it is only temporary. When you cut your losses you are more likely to reach your target audience and create a stronger, more engaged community of followers.
Step 3: Hit the Refresh Button
Now that you’ve figured out your top performing content, archived posts that don’t align and removed inactive followers, you’re ready to start posting with even more purpose!
And Remember, your strategy is the heartbeat of your social media profile. It’s more than staying on top of trends and using the next viral audio. Keeping your strategy fresh requires you to be on the look out for new ideas.
Be sure to look for ways to utilize new & popular hashtags, fresh content ideas, new short-form video trends that align with your niche, and seek out new accounts to engage with to keep growing your audience.
To keep your profile and content fresh, growing, and thriving, we recommend that you perform a social media audit quarterly OR at a minimum, bi-annually.
If you don’t typically perform an audit, this is your sign to set a reminder for yourself in your calendar to ensure you don’t forget to do an audit!
Stay Up to Date with Social Media Trends
We hear you, the social media industry and trends change at the drop of a hat. Since things are changing quickly, we know it can feel overwhelming to keep track of it all.Our team is here to help you stay up to date with the latest trends, updates, and changes. Join our DIY Marketers Club to ensure that you are getting new social news monthly 👏