The world of social media never slows down. And as social media marketers, it's all too easy to get caught up in it all while doing our best to keep up with the constant stream of material we must produce to stay relevant in the current digital environment. And just when we start to feel like things are going well, our good friend Adam Mosseri creeps out of the bushes with yet another glorious update to truly put a wrench in the works.

Social Media Managers: There surely can’t be any more changes to Instagram@mosseri ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hOMo8srZPc

— Slate (@slateteams) July 11, 2022

Amidst the chaos of this fabulous career, many of us are guilty of forgetting to sit and pause for a minute, delve into the data, and really understand what’s actually working and what maybe needs reconsidering. Sometimes it feels easier to just keep going with what we’re used to. But ultimately, that’s not going to get you the results you want.That’s where a good old social media audit comes into play. Try not to be put off by the word ‘audit’ either. Auditing your social media accounts is simply a way of finding out whether or not your social strategy aligns with your business goals. And if you’re sitting here right now thinking to yourself “how the heck am I going to find time to do this?” then please don’t fret. The Slate team has put together this super handy (and FREE) social media audit template that has done most of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to figuring out what you need to measure. All you have to do is get yourself familiar with how to conduct a social media audit by reading this blog, grab yourself a nice cup of coffee, bring up a full view of all your social accounts, and plug the numbers into the template.

Slate’s social media audit checklist 

#1 — Take an inventory check of your social profiles 

One of the first things you’ll want to do is take stock of all the social media profiles belonging to your brand. You want to make sure that there are no random inactive profiles sitting in the dark, collecting dust. This is not as uncommon as you may think either. Maybe a social media executive before you graced the business set up a Pinterest account with good intentions to activate a strategy. But now, it’s currently sitting there 5 years later with 1 post and 2 followers.While you don’t particularly need to track the inactive accounts, you will want to make sure you have control over them. Through the audit, you may decide that the inactive channels serve no real purpose for the brand and that it would be best to deactivate them rather than risk your target audience stumbling upon a derelict profile that doesn’t best reflect the brand.Or, you may actually uncover golden nuggets of opportunities that would perfectly fit the network you’ve been ignoring. Whatever it is, this first step of wrangling all of your existing social media profiles will give you a clear picture of what you are dealing with.If you’re using Slate’s social media audit template, use the “Basic Information” section for each platform to record these details.

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#2 — Review the strategy of each platform

The next step in conducting a social media audit is to review the strategy behind each platform. This is so important for ensuring your invested time and efforts align with the wider business objectives, are moving with the times, meet the needs of your audience, and are suited to any changes and updates with the social platforms.Using the “Strategy” section for each social platform on our social media audit template, you will first need to consider what the business purpose is for being on it and why it’s so important to be there. Next, consider the objective and what you’re hoping to achieve from that platform. For example, is it to build a community, raise brand awareness, increase website traffic, or maybe generate leads?Then comes reviewing the content pillars for each platform. Content pillars are an essential component of your brand’s content strategy and refer to a set of themes or topics that your brand will use to create posts. For example, if you were a beauty brand, maybe your content pillars include self-care advice, customer testimonials, and brand products. The key is choosing content pillars that will resonate with your target market. Revisiting the “why” behind each platform will truly help you rediscover your social media purpose.

#3 —  Conduct an audience analysis

Next, we’re going to conduct an audience analysis for each platform. Having a thorough understanding of your audience will make all the difference in ensuring success with social media marketing. Knowing information like who your audience is when they’re most active, and which platforms they appear to prefer will help you create and put out content that your audience will love and engage with.Fortunately, most of the popular social media platforms available today provide super user-friendly dashboards containing all those juicy insights. Open up the audience insights tab on each platform and then head over to the “Audience” section of Slate’s social media audit template to note down information concerning:

• Following: How many followers do you currently have on the platform?

• Growth (past 12 months): How much have you grown in the past 12 months?

• Growth (monthly): What’s the average growth month on month?

• Activity: When is your audience most active?

#4 Podcasts 

Now, this one’s for all the social media marketers out there thinking to yourself, “how the heck am I going to find time for all this learning?!”. We feel you. Here, at Slate, we totally understand how overwhelming it can feel working in the world of social media. That’s why sometimes, you just need to incorporate some productivity hacks into your life.An easy ‘hack’ for keeping up with the latest trends, updates, and just general learning around social media marketing, is through listening to podcasts. In the last few years, this form of content has experienced unprecedented growth. According to Edison Research, 73 percent of the U.S. population aged 12 and over has listened to online audio in the last month.One of the reasons behind the podcast format's growing popularity is due to its convenience. Users are empowered to listen to audio episodes whilst getting on with their daily lives. So, whether you are on your daily commute, on a lunchtime stroll, or cooking dinner, why not tune into a social media marketing podcast? There are tons of amazing ones out there, but if you need a little inspiration, why not check out this list put together by the Influencer Marketing Hub!

#5 Google Trends & Google Alerts

Google Trends does what it says on the tin — it very literally shows you what is trending across any industry/ topic you can think of.A great way of utilizing this free platform is by using the “Daily Trending Search” feature to discover which topics are currently proving to be popular amongst Google searchers. This is so handy for newsjacking and creating reactive content for your followers. Whether it’s a certain Netflix show trending, a sporting event, a seasonal trend, or an international day. Using the data provided by Google, you can piggyback onto popular searches with skillfully curated content that links to your brand in some way.

We hope this blog has given you some strong inspo for keeping up with industry trends in order to absolutely kill it in the content creation game. Here at Slate, we’ve recently put together some of our top predictions for top 2022 trends in the B2B social media marketing space — so be sure to check that out here.

Learn more about how Slate can help transform your social media content and schedule a demo today.