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Social Sessions
Brought to you by TJ Creative Agency, a social media marketing agency, this podcast that will take you behind the scenes of the world of social media. Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, a content creator or just an overall creative person we will teach you how to create the perfect social media strategy and build your brand online.
Social Sessions
How to Conduct a Comprehensive Social Media Audit for Success in 2024
Just think, what if you could leverage all the potential of your social media platforms and skyrocket your brand's growth? You, yes YOU, have the ability to make informed decisions about your brand's future on social media. We, Terrah and Audrey, take you on a journey that challenges traditional strategies, sharing insights into how to conduct an effective social media audit. Imagine understanding which platforms work best for your brand, how to make the most out of the latest TikTok trend or how showing a bit of your personality might just be the key to connect with your audience.
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Have you ever wondered what goes into your favorite brand's digital marketing strategy?
Speaker 2:I'm Tara, the founder of TJ Creative Agency and I'm Audrey, the creative marketing director of TJ Creative Agency.
Speaker 2:Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, a content creator or just an overall creative person. We'll teach you how to create the perfect social media strategy and build your brand online. Welcome back to social sessions everybody. It's Audrey and Tara and we are talking about how to audit your social media and really like prep yourself for success in 2024, which is like I know everybody says this, but like it really feels insane that it's almost 2024. I honestly feel like New Year's was two weeks ago. This is like the longest year of my life and also has gone by the quickest. I swear to God.
Speaker 1:You've done a lot this year.
Speaker 2:I've done less. I was talking to my dad the other day and he was like I thought, because I was talking about how I'm going like out of town for New Year's, and he was like you said you were going to stop traveling. I was like I did For September, october.
Speaker 1:he was like okay, well, yeah, because you went to like Greece and all kinds of places this year.
Speaker 2:That was last year, oh was it.
Speaker 1:So what I'm?
Speaker 2:saying it flew by.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like this time last year. I got back like this last year. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, can't believe it's going to be 2024, but we're going to help you prep, we're going to help you get ready. Nothing major, but just get things in line to help you feel more organized and ready for the New Year. The New Year Before that I do have a little like social media, not an update, but just like news. I don't know if you guys have been seeing this. I get it on TikTok every time and it's like try posting videos over a minute, like it keeps popping up. Have you seen that? Like it pops up at the bottom of the screen for me constantly on all accounts. I keep seeing it on all of the accounts. Yeah, it just pops up and it's like try this, like tip. I don't even know how it words it, but it essentially is just saying like try videos that are over a minute. So, as I was doing my research for this and just trying to look up, you know what news there is, what updates are.
Speaker 2:Our TikTok has come out and actually told creators that users are now spending half of their time on the app watching content that's longer than a minute. So over the past six months, creators who have posted videos longer than one minute have five times the growth rate in followers than those who only post short videos. That's pretty interesting. So I thought it was just interesting that they had Like stats like that to back it up, coming directly from TikTok.
Speaker 2:Because sometimes you see stats like that and you're like who are you polling? Who would you do? Yeah, like where'd you get it? And I'm not saying it's invalid, but it's usually not like cross-platform, like tiktok has access to everybody's Information. So that was kind of interesting. It doesn't feel shocking, right, because we've been saying For a long time that longer content is performing better on tiktok, but now tiktok themselves has come out and said it and been like I Think that's also their way of saying Talk to the camera, because how else are you supposed to get a video that's over a Minute? I guess you could do like a vlog, but typically when there's vlog style videos, it still has like some sort of voiceover. You know what else is really interesting, kind of on this subject.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm is.
Speaker 2:I was watching a video of A girl that I think she works in influencer marketing. So she was doing like a get ready with me. She's an influencer herself but she also has a full-time job where she works in influencer marketing and she was doing a get ready with me and she's talking about what she looks for in influencers and the first thing she said. She said I don't look at follower count, I look at if I can gauge your personality if you talk to the camera and there's Personality there. She was like if there's aesthetic videos, I probably am not gonna choose you to work with the company like because I don't know anything about you. I have to be able to look at your page and know stuff about you. So she said Talking on camera and being showing some sort of vulnerability are the two biggest things she looks for when she's looking for influencers to work with.
Speaker 1:So I think that too. I think we naturally do, or I do that when I'm when I've been looking for ones recently especially.
Speaker 2:I'm like yeah because you typically you trust those people a little bit more, because you get to, it's easier to know them. Like I can think of a few girls that I follow, but they don't really. It's still very aesthetic videos and I'm like I have been following for you for like a year and I still don't know that much about you, anything about you, yeah. So Anyways, just thought that was some interesting information. Okay, getting into how to prep yourself for 2024, how to essentially, we're just gonna walk you through how to perform a social media audit for all of your platforms so that way you can start Fresh, you can start next year on the right foot.
Speaker 2:So, first things first. Why perform an audit? I Feel like you guys know this, but if you don't, you're able to see Results from all of the different platforms. You're able to see what kind of content is working for you, what isn't working for you, what platforms are giving you the best results, everything like that. And you want to know all of that information so that you can make decisions With confidence as you move forward, versus Just guessing about what should I post, when should I post, where should I post? It takes having this audit and gathering all of this Information takes a lot of the guesswork out of social media.
Speaker 1:So this is the numbers side and the timing, like it is so good to do it at least, maybe a few times a year, but at least once a year to like, because you're able to really have a bulk amount of Of stuff to refer back to and look at what was the most popular and what did. What really did the best.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this type of an audit is something that you probably do once a year, but I like even just looking at analytics and some of the things that we're gonna talk about. I look at on like a bi-weekly basis. I'm looking at every time I make new content. I'm looking at this information because it's really helping me understand what's performing well and what's not performing well. So, first thing, simply start a Google sheet or an Excel sheet or a Google document, however you want to write things out, but write this stuff down, like, start somewhere where you can write it out, and if you want to do I think a Google sheet is easiest or Excel that's where I keep all of my analytics. I have a column for everything. I will say there's a really good template. I think it's either Hootsuite or Sprout Social. I will link it in the description. I think there's already a template that they have. So if you don't want to go through creating an entire new Google sheet, I don't blame you, because it can be quite annoying. So I believe they have a free one. So I will link that in the description. But just have a place where you can write everything out, because doing this mentally does nobody any good. You're going to forget it and you're not going to have anything to refer back to. Essentially, this time next year, when you do it again, the numbers aren't really going to mean that much because you won't know what last year's numbers are.
Speaker 2:So write this shit down and keep track of where it is, like put it in a Google folder, okay, so the first actual step is to list out all of your social media platforms. Make sure you get all of them. There's definitely going to be some that you use less than others, but write them all out. This is probably going to be your rows on a Google sheet. Is each platform?
Speaker 2:And, as you're doing this, check in on all of the branding on each platform. Do they align with your current branding? Check out the bio, check out the name, everything like that. Does it align with the branding? Maybe you had a rebrand and maybe you missed a certain platform. So look into that. Make sure that all the branding is aligned and, aside from the visuals, make sure the tone in which you are conveying your company is the same across each platform. That's why I said check into the bios, because it might sound very different from platform to platform, and it shouldn't. That's your tone is just as much part of your branding as the visuals are. How you are talking to your audience is actually probably more should be like, more consistent and more recognizable than the visuals itself.
Speaker 1:I actually think too. I was sorry, I was like kind of looking at something, but later does that. I know you don't use later analytics, but it's really nice and helpful because they do do this like one year thing. I wanted to look and see if it was, and it shows you everything on there. Yeah, but you have to have that link in bio running consistently for the whole year. Yeah, it's going to be able to backtrack and find content, I mean, find that data for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of places will like, I think, even if you use like Sprout, social or anything like that, I think they're able to pull up your analytics you know for the entire year, but I think still, it's really important for you to track it. It's one thing to look at it like documents like that, but having it tracked somewhere and having it saved somewhere because it changes so frequently. You know what I mean. I have an analytics document for each of our clients on Google Sheets, which I believe our whole team does, but having it saved somewhere versus just looking at it. So I think what I'm saying is like all of these are great tools, but just keeping it in one uniform place is what's really going to be able to show you the difference between like year by year and everything like that. Yeah, so after you list out all of your social media platforms and essentially figure out your template or your Google Sheet or whatever have a place, now revisit your goals for each platform. Make sure you know what your goal was for each platform. So your goal for TikTok might look different than your goal from Instagram, might look different from your goal for LinkedIn. So, for example, I typically use TikTok mainly for brand awareness. That's my Real purpose there, and I use Instagram a lot more for conversions and community building, where I'm probably interacting with the audience a lot more on Instagram and I'm looking a lot more for, like, website traffic. So knowing that is really going to help me determine what was considered successful on each platform. You know what I mean. Yeah, so check, just like remind yourself. That might not be something that you need to write down, maybe it is. It's up to you. Again, how you want to write this all out is up to you in your brain and what matters to you, but just make sure you know what the goal is for each platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, next, evaluate each platform's progress. So, now that you know what you were trying to achieve on each platform, you're able to look at the analytics that align the best with those goals. So, going back to our example, if tick tock, I'm looking mostly for an increase in brand awareness and increase in Just people learning about my brand, I'm probably gonna look at things like overall reach and impressions, and If I'm looking on Instagram, I'm looking more for conversions, I might actually go to Google Analytics and see how much website traffic is coming specifically from Instagram. So don't limit yourself to just each platform Because, like I said, there's definitely tools outside of the platforms themselves, like Google Analytics, like Sprout Social, like Whatever scheduling tool you have probably has some sort of analytics attached to it. Most do so. Look into those things, right? So that's again gonna look different for each platform. But be as specific as you can. Write down any sort of the numbers or any sort of the analytics that you think Really align with those. And if you've performed an audit in the past, be sure to compare these numbers to last year's numbers, because that's really the whole Point, right, you need. There's no point in writing down numbers if you have nothing to compare it to. So usually that means either Comparing it to last year's numbers or that means comparing it to the goal that you had said. Right, there's usually there should have been some sort of KPI, some sort of number that you're trying to Achieve. Otherwise you're really just going off of vibes and that's not doing anything for anybody.
Speaker 2:Next, identify your best performing posts on each platforms. So that's gonna look different for each platform. Right, again it it's fully dependent on your goals. So what's considered the quote-unquote best performing platform or best performing post might look different on one platform than the other. Like Instagram, it might not be as much and it depends on success. To you, right, instagram, your highest, your best performing post might not always be the highest reach. It might be the highest engagement you know. So it's gonna look different.
Speaker 2:Determine I mean, before you even write it down, determine what that looks like, what is Considered the best performing Post. So a lot of times, you can determine this by the reach, the engagement rate and the impressions. Those are probably the three that you're gonna look to the most, and this is important information, because this is really going to tell you what kind of Content your audience responds to the most, and it might be completely different per platform. Yeah right, you might have a lot more like Raw, unedited, type of content on tick tock that performs a lot better. Your audience is a lot more engaged on content like that, versus Instagram might be a little bit more put together or like maybe Graphics do better on Instagram. It's it probably is going to look very different, um, I, but yeah, it's going to tell you and I think each analytic in this sense is also going to tell you something different. This is something.
Speaker 2:This is one of the ones that I look at every two weeks is the content and the reach, and impressions are important, right? Impressions, less so. Impressions I feel like I actually don't mean anything, but they are a number nonetheless. The reach on they're just a higher number, so they they just like look better to people, but it really doesn't mean much. The reach on each account, on each post, is probably going to tell you, like, what is reaching a broader audience. That's usually going to be the awareness stage type of content. That's going to be the stuff that the intention was to go viral, the intention was to reach a new audience, blah, blah, blah. That's what the reach is going to tell you. The engagement, though, is going to tell you what your community that you already have is most, I was going to say, affected by it, most interested in. Yeah, so the numbers tell you different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. I'm looking at APS-Size and you can turn. I mean, you can look at post-performance, real-performance, story-performance, yeah, and it will give you a breakdown of each of them with impressions, reach, likes, comments, but it's, I feel, for me it's usually the ones that I actually you can tell you kind of feel what people like once you start to yeah an audience, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the whole reason that we track stuff like this. And normally, when you track it regularly, these types of numbers specifically, you do become aware of like oh, my audience likes these specific videos, which is also the point of series. Right, that's why so many people do a series or do the same type of content over and over again. Yeah, because it performs well for them. Right, they're able to determine what their audience likes and it's kind of their success equation, right, they know A plus B equals success, essentially.
Speaker 2:You know, like I think of Chris Olson, who kind of got popular on that, like the coffee stick of like, hey, what do you want from so-and-so? And then he's like flying the coffee across the world. Right, that was his thing, that's what people knew him as. So every time he does one of those, they become they're like a higher performing video for him and he knows that. Right, that's his equation, that is what is going to work for him. So you start to get to know your audience and you start to get to know, okay, hey, like, these perform pretty well, these got higher shares, higher saves, whatever it is that you're looking for. So you can kind of recreate that magic over and over again.
Speaker 1:How do you feel about going through this audit and then being able to identify those things and even reusing the same video, maybe with a different sound?
Speaker 2:or something like that. I think it's good. I think, on a graphic level I mean, I think that's fine as long as you're not doing it constantly. But a lot of people repost their best performing videos because it's going to reach a different audience, but it's proven to have worked, even on a graphic level. I've been doing this more on our page, where I'll find a post that I think did pretty well and I just change the graphics. It's the exact same information, the exact same wording. It's just presented in a different way and most of the people aren't going to know Because, you see, realistically, this is a sidebar that I talk about a lot, but realistically, you guys, it's a bit selfish to believe that people are going to remember everything that you post.
Speaker 2:Like, they see so much you, everybody sees so much content on social media that they probably don't even remember what you posted a week ago. I'm not saying repost that immediately, but I'm just saying, like, if you posted a video one week ago, they've seen hundreds of pieces of content Since. Yeah, anyways, moving on, review, review, next, review your audience's demographics. So this is again, can differ per platform, but this is really going to help you determine what, like who, you're talking to when you create your content. It can help you create more targeted content. It can help you with your captions and your tone of voice, because you can really identify the type of person you're talking to.
Speaker 2:For example, we have one client who, every time I look at her page, it's like 30 to 45 is really her age range. So as I'm making her content, I'm referencing things that that age group might. I'm using captions that maybe aren't gonna use like internet slang or if it is, maybe it's like Two years old internet slang. You know what I mean. Like it's not gonna be, I'm not gonna talk to them like they're Gen Z. The same way that, like it affects the memes that I use. Right, because if I know that that's the, that's the Demographic that I'm talking to, like these 30 to 45 year old women I'm probably not gonna make a meme about like Pete Davidson. You know what I mean. I'm probably gonna make I use the friends Cast a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's true, huh, because that's what they're gonna relate to the most. You know it's more universal for them, versus if I started making memes about like Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner, they're probably like what, who is that? Or I start making memes about like like I this is I make memes Her for my personal page all the time. I post them on my stories, but it's usually just like. Yesterday I saw a picture of Rosalia and the guy that's in the bear I don't remember his name Obsessed with this photo. It's like her smoking a cigarette. They're like supposedly dating. I'm like, I'm obsessed with this. This. That's not. I'm not gonna post that photo on this page. They're not gonna know who the hell these people are.
Speaker 2:Because you have to be so currently locked in to internet culture and pop culture in general that like you would have to, yeah, and also because, no, I'm not saying Spanish music or Latin music is like Specific to this generation, but it wasn't nearly as pop popular as it was, you know, when these people were maybe listening to more like pop type of music, right, so they might not even freaking know who Rosalia is insane to me, but they might not know who that is, yeah, so that's kind of why we look into the demographics. Aside from their age, you also look into where they live. Is it a mostly male audience or a mostly female audience? You can actually learn there's a lot of information about your Audience on each platform and, I believe, probably where your scheduling tools are. So it just helps you better, taylor, who you're talking to.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool. Actually it's kind of fun to look at Year because you can look at like your whole year and you know in most cases it's going up and so it just is a motivator. I feel, yeah, you know what I mean, keep going.
Speaker 2:So that's, that's most of the information, information that you're gonna gather, right and then? So now it's more. So what do you do with it? Now You're gonna determine your new goals Using everything that you just gathered, all of that information. Determine what your new goals are for each Platform, right? So maybe it's like and make them specific, right, like, use an actual number instead of just being like increase website traffic Okay, that's dumb, that's dumb.
Speaker 2:Okay, use an actual number and make it like realistic. Let's say, you had, like your website traffic. You, you drove like a thousand people to your website. Maybe your goal is to like double it, or maybe it's 1500 from this platform next year. Whatever it is like, use an actual number. Also, make it realistic. Don't be like 15,000, because that's kind of, maybe, crazy of you, but make an actual number. And then, once you have those goals that you have for each platform, determine what KPIs you're gonna use to track them.
Speaker 2:So, again, if you're just like increase brand awareness, how are you gonna track that? Because a lot of these things, like these goals, don't really mean a ton if you can't track them. Yeah, so if your goal is increase brand awareness, maybe that's like increase the amount of account, new accounts reach. That's one of my favorite things to look at on Instagram is when you look at accounts reach and there's that Graph where you can see how many of them are non followers. Yeah, that's one of my favorite. Maybe it's like increase that by whatever percentage, or we want to reach X amount of non followers in the next few months. Whatever that is, just make it. Choose your KPIs, choose the analytics that you're going to Track in order to keep up with your goals. And it's also gonna really keep you accountable, because if you, if you're not tracking anything, there's really no accountability there.
Speaker 2:And, lastly, now that you know your goals, adjust your strategy accordingly. So if your goal for TikTok was previously to increase brand awareness and now it's to drive people to Instagram, your marketing strategy might look different. Right, you're maybe not focusing so much on viral content, but focusing more on that community and getting to know your audience so that they do follow you to other platforms. So if your goals change, you can't keep using the same strategy, because now it's outdated. So that is a very simple overview of how to perform a social media audit. Again, you do it for all platforms probably at the same time. It's probably going to take you a little bit of time, but it's very much worth it and I think it's going to help all of you feel a lot more confident moving into next year and feel a lot more secure and stable as we move into 2024.
Speaker 1:I loved it. This was a really good episode. I think we should even maybe provide didn't we do a newsletter or something about this?
Speaker 2:Yes, there is a blog post. It's not necessarily about an audit, but it's just things that you should look into before you go into 2024 to set yourself up for success, and it's more so just a list. So if you guys want to check that out, that will also be in the description of just things that you might need to check on, things that you might need to refresh whatever. We've got like four weeks. We've got about four weeks for you guys to do this stuff and to prep yourself for the next year.
Speaker 1:Love it. Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 2:Gorgeous. Well, thank you, and we will talk to you next week.