If you are considering putting some effort into social media marketing, your first step should be to conduct a social media audit on your business.

Whether you’re starting from scratch, or stepping things up a notch after a period of dormancy, it’s essential to find out exactly where you are starting from. A social media audit will show you what’s still missing from your marketing mix, and provide a base line for you to measure and compare how any steps you take after this point affect the status quo.

The word ‘audit’ might sound a bit scary, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds!

Basically, you’ll want to compile a summary of your online presence (including your website, social media accounts, and any applicable review sties), do some analyzing, and use that information to form action items.

Below you will find a rough template to follow while conducting your social media audit. Fill in each item where it applies to you:

  1. COMPANY PRESENCE ANALYSIS
  2. List Social Networks (Include URLs)
    B. Double Check for Duplicates
    C. Check Employees’ company listings on their profiles
  3. MEASURE YOUR STATS:
  4. Facebook (Insights are available for pages with more than 30 likes)
  5. Likes
    ii. Average Number of Views Per Post
    iii. Peak Activities
    iv. Number of Posts Per Week
  6. Twitter
  7. Followers
    ii. Retweets
    iii. Number of Posts Per Week
  8. Additional Social Network Metrics
  9. HOW ARE YOU USING SOCIAL NOW?
  10. Describe Activities
    B. Employee Engagement
  11. LISTENING FOR OPPORTUNITIES
  12. Describe Data from Online Tools (Social Mention, Hootsuite, Twitalyzer)
    B. What is your competition doing?
  13. WEBSITE EVALUATION
  14. Where are social links?
    B. Live Feeds/Like/Share Buttons on Content?
    C. Site Ready for Conversion?
    D. Describe Data from resources like Marketing.Grader.com (HubSpot)

Analyze your results, and find the weak spots.

Never got started on Twitter? Missing social links on your website? Posting less than daily on most networks? Now is the time to start building a real social media presence, and get a routine in place that assures you will have high quality content posting at least daily to your accounts.

Take action based on the information you glean from your social media report. After a few weeks, look back on your audit, and see which areas you have improved on. What is still missing? Go from there.