You’re on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, using Vine.. whoo! You’re doing a lot, AND you’re running your business! Well congratulations, but are you doing well on all of those platforms?

That is the problem for the average business owner. Sure, you’re posting to all of the platforms. You’re sharing blog posts, and finding funny cat pictures that even include your product, but are you getting anywhere? When you don’t have a solid strategy, it’s nearly impossible to actually gain any traction on any of the social networks, let alone do well on them. So what’s a business owner to do?

An audit. An audit? Like finding all my receipts and tax information? What does that have to do with social media? Everything.

What is a Social Media Audit?

A social audit is when you take a look at everything you’re doing. You look at your goals (have you made any of those yet?), your actual results, and the strategy you have planned. You take a look at your competitors and what they are doing, and their results. Are they getting “liked”, pinned, and retweeted?

A good social audit will take into consideration your niche, your target audience, your current social presence, your goals for social media, your current results with social media, and your options.

A social media audit will also ask the questions “Why are you using ?” “Why does the company have this social profile?” “Do you really need it?” There are a lot of possibilities out there, and a lot of obscure, unknown websites that allow profiles, but do you really need all of them? Chances are no.

It is great to be on all of the social media platforms, but if you’re just starting, you don’t need to necessarily be trying to run all of them at first, either. Make a list of all of your social media accounts and begin answering the questions:

“Why are we using this social account?”

“Why do we want to use it?”

“What are our goals for this social media platform?”

“Are our target markets using it?”

Once you have answered those questions, you can begin to see or visualize what platforms you will be focusing on (especially if you are just starting out). If you have been active on all of the social platforms, it’s possible you’ll want to continue being active, especially if you are getting interaction on all of them. But never be afraid to change what you are doing, or where you plan to focus your attention.

Do you change your social media strategy often? Let me know about it in your comments!

Be sure to check all of the posts in this series:

Social Media Audit Explained (reading)

Complete Profiles

Goals and Strategies

Getting and Measuring Results

Checking Competitors