Having a clear social media marketing plan for your child care business is key if you want to connect with families online. Conducting a social media audit is the best way to follow up on your social media strategy and evaluate the impact of your social media efforts thus far.
What is a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit is a process of reviewing your center’s social media accounts to see what’s working, what’s not working and what could be improved. The purpose of a social media audit is to find out whether or not your social media is accomplishing your goals and objectives. It allows you to analyze your activity, results, audience and the return on any financial investments you made.
An in-depth social media audit reveals plenty of helpful information that you can use to advance your center’s social media efforts, including audience demographics, post reach and views, shares and more. It’s a great idea to get in the habit of performing social media audits quarterly to track your growth and reevaluate your strategy.
How to Perform a Social Media Audit
1. Create an audit spreadsheet.
Before starting your audit, create a document to track your findings. Be sure to include all of your center’s social profiles in the spreadsheet and any metrics you want to evaluate for each, including audience growth rate, post reach, social shares and average engagement rate.
2. Check for consistency and quality accross all platforms.
After you’ve logged all of your center’s active accounts in your spreadsheet, take a look at each one to ensure that each profile is consistent with your current brand identity. Is your logo the same on all social platforms? Do your posts represent your family-centered brand? Are your photos high-quality? Do your bios accurately depict your center’s mission?
3. Measure your social media metrics.
Evaluate your overall metrics for each social media profile and document them in your spreadsheet. Include the number of followers, average likes and comments per post, number of shares and post reach. Most social accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, offer on-platform analytics tools with these metrics.
4. Identify your top-performing posts on each platform.
For each social account, look for the three best posts with the most engagement. Record the posts (or links) in your spreadsheet and look for patterns. Use a column in your spreadsheet to jot down thoughts and ideas about your most impactful posts so you can optimize your future posts for more family engagement.
5. Identify your most shared content.
When conducting a social media content audit, it’s important to make note of what content is receiving the most social shares and delivering traffic to your child care blog. Make note of which posts are shared most among parents to add similar curated or blog content to your social media content calendar.
6. Analyze your audience demographics and interests.
Your center’s social following may differ from platform to platform. It’s important to understand how you can reach parents differently through each channel. By recording your demographics, you can learn more about your audience and the parents who are interested in your center to improve your engagement.
7. Calculate your return on investment.
If you’re spending money on Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads, monitoring your spending and ROI periodically should be a priority. Find out what’s working and what’s not before continuing with your usual tactics.
8. Reevaluate your strategy.
Once you’ve completed your social media audit, it’s time to modify your strategy based on your findings. Use your information to create new goals and objectives for the next quarter. No matter which objectives you’re trying to reach, your social media audit’s data will help you optimize your social content to reach your goals.
