How to Strategically Improve Your Social Media Presence

A strong social media presence won’t make up for poor products or bad customer service. But, it can give your business an incredible lifeline to connect with customers, develop leads and increase brand awareness.

Why? Because more people than ever before are on social media. According to the Digital in 2020 report released by We Are Social, social media users reached an all-time high of 3.8 billion!

But gone are the days when simply posting anything will get you attention and reach. Making your social media presence a worthwhile investment requires strategy. Use the following tips to audit your social media accounts and strategically improve your presence.

6 Steps to Audit Your Social Media Presence

1. Get Clear on Your Goals

As with any aspect of business, the first step is to ask yourself: Why? Why are you on social media? What do you want to accomplish? And, how does your social media presence help?

You want to be as detailed as possible. For most businesses, increasing sales is the ultimate goal. But take the time to consider how smaller goals contribute. For instance, you may want social media to help you do some or all of the following:

Increase brand awareness
Strengthen customer relationships through goodwill and increased engagement
Educate customers about your products and services
Highlight your unique value proposition
Increase traffic to your website
Showcase your community involvement
Be a customer support resource
Monitor, respond to, and engage customer reviews

2. Identify Measurables

business woman looking at stats — The more detailed and measurable you can make your goals, the better you’ll be able to monitor your progress and make improvements.

All of the above goals can contribute to a successful sales campaign and are excellent ways to utilize social media. But how do you know if you’re accomplishing these things? By identifying clear measurables for your specific goals, you can track your success.

The following outlines some key stats based on each of the previously mentioned goals:

Goal: Increase brand awareness.
Stats: Reach, Impressions, Engagements and Mentions.

Goal: Strengthen customer relationships through goodwill and increased engagement.
Stats: Engagement and Fan Growth .

Goal: Educate customers about your products and services.
Stats: This one is one of the trickier to measure. Generally speaking, it’s closely linked to Engagements.

Goal: Highlight your unique value proposition.
Stats: This is another tricky one to measure, but it’s generally tied to engagements and fan growth.

Goal: Increase traffic to your website.
Stats: Link Clicks, Time on Page, Bounce Rate, and Unique Visitors.

Goal: Showcase your community involvement.
Stats: Mentions and Engagement are the primary stats here.

Goal: Be a customer support resource.
Stats: How many questions you answer, whether you do so through messenger or comments. This can be a difficult stat to track, as the statistical monitoring is almost always done manually. Combining this goal with a customer support portal is often the way to go.

Goal: Monitor, respond to, and engage customer reviews.
Stats: Total number of reviews and number of negative reviews mitigated.

Goal: Increase newsletter signups.
Stats: Increase in New Subscribers.

3. Break Down Your Posts

Now that you have defined your goals and identified your stats, you can start identifying which posts are the most successful and common elements those posts share. These elements may include:

Colors of Visuals
Brightness and Contrast of Visuals
Content of Visuals
Types of Posts (images, video, link shares)
Text Length
Types and/or Use of CTAs
Tone of Text
Clarity of Text
Helpfulness of Text (does it address customer concerns or roadblocks?)
Topics
Posting Days
Posting Times

4. Identify What Social Posts are Working for You (and what aren’t)

happy man using phone — As you start to see what posts are working for you and what aren’t, you can really start to fine-tune your approach and maximize your efforts.

This is where the fun really starts — where you get the data to make strategic improvements to your posting strategy. Use the following tips to collect and evaluate your data:

Create a Spreadsheet

Create a spreadsheet with columns for all the key stats you want to track. This includes the measurables attached to your goal and the elements. It’s also a good idea to have a column for the link to the specific post in question. This allows you to quickly reference it.

Export Your Data

The most successful social media campaigns work in combination with your overall marketing plan. This means you will likely be pulling statistics from more than one source. This could include, but is not limited to:

Google Analytics
Social Insights, such as those provided by Facebook Insights
Newsletter Analytics
Manually Collected Statistics
Platform specific data like Wistia’s video / channel / project stats

NOTE: For some platforms, like the ever popular Instagram, the scope of analytics is limited. Keep an eye out for our upcoming post about how to track, monitor and optimize your Instagram Business account.

Fill in The Appropriate Columns

Generally speaking, it’s easiest to fill in the appropriate columns with the appropriate goal statistics. Then, evaluate each post based on the desired elements.

Yes, this process can be time consuming. If you are short on time, consider evaluating the top 20% of posts and the bottom 20% of posts. This can help you see trends in what’s working and what isn’t.

It’s also worth noting, that while this process does take time, it’s vital to maximizing the effectiveness of your efforts moving forward.

Identify Key Trends

Some trends can be obvious to see, such as certain post types way outperforming others. We often see huge spikes in the performance of video posts.

You might also find that certain types of visuals gain more engagement and reach, such as fun images or behind-the-scenes captures.

Another common occurrence is the brightness of images. Typically, the brighter the picture, the higher the reach. Contrast helps the image subject be clear. We’ll follow up this month with helpful design patterns and fundamentals to make your designs pop.

However, there are less obvious elements which could also influence the effectiveness of your posts. For instance, you might notice a trend in the length of text. Many social media optimization sites will encourage shorter text. But depending on the platform, we’re seeing an uptick in the effectiveness of long-form text.

Long-form text also often corresponds to heartfelt messages, educational essays, and business updates. By taking stock of the message being displayed, you can also start to see a connection to performance.

5. Put Your Insights to Work

While you won’t want to post the same thing day-after-day, you can start to hone in on the posts which help you best achieve your goals.

This may require doubling-down on your commitment to recording video and/or taking pictures. For most accounts, original images and videos significantly outperform stock photography and videos.

6. Monitor Your Success & Keep Identifying Areas of Improvement

“remote — Help your team stay on track by doing regular check-ins to monitor your performance, review your goals, improve your approach and celebrate your wins.

Just auditing your social posts once and tweaking your strategy can help. But it can be hard to know what kind of difference your investment in performing an audit really had without continued monitoring.

Additionally, it can be difficult to keep making progress towards your goals without keeping a constant pulse on what’s working and what isn’t. Social media is a constantly changing landscape. In order to maximize your efforts, you need to be dialed in to the latest trends and posting options.

Bonus Tip: Use Your Own Reach

As you can see if you made it to the end of this post, running an effective profile takes time and resources. Pick your social media platforms by where you have the bandwidth to make an impact and publish the right kind of content. Don’t create a dozen profiles if you can only grow two. Do the work, expand when it’s appropriate.

Have Your Social Media Posts Professionally Audited

Our marketing team helps businesses in a wide range of industries maximize their social media presence. Let’s talk about how we can help you take full advantage of your online platforms.

Talk to an RWL Design team member.