When was the last time you conducted a social media audit?

If your business or organization has any social media presence whatsoever, it’s important to conduct regular social media audits. After all, if you’re investing time and resources into building your social media presence, you’ll want to know its impact.

Basically, this entails a review of ALL of your social media platforms to determine the overall impact of your social media presence.

Does that sound daunting? It doesn’t have to be – if you know what to look for!

We suggest focusing on five key areas:

1. Review Key Metrics

Reviewing key metrics will give you a good overview of how your accounts are performing overall.

What counts as a “key” metric will depend on your goals and objectives, but more often than not, key metrics include:

2. Identity Top Performing Posts

This will tell you not only what type of content resonates with your followers, but also the type of media they respond to best.

Some questions you may want to ask include:

As you evaluate your top performing posts, remember that the results may vary from platform to platform. For example, what works best on Instagram may. not translate to LinkedIn, but once you know what works where, you’ll be able to develop a more effective and strategic content plan.

3. Assess Brand Consistency

This includes both the visuals and the messaging. Is there a cohesive look and feel to your posts? Can your followers get a sense of what your business/organization is all about by scrolling through your feed?

Ideally, the answer to both questions is, “Yes!”

If it isn’t, this is a great time to revisit your brand guidelines.

4. Analyze Demographic Data

This will give you a breakdown of your audience in terms of age and gender. This also may vary across platforms, but knowing how different demographic groups are interacting with your posts can help you evaluate and refine your content strategy, reinforce the relationship you have with your current audience, and expand your reach to new audiences.

5. Identify Successes and Areas for Improvement

Did part of your social media strategy work especially well? Give yourself a pat on the back!

But don’t stop there.

Celebrating your successes is important, but it’s equally important to identify the areas that need improvement. Whether it’s a need to appeal to new audiences, or maintaining brand consistency in your imagery, the lessons learned from your social media audit will help guide your next steps along the path of optimizing your business’s social media presence.

One of the easiest ways to track traffic to your website is through UTM codes.

A UTM, or Urchin Tracking Module, code is text that is added at the end of a URL that you can then analyze through Google Analytics.

Once you understand how to set them up, they are a great way to determine how well your ads, messages, newsletters, or social media posts are performing.

1. Explaining the pieces

There are several elements in a UTM code:

Campaign Source

This tells Google where the traffic came from – a specific place. Examples would be a social media platform, a blog, a newsletter, or another website where your content appears.

Campaign Medium

The campaign medium tells Google how the traffic got there or the channel that was clicked on; an organic social post, a paid social ad, email, cpc etc.

Campaign Name

Here’s where you can start to put more specific identifiers on your link. We use things like….well, the name of the campaign. Sometimes this is a larger campaign (Christmas concerts) or sometimes it’s a more specific name (Messiah) if we have multiple pieces of content pushing back to the website.

Campaign Term

This is most often used in search ads for keywords and phrases.

Campaign Content

With this piece, you can identify exactly which piece of content generated the click. For example, if you have two or three Meta ads driving to the same URL, or two issues of your newsletter promoting a page on your site, you can be specific about which ad or issue. We like using basic identifiers – the date of the newsletter, what element in the newsletter (header image or button) and sometimes, the format or colour of an ad (yellow background or video).

A lot of this will be up to your own naming conventions, but it’s important to make them easily understood by another person. (This is our “abducted by aliens” practice….if you disappeared tomorrow, could someone else easily figure out what’s going on?)

Pro tip: Set up a spreadsheet to list important UTM codes to help you keep track.

2. Putting it together.

One important thing – consistency in your naming is important. UTM codes are case sensitive so make sure you use the same format for all your codes. We use lowercase as our default and use an underscore “_” instead of spaces.

Here’s the generated UTM code:

utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=christmas_concert&utm_content=Nov_12_header_image

utem_source=blog_TO&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=september_classes&utm_content=yellow_background

It gets added to the end of the URL, following a “?”:

https://www.blue-elephant.ca? utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=book&utm_content=testimonial2

3. Tools & Tips

There are lots of sites out there that will help you build your UTM codes. We really like Google Analytics’ Demo & Tools Campaign URL Builder.

You may already have access to a great UTM code generator. Some social scheduling programs (Hootsuite, SkedSocial, Buffer etc.) will do this for you automatically.

When you input your information in the fields, a code is generated that you can then copy and paste:

utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=christmas_concert&utm_content=Nov_12_header_image

This code is great when you can hide the long link. A good example is if you’re sending the tracking code to a third party to link back to your site.

However, it looks TERRIBLE if you can see the entire link. Your audience sees a long line of gibberish and may not be inclined to click the link.

To clean things up, you should generate a shortened URL. If you have a free bit.ly account you can connect it to the Campaign URL Builder and it will generate the shorter URL for you.

That’s a much better-looking link, right? https://bit.ly/3v76G2n

If you are building ads in Meta Ads Manager, you can generate UTM parameters right inside the ad.

Now that you know how to label the traffic coming to your site, you need to understand how to find and interpret the results in Google Analytics.

We’ll cover that in an upcoming blog!

Creating content is the easy part (or at least the easier part).

The hard part? Actually coming up with content ideas.

The next time you’re stuck, try these tips for generating content ideas. They’re sure to help you kick off your next brainstorming session.

Repurposing content

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! You already have a wealth of content, make it work for YOU.

Everything from newsletters and blogs to website copy can easily be recycled into social media posts. 

This helps reduce your workload, as you don’t have to generate ideas from scratch. Going through older content can also help to inspire new ideas, or ideas for content you want to re-share or expand on. 

Creating content in “buckets”

At Blue Elephant, we always like to find themes that are relevant to our clients. This way, we can cycle through different topics without sounding repetitive. 

It also makes it easier to create content when you already have an idea of what you’re looking for.

If you have a few trusted third-party sources related to your brand, share them! Are there any holidays that speak to you? Add them to your content calendar!

Groundhog Day is an important one for us. For you, maybe it’s World Chocolate Day or National Dog Day. (These are both VERY good choices.)

Interviews

This can take form either internally or externally.

Internal interviews could become “meeting the team” posts. Who are the people behind the brand? This content helps build a connection with your audience, creating a sense of familiarity.

For an external interview, you could ask a fellow industry expert questions. Maybe this is someone you’ve worked with in the past, or a mutual industry connection.

Content like this can open up even more avenues for creating future materials.

Whether you’re planning to hire an agency to look after social media for your business or handle things on your own, there are a few key terms you should be aware of. We’ve put together a short glossary of some of the most relevant social media marketing terms you should know. 

B2B: This stands for business-to-business. B2B businesses use social media to target and communicate with other businesses to whom they’d like to sell products or services.

B2C: This stands for business-to-customer. B2C businesses use social media to target and communicate with current and potential customers.

Boost: Boosting a post turns your organic post into a paid advertisement. Boosting your posts will get your content in front of people who don’t already follow your account.

CTA: This stands for Call To Action. Using a CTA on social media posts encourages followers to take a specific action, such as “Visit our website to learn more” or “Book now!”

Carousel: A carousel is a post using multiple images or videos that users can swipe or click their way through. 

Clickthrough Rate: If you’ve included a link in your post, the clickthrough rate (CTR) tells you the number of people who clicked on your link.

Engagement Rate: This refers to the number of people who have interacted with your post, including likes/reactions, comments, shares, saves, and click-throughs.

Evergreen Content: While posts marketing a specific event or promotion are only relevant for a short period of time, evergreen content is relevant no matter when it’s posted. Examples include FAQs, services/products offered, and other basic information about your business.

Feed: Sometimes also called a News Feed, this is the list of content that social media users will see displayed. Feeds are constantly updated with new content, and include both organic and paid content. While some social media feeds are chronological, most are regulated by algorithms. 

Hashtag: A hashtag is a keyword or phrase that is preceded by the # sign. Hashtags are used to categorize your posts, help users find content they’re interested in, and help you increase your organic reach.

Impressions: This is the number of times your content is displayed. The same post can have multiple impressions if it is displayed in someone’s feed more than once (e.g. the post is shared by multiple people in an individual’s feed).

Reach: This is the number of unique accounts that have viewed your content. Reach can be divided into two categories: organic and paid. Organic reach refers to the number of unique accounts that viewed your content without paid promotion, either by following your account, viewing content that was shared by other people they follow, following a particular hashtag, or finding your content through a keyword search.

Throwback Thursday: #ThrowbackThursday or #TBT is a popular hashtag used mainly (but not exclusively) on Instagram. This is a simple and effective way to re-share older content.

With so many social media options out there – and new platforms emerging all the time – determining the best platforms for your business can be overwhelming. While it might feel like you need to have a presence across all platforms, your social media strategy will be more effective if you focus on the right platforms.

Before we get started, we do recommend creating accounts for your business on all social media platforms – even the ones you don’t plan to use. This ensures that your business is protected, and prevents someone else from claiming your business name and posting as your business.

Once you’ve claimed your business accounts, consider these questions to help you determine where you should focus your efforts:

#1 What type of business do you run?

Finding your place in the social media landscape starts with identifying the nature of your business. Is it a B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-customer) organization? 

For B2B businesses, a presence on LinkedIn is a must. You’ll also want to be posting on some of the other major platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, but this will largely depend on the type of content you’ll be posting. (See Question #2.)

For B2C businesses, you’ll want to target the platforms your customers (and potential customers) are spending their time. The big platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are ideal for B2C communication for a couple of reasons: 1) these platforms have A LOT of users, and chances are your customers are among them; and 2) these platforms make it easy for your customers to get in touch with you, by replying to posts or through DMs.

#2 What type of content do you plan to share?

Is local marketing important to you? Make sure you’re posting regularly to Google My Business. 

Will you mainly be sharing images of your products? Get yourself on Instagram and Pinterest. 

Do you want the ability to post longer form articles? LinkedIn and Facebook both allow for this.

Will you be primarily sharing video content? You’ll probably want to set up a YouTube channel, and depending on the nature of your content, it may be worthwhile to post on TikTok.

#3 Who is your target audience and what platforms are they using?

This is key. Just like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, you want to be where the people are. More specifically, you want to be where your people are.

You could come up with a brilliant LinkedIn strategy, but it won’t be of use to you if your target audience is mainly on Instagram. 

One way to figure out where your people are is to search relevant hashtags. If a lot of users are posting about topics related to your business, there’s a good chance that you’ll find an audience for your posts. 

#4 What are your competitors doing?

It’s definitely worthwhile to know where your direct competitors are focusing their social media efforts. This gives you an idea of where the existing audience for your industry is. 

But it’s also useful to know where your competitors aren’t. 

For example, if there are platforms not being used by any of your competitors, this could be an opportunity to target a previously untapped market.

#5 How much time and money do you have to invest in building your social media presence?

Are you a solopreneur doing it all yourself? Do you have a dedicated marketing and communications team or team member? Will you be outsourcing social media to an agency?

Time and money are finite resources, and it’s important to consider how much of each you’re able to invest in your social media strategy. 

If you have minimal time and a limited budget, you probably won’t want to focus on platforms that depend on post frequency and interaction with other users, like Twitter or Threads. It doesn’t mean you need to stay away from those platforms entirely; just make sure you manage your expectations.

If you have unlimited resources, great! But if, like most businesses, you don’t, invest in the social media platforms where you’ll make the biggest impact with the resources you have.