If you’ve never done a social media audit before, the idea of it can be quite daunting to get your head around. You need to understand how all of your platforms are performing and how they fit with the strategy you set out at the beginning of your businesses journey on social media. 

 

If you need help with a social media audit then not to worry – here’s all the information you need in order to create a valuable, insightful social media audit that will help you build your following and your social media success. 

 

 

Firstly, you need to make sure you list all your social media accounts. Make sure you do a search for these accounts on each platform too so you can see if there’s anyone impersonating you. If so, you’ll need to report it and get it taken down. 

 

You also need to make sure you’re keeping track of your log-ins, so you’ll be able to easily access these accounts, even the ones you may not be using. 

 

Listing your social media accounts will help you discover platforms that may be worth you launching on, so you can expand your following and client base. 

 

One of the most important things you can do when your start growing a social media audience is build trust in your business. Without trust, your audience may not engage with your business. If they don’t feel like they believe in your business or your products/services then they won’t be making purchases and becoming a part of your audience. 

 

A survey by PwC found that 35% of respondents noted ‘trust in a brand’ as a top 3 reason that influences their purchasing decision. Therefore, it’s important that you build this trust with your customers as soon as possible. 

 

Here are some tips that will help you build trust on social media. 

 

 

How good is the content you’re posting? Your content needs to have some value if you want to build trust with your audience. 

 

In order to start creating high quality content, you need to make sure you understand your audience. What do they like, what are they engaging with on social media, what are their interests etc. If you understand who your audience are, you’ll be able to create content that is perfectly targeted towards them. 

 

Social media engagement is highly important if you want your business page to grow. It helps to boost your posts in the algorithm for more potential customers to see them, and shows you that you’re heading in the right direction with your content. 

 

Engagement also helps you to build meaningful relationships with your customers, as you’ll be able to reply to their comments and messages and start conversations. It acts as a great tool for you to discover how your business is doing, and the growth that it’s achieving. 

 

Engagement is when someone interacts with a piece of content you made, whether it’s liking, sharing, commenting or even clicking links and hashtags – any action they take on your post is an engagement. 

 

However, some businesses find it difficult to gain engagement, especially when they first start out. Attracting an audience from scratch who will engage with you isn’t easy, neither is trying to keep your engagement high if your growth has slowed down. 

 

Here are some ways you can improve and increase your engagement. 

LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B marketing. You can reach out to business owners in your industry, make connections and support each other on your business journeys. LinkedIn also lets you advertise your services to people interested in your industry, so that you can attract new customers and clients. 

 

LinkedIn, like other platforms, is a great choice for you to give your business an online presence. There are certain times that you can post on the platform for maximum reach and engagement. Here are some of the best times to post on LinkedIn. 

 

 

HubSpot research has outlined specific days and times that are best for your business to post on LinkedIn. Mondays aren’t advised, as many business owners will be busy catching up with work they may have received over the weekend, or completing work that needs finishing from the week before. Mid-week is best to post, as this is when business owners frequent LinkedIn more often. Fridays are advised if you post during the workday, before business owners and employees log off for the weekend. 

A lot of the time, following your analytics will help you to discover which time would be best for you to post on Instagram. Your audience’s online behaviour patterns will vary for each business, as your customer group will be solely unique to your business. 

 

However, Instagram also has a built-in algorithm which prioritises recency, which means even if you post at the optimal time for your engagements, some of your clients may still not see your posts. Here are some of the best times for you and your business to post on Instagram. 

 

 

A study by Hootsuite found that it’s best to post at midday on Monday’s, Wednesday’s and Thursday’s, morning on Tuesday and Saturday, and later in the day on Friday and Sunday. It found people were more likely to be active mid-week during the working day. 

 

Instagram is often used by workers when they’re on a break, so engagement will be higher at those times of day. 

Your social media bio tells people in a short summary about your business. You need to sum up what your business is about, along with adding a bit of personality to draw people in. Striking the right balance will help you appeal to your chosen target audience whilst giving them some basic details about the nature of your business. 

 

But how do you write the perfect social media bio? Here are some tips that you can follow. 

 

 

Who is your target audience? You have to ask this question with everything you create or write, as these are the people you need to appeal to the most. 

Your brand voice needs to be reflected in your bio – if you’re humorous, the use humour. If you’re more professional, keep your bio a little more straight forward. From your research, you’ll know what your audience requires from you to get them engaged and excited about your business, your products and your services. Make sure this is reflected in your bio. 

When it comes to posting on your business page, you need to make sure you’re doing it at the times and on the days that get you the most engagement. 

 

However, many small businesses won’t have a dedicated social media team available to create and post content at these specific times. That’s why scheduling tools are an ideal choice if you don’t have the time in the day to make sure you’re logging on and posting at the right moment. 

A lot of brands use scheduling tools to post on social media no matter how big or small they may be, so you should consider using them for your business too. 

 

 

Scheduling tools allow you to schedule your content ahead of time, so that it goes up at the time you need it to, without you needing to log on and post yourself. These tools will allow you to pick a date and time for your content, so that it posts even when you’re doing other work. This will ensure you’re still posting at the optimal times, without needing to worry about taking time out to do it yourself. 

Consistency when marketing on social media is vital if you want to see growth, and turn your social media into a successful avenue for you to sell products and reach new customers. 

 

Without consistent posting, your audience can get confused as to why you’ve not posted, or could be overwhelmed by a volume of posts. But your consistency doesn’t just end at posting – it also includes your brand voice, the way you respond to people and your overall branding with things such as graphics and videos. 

 

Here are the reasons why consistency is important on social media.. 

 

 

By staying consistent on social media, your brand will begin to be recognised. You’ll stay in the minds of your audience if you’re posting at the optimal times on the days that they’re most active, helping them to recognise you and remember your brand. 

 

Brand recognition is important, because you’ll want to be the brand people go to before competitors. Staying consistent with your online marketing will help you do this. 

If you’re wanting to get your business out there on social media, you need a social media strategy. This will help you plan how your business will appear on social media channels, and will help you work out a route to having online success. 

 

Your strategy needs to consider a number of things, from what and when you post to the tracking of analytics. 

 

Looking to get started? Here are some tips on how to create a great social media strategy. 

 

 

You need to know who it is you’re planning to target. Without knowing your audience, you may not see the results you desire. Your business has the opportunity to reach new people online, and therefore your need to ensure you’re targeting the right group. 

Social Media is a great place for you to be able to connect with new audiences and your ideal client is likely to be within this audience. There are many ways to find out who your ideal client is, and what the best way would be for you to get in contact with them. 

 

Your ideal client often won’t just come to you – you have to discover them. After all, how will they know the benefits of your product/service if you don’t locate them in order to get them invested in whatever it is you’re selling? Your ideal client can provide a big benefit for your business – having loyal customers who are truly fans of what you’re offering can really provide a boost to your business and help you increase your sales. 

 

So how do you find your ideal client? Here are some tips to get you started on discovering who you should be contacting. 

 

Whilst most social media seems to be simple text or image posts, many forget the importance of videos. Video’s will capture your audience in just a few seconds, and if your content is interesting enough, the viewer is likely to stick around. With the rise of YouTube, TikTok and most recently Instagram Reels, many businesses now look to post engaging content for new audiences across these platforms. 

 

Videos allow you to create interesting, visually based content that is a lot easier to consume than written paragraphs or swiping across to view paragraphs on attractive infographics. Videos require little to no interaction from the viewer – they simply have to press play, or just stop scrolling due to the auto-play feature. If you take a look at some of the most successful companies on social media, they will often use videos, especially when they’re trying to reach new audiences. As long as you have a good idea about who your audience is, you’re likely to succeed. TikTok is the perfect platform to try and reach a bigger audience – if a viewer is already interacting with similar content to yours on their personalised ‘For You’ page, then your video is more likely to appear in their streamlined timeline. This means you gain more exposure, new followers, and the more interaction your video gets, the more likely you are to appear on other people’s pages. 

 

Research has shown that 85% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, with 92% of marketers agreeing that it is an important part of their marketing strategy. From this data you need to be considering your options going forward. So, here are 5 reasons why you should be publishing video content on your social media platforms. 

 

 

Generations are changing and having a picture or a piece of long form text as a creative won’t grab their attention anymore on social media. Whereas, video is a fantastic way to hook your audience, as video content holds the viewers’ attention 5x longer than an image or piece of text. 

 

Video allows you to be concise and capture the viewers' interest in the first few seconds. It’s important to make sure that in the first split second of your campaign, you can attract people’s attention and make them stop scrolling through their feed to pay attention to your brand. This lies in your ability to condense information down into easily digestible snippets of content that is long enough to maintain viewers' attention but short enough to leave them wanting more.