A Social Media Audit Template For Social Media Managers

A key part to creating a social media marketing plan is conducting a social media audit. This assesses how well your current social media use works for you. There are many different steps involved when doing a social media audit, so we have put together a social media audit template to help you conduct your first (or second, third, etc.) one more efficiently.

Not sure where to start? To help you navigate the template, we also put together this 6-step guide on how to execute a social media audit.

Execute a social media audit in these 6 steps

Step 1: Create a social media audit spreadsheet

Creating a spreadsheet will allow you to have a home for your social media audit. As you go through these 6 steps, you’ll see that the spreadsheet will start automatically adding new columns. To start, create a column for social network, URL to your profile on that social network, and owner. The ‘Owner’ field may seem superfluous, but it’s actually really important to keep track of this information—it allows you to know who owns the password and who is in charge of posting and engaging with followers on that social profile.

Step 2: Go on a search for your social presence on Google

Go on to Google and search your company name to see which social media profiles show up. This will allow you to see if there are any imposters using your company name, and find out if the right social media profiles are appearing on Google. You can either create a separate spreadsheet to track the results of this search, or add a new column, labelled ‘Shutdown Y/N’, in the original spreadsheet. The purpose of this is knowing whether you need to track down an imposter to tell them to shut down their account, or contact the social network to ask them to interfere with the matter.

Step 3: Evaluate your social media profiles

This is an important part of your social media audit. Just like a social media marketing plan, you need to always evaluate your social media profiles. During the evaluation process, create a mission statement for each profile. Make sure each profile aligns with your business goals and objectives—this will help you in deciding whether being present on that social network contributes to your overall strategy, and whether or not it’s worth for your business to keep that profile.

Step 4: Make sure your social media profiles are on brand

Now that you know which social media profiles you’re going to keep, it’s time to check that each of these profiles are on brand. This means making sure you have a proper profile photo, cover photo, icons, bios and descriptions, and that the URL is correct.

Step 5: Centralize the ownership of your passwords

The process of doing a social media audit can help you make sure that all your social media profiles are secure. One way to test this is centralizing the ownership of the passwords for each profile. For example: you can have your IT department own the key to all the passwords for the social media profiles. Then use a password managing tool like LastPass to share access on a need-to-use basis.

Step 6: Create a process

Once you’re done your social media audit, it’s time to take what you learned and create an internal process when it comes to creating new social profiles going forward. Create a criteria and take note of who will approve the requests.

For example, take note of:

• Requester
• Who is the target audience?
• What type of content will be posted in this profile
• Who is going to respond to content?