Whether you have recently decided to take stock and deliberately improve your social media presence or you are just starting out on your public persona presence, it is important to audit how you currently present yourself online.

This is one of those situations where it is important not to run before you can walk. Yes, you should be thinking about a strategy, the kinds of content you will create, how to use hashtags, the best schedule for creation and posting, and more… but let’s start at the beginning!

Any project or change manager will tell you there’s no point attempting to make improvements before you know what the baseline is. This is also true for your public persona. Follow these steps for auditing your social media accounts before you start making changes.
We will have you increasing your reach and readers before you know it!

Make a list of all your accounts

A social media audit begins with your profiles. It is important to check all your accounts, even your personal, private accounts. Make a list of them all and understand exactly what you use each account for. Any accounts that are not meant to be for your public author persona, make them private.

Review your privacy settings

Check your privacy settings on each of your social media accounts and make sure that you are comfortable with who can see your content and personal information. Consider adjusting your privacy settings to limit the amount of personal information that is publicly available.

Check your bio and profile information

Review your profile information, including your name, bio, and profile picture, to make sure that they accurately reflect who you are and what you want to share with the world. Make sure the information is up-to-date – yes, I’m sure you do look great in that photo from high school but is that really representative of you now?!

Bios often have limited space/character limits you must stick to, so remember to keep things short and sweet, and to show your personality! If the platforms you are using provide a pinned post feature, ensure that you are pinning the most relevant and interesting content to your profile.

Being an author is a job, regardless of how well it pays. So remember that this is, in a sense, your professional public persona.

If you have any branding on your website, try to keep it consistent across your social channels as well. Check out Later’s tips for crafting the perfect Instagram Bio for inspiration across your platforms.

Review your posts

A social media audit requires taking stock of the current state as well as taking action there and then. Go through your past posts and remove any that are inappropriate for your public persona or that you no longer want to be associated with. You can also use the opportunity to update your content and add new posts that reflect your current interests and activities.

Check your followers and connections

Look through your followers and connections to make sure that you know who they are and that they are people you want to be associated with. Consider removing any connections that you no longer want to be associated with.

Understand the kinds of people who tend to follow you, as this will give you valuable insights into your existing fans and the kinds of readers you are likely to attract. Let this information guide you in the kind of posts you make.

And remember, your audience may differ from platform to platform!

Analyse engagement and traffic to your site

There is no point in trying different strategies to increase your reach and audience if you never reflect on how successful they were. What performed well with your followers? What posts tanked?

Start to understand the kinds of posts that do well, from on-platform engagement to routing traffic through to your website.

There are a lot of social media scheduling services that offer in-depth analytics, but they usually require a paid plan. Going the free route is still possible, just a more manual process.

You will need to go into the settings of each platform to find the analytics. On some platforms, you can view the analytics of each post from the post itself.

If you have a website, ensure you are using Google Analytics which can show you your referral traffic from social media (Acquisition -> Social -> Network Referrals).

Delete inactive accounts

If you have social media accounts that you no longer use, consider deleting them to reduce your online presence and the risk of identity theft. Keep an eye out for any fake accounts created in your name and report them as soon as they appear.

Create benchmarks and goals

You are almost ready to start developing your new social media strategy. But first you need to take what you learned from analysing your accounts and website traffic to create baseline benchmarks. Some things to take note of:

• How often have you been posting on each channel?
• What kinds of posts have you been making?
• How much engagement have you been receiving?

You are now ready to start developing realistic and strategic goals for your future use of your social media profiles!

Ready to start auditing your social media?

We have created a template to help walk you through each of these steps. Download your free template now.