The Importance of Social Media Audits for Radio Stations

What is a social media audit?

A social media audit measures how well your social content is performing on different accounts and equips your radio station to more effectively optimize its social pages – what’s working and what’s not.

Social media audits are important to help you better:

• Understand how your social presence impacts your radio station’s objectives

• Consistently engage with your audience

• Uncover new ways to connect

What are the benefits of a social media audit?

While your to-do list likely doesn’t need one more thing added to it, a social media audit is worth doing for a variety of reasons including:

• An audit equips you to make educated decisions. Wondering if your station needs to be on “X?” Maybe you’re considering focusing on Instagram only.  By auditing your social pages, you can make educated decisions about where your station’s social efforts should be concentrated.
• Social media audits equip you to highlight social’s impact for the station. Though ROI is important, social ROI is not easily calculated.  Audits though can uncover key elements you might not have noticed – a piece of content which struck a chord with your audience and was shared by followers on their social pages, a comment asking about programming your radio station airs or maybe it’s the “thank you for being a bright light in the community” kudos from a long-time listener in response to a post which shared an encouraging word.

How to conduct an audit?

1. Take Inventory: From Facebook to Pinterest . . . whatever social platforms your station is on, even if you haven’t been active on it, gather all of your station’s social media assets and put them in on place (maybe a Google Sheet).
2. Define Goals: Go down the list of social platforms your station is on and note the social media goal for each one:

• Increasing awareness of your station in the community
• Growing your audience
• Moving followers to radio
• Increasing traffic to your web site

3. Check Consistency: Double-check each of your platform profiles to make sure that they all match. Make sure your profiles all have the same bio, about, images, URLs and hashtags. If you don’t already have a “About Us” paragraph or mission statement, now’s a great time to create one!
4. Get to Know Your Social Audience: Who are you targeting on your social media channels? Most of the social networks provide users with audience demographics (see below for links).   Take time to review the data and see if you’re reaching your targeted demo.
5. Look at the Numbers: Gather the key metrics for each platform to give you insight into how your audience is responding to your social media content.  Each platform has its own social media analytics tool:

• Facebook/Meta
• Instagram
• Twitter
• TikTok
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat

6. Celebrate the Wins: For each social profile, list your top five posts. Drill down the posts which most resonated with your audience – did they engage more with videos, carousals, question- based posts?  Take note and make plans to do more in 2024 of what speaks to your target audience.
7. Make a Plan: Once your social media audit is complete, set a time to evaluate your findings. You might consider gathering a couple of key station staff members to discuss the audit results, top takeaways and what action steps to take.

By conducting a social media audit, you’ll gain a better understanding of what content resonates most with your audience, which platforms you should focus on (and which ones you should place on the back-burner!) and what adjustments you can make to keep your radio station’s social media presence strategic.