How to Conduct a Social Media Strategy Review: Tips for Small Business Owners

Written By Shivika Kumar

Is your social media marketing strategy a dusty 40-page document lost somewhere amongst all your files on your desktop?

Perhaps the last time you looked at it was 6-months ago when you started the year determined to start making an impact on social media.

Whether you’ve been following your social media marketing strategy to the T or have let it fall by the wayside, it is worth conducting a review to see whether your current strategy is still serving your business.

Why review your social media marketing strategy?

  • To ensure it is still aligned with your business goals and objectives

  • To ensure the content you are delivering is aligned with your mission (i.e. what you want to be known for)

  • To ensure the content you are creating still resonates with your target audience

  • To ensure your chosen platforms are helping you meet your business goals

Ideally, you should review your social media marketing strategy at the end of every quarter. However, conducting a quarterly review isn’t always possible for small businesses due to a lack of resources (whether that be time, money or labour).

That’s why a mid-year or 6-monthly review can be a great chance for you to step back so you can identify the tactics and practices that have and haven’t been working for your small business.

You’ve invested a lot into starting your business so it’s important to know that it’s paying off. A review can help you identify any gaps in your current strategy as well as what areas to optimise to ensure you are getting the most bang for your buck.

A review will save you time and money in the future because you will be investing in tactics that drive results.

“I’m feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin.”

Reviewing your social media marketing strategy shouldn’t feel like a chore you have to mark off your to-do list if you break it down into individual parts. It’s important to also view this as a learning opportunity to understand what you can do better to benefit your business.

Grab your favourite snack, a warm drink and set aside a day (or even a week!) to complete your review.

Why review your social media marketing strategy?

  • Branding: Are all your pages and platforms aligned with your brand guidelines?

  • Top performing posts: Have a look to see which posts are performing the best and on which platforms? (Consider impressions, reach and engagement).

    If you don’t already have monthly reports for social media, you can backtrack and record analytics on a separate spreadsheet divided by month. Alternatively, you can use a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to automatically generate reports for you over a set time period.

  • Analytics: We love to hate it but analytics can tell you a lot about your social media strategy such as where is your audience coming from, who are they and what their habits are.

    Whether you use in-built analytics from your website or google analytics, at the end of the day, your website is where the magic happens so it’s important to know whether social media marketing strategy is driving leads to where you need them to be.

  • Audience demographics: It’s important to note down whether the audience you are currently reaching matches your target market.

    If they don’t, consider undertaking some market research to better understand your audience, what platforms they use and what their usage patterns are like (what content do they like/ don’t like, when they are online, etc.). This data will help you optimise your content and strategy to enable you to better reach your ideal customer).

Why review your social media marketing strategy?

Recording data is all fun and games unless you put in measures to make it work for you.

Things to ask yourself to help you implement the data you have gathered:

  • What have you learnt from this audit?

  • How can you convert this data into actionable goals and objectives for the next 3 to 6 months?

  • How will you keep yourself accountable for reaching your social media marketing goals and objectives?

Taking time to build a data-driven social media strategy can help ensure you are investing in strategies and practices that resonate with your audience. In turn, helping you meet or even exceed your goals and objectives.

Need an extra hand or a personal cheerleader to undertake a social media audit for your small business?

I can help! Let’s hop on a Zoom call to discuss how to gather and turn this data into actionable steps for your small business.

LET’S CHAT
Shivika Kumar