Facebook is one of the oldest social media platforms where brands continue to promote their products and services.
And despite everyone thinking that this platform is old news and no use, marketers continue to consider it the perfect environment to grow their businesses.
Even if a social media strategist’s greatest strengths do not include auditing, performing a Facebook audit once in a while is mandatory.
By analyzing what works and what doesn’t work for your Facebook page, you get the chance to improve your Facebook marketing strategy.
In what follows, we’ll learn how to develop a Facebook audit in a few easy steps. Easy like a Sunday morning, I promise.
How to conduct a Facebook audit
1. What is a Facebook audit?
A Facebook audit is the process through which you review your Facebook business page’s infos and assess your content.
Since Facebook is always adding new features and updates for Facebook business pages, you need to make sure that all the info you display remains valid and updated.
By performing a Facebook page audit, you will also be able to spot when there are branding issues or whether your brand’s values and principles are still followed.
If your Facebook content does not reflect what you preach, as a brand, in your "About" section, then changes are needed. Users will not consider your brand to be a trustful one.
One of your brand’s main goals is to be relevant and to make a difference in your niche and industry.
2. How to do a Facebook audit - a step-by-step guide
When you build your brand’s presence on Facebook, you need to make sure everything is in order, maintaining relevance at all times.
That’s why you have to learn how to audit a Facebook page, update your information, and complete the missing puzzle pieces to remain a trusted brand.
Briefly, a Facebook page audit consists of the following steps, which we'll cover in greater detail later on.
Facebook audit checklist
1.Keep your brand’s profile public and accurate
2.Check and update all profile infos
3.Make sure your CTAs are relevant
4.Analyze your posting patterns
5.Evaluate your audience
6.Measure your performance
7.Make strategy adjustements
3. The components of a Facebook audit
To understand what steps you need to cover throughout the whole process of conducting a Facebook audit, we've put together a guide covering strategies and tips that will simplify your analysis.
3.1. Facebook profile audit
First things first, start by making sure your profile is completed.
We all know that first impressions matter, especially when talking about introducing your brand to Facebook's user community.
That is why when auditing your business's Facebook page, you have to start with the place that contains all the relevant information about you, which is your profile.
To be in line with your brand's identity, your profile picture, together with your page's cover photo should include your branded colors, together with your company's logo.
Exactly like your business card, your Facebook page must also contain essential information about your brand, mentioned in the "About" section. We're talking about the website, contact info, and, ultimately, your brand's mission.
Lastly, don't forget to check if your CTAs are set (and that you have enabled the best options for your brand), as these elements facilitate the connections between your followers and your brand.
3.2. Facebook content audit
Even if the first visuals on your Facebook page work as your business card, your Facebook content is what should keep your audience engaged.
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Pay attention to the look and feel
When creating your Facebook audit report, content analysis plays a crucial role, as it offers insights for future post creation and optimization.
Given the great amount of information that's sent through social media and the brand's constant battle to get the attention of the users, branding becomes paramount. Because it's the gateway to becoming top of mind.
That is why it's important for your Facebook content to align with certain criteria.
For all your Facebook posts it's recommended to have a similar structure and design in such a way that, if someone sees that independently, they’ll know it’s yours.
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Optimize creatives and their size
Yes, size matters, especially when we talk about content. Your videos and images should be optimized to fit Facebook’s specs.
High-quality visuals adapted for every type of device will make a huge change, since people nowadays value high quality experiences from brands more than ever.
3.3. Facebook strategy audit
Now, after you have analyzed your Facebook profile and content, it's time to delve deeper and look at performance insights to understand how you can make the most out of your Facebook marketing efforts in the future.
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Analyze your posting patterns
Are you being consistent in your posting? Do you post often enough? Are you posting at optimal hours?
These are all questions you should answer when performing your Facebook strategy audit.
Because most certainly you're running a Facebook audit to understand what the missing points in your activity that prevent you from gaining the Facebook success you're after are, it's important to leverage the insights you get for future optimization.
Simply put, use the responses you give as a starting point for identifying better posting patterns.
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Track your engagement and other relevant KPIs
Is your Facebook content successful in generating the results you've set for your Facebook marketing activity?
To understand how effective is your content strategy in creating brand awareness, drive conversations and boost your sales, you have to look at a couple of key metrics that evaluate your performance, such as engagement, reach, and traffic.
TIP: Check history post data
For your Facebook performance analysis, you can leverage a third-party Facebook audit software, such as Socialinsider's analytics solution, that offers you in-depth KPIs and research opportunities.
By leveraging a Facebook audit tool that offers historical data, you can get access to old Facebook posts that can be tracked down ever since the beginning of your brand’s journey on Facebook. This will help you get a sense of how your brand’s content strategy has evolved.
2.3. Learn more about your Facebook audience
This is the part where you have to look into who your followers are to see if your current content strategy is helping you attract your target audience.
Because sometimes your target audience and your actual audience may not coincide, this part of your Facebook audit process is very important, as it may signal that you have to change the way you approach Facebook marketing.
Ultimately, you should look at your followers' data by approaching a quantitative analysis perspective as well - meaning auditing your growth.
For example, have you lost or gained any fans since your last Facebook audit? If so, you should dig into the campaigns that generated the changes.
With Socialinsider, for example, you can dive deep into various analysis areas that can help you create a powerful Facebook audit, from content and engagement to ads and specific campaign audits.
To access this kind of data, all you need to do is put the brand you're interested in running a Facebook audit for by adding a Facebook profile link and then go to the section you're interested in. Easy breezy, right?
3.4. Facebook ads audit
If you're complementing your organic Facebook marketing efforts with ads, you should also include an analysis of this area in your Facebook audit. Similar to your organic content analysis, your Facebook ads audit should cover a couple of angles.
So, buckle up and let's see how you can audit your Facebook ads to understand if your investment is generating the results you are looking for.
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Evaluate your ads' performance
When running ads campaigns you constantly need to keep an eye on the data. After all, you need to make sure the ads you're running drive a good ROI and your budget is not thrown out the window.
That is why, if you're wondering how to audit Facebook ads, you should know that the best starting point is by getting an overview of the CPC and CPM your ads campaigns have scored.
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Analyze creatives
Your Facebook ads should be eye-catching to stand out from the crowd. We all see tons of ads on Facebook every day.
Most of them look the same, using the same visuals and a weak CTA. You should craft Facebook ads that convert, making users stop scrolling and click your link.
If you notice that certain ad campaigns are no longer engaging for your audience, maybe it’s time to close that Facebook campaign.
When your Facebook audience is no longer expressing their interest in the products you advertise, you are just wasting your resources.
This is a sign that you need to redesign your Facebook ad campaign and make it more attractive.
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Review the audiences your ads are reaching
Another thing to keep in mind when performing a Facebook ad audit is to make sure your ad reaches your target audience. Exactly like it should happen with your organic posts as well.
Otherwise, you’re advertising roses to someone who is only searching for lemons. Your efforts would be in vain.
Make sure you know your audience well. The way you build your ad helps you attract the right people who are also more likely to buy your products and services.
4. How to use a Facebook audit tool to simplify your analysis
To streamline your Facebook audit process, you can turn to various tools that offer performance reports and scores for different areas, like the ones we talked about.
Such a Facebook page audit tool is, for example, Socialinsider, which provides data about engagement, followers, posting frequency, top content, and more, reducing your research to just a number of clicks. How great is that?
Thanks to its exportable reports feature, you can get visually appealing data for your Facebook audits in a matter of minutes.
Offering in-depth analytics solutions, Socialinsider also facilitates competitor audits, which enable insights for future strategy optimization.
Besides being a fast and easy-to-use platform, Socilainsider also lets you track past data, which helps you identify your brand’s most successful strategies over time, becoming a most valuable Facebook audit tool.
Final thoughts
Conducting a Facebook audit may sound like a complicated and not so necessary action, especially when your days as a digital marketer are already so packed with content creation and team coordination.
No one said conducting a Facebook audit is necessary every month, but at least once per quarter is highly indicated since it allows you to optimize your content on the go and not risk losing precious resources.
Now that you have broken down the basic steps of a Facebook audit, you can start running your own and find out which segments need improvement on your Facebook page.
FAQs about Facebook audits
1. Why run a Facebook audit?
While there are many benefits of conducting a Facebook audit, the main reasons why a Facebook audit is important are the following:
- it allows you to find the best time frames when your audience is engaging the most by seeing in which months, days and time intervals they are most active
- it helps you establish trends, depending on seasonal events (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day etc)
- it offers actionable insights into how to adjust your Facebook strategy
- it highlights trends in your captions, analyzing whether long or short captions work better
- it highlights which post types are the most engaging for your audience
2. What's the recommended frequency of a Facebook audit?
There is no specific timeframe for conducting a Facebook audit. However, quarterly is the recommended period, given that brands usually leverage seasonal campaigns. Also, a Facebook audit is recommended, especially when a change in strategy is considered, and an evaluation of the current tactics is needed.
