What’s inside this article: A look at what a social media audit is, how to perform a simple audit on your social media accounts, and how regular reviews of your socials can improve your productivity and well-being.
Social media has become a massive aspect of our daily lives. We all spend an alarming amount of time scrolling, liking, and commenting on various social media platforms.
In fact, the majority of us spend hours on these platforms without even realizing it. When it comes to personal and professional use of social media, it’s essential to evaluate your accounts regularly, and this is where a social media audit can be incredibly beneficial.
What is a Social Media Audit?
A social media audit is an evaluation of your social media accounts. It’s beneficial to analyze your accounts regularly to ensure they meet your needs and expectations and not negatively impact your well-being and productivity.
Doing a social media audit is simple. During an audit, you’ll review your profiles and assess their effectiveness. Some people may use the process to improve their online presence, while others may be more concerned about their well-being and productivity.
Steps to Audit Your Social Media Accounts
1. Choose Which Accounts to Audit
To start, list all your social media accounts that you use frequently. For example, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, or any other social media platform you use.
2. Review Your Profiles
Once you’ve identified your social media accounts, it’s time to review your profiles. Check whether each profile contains the necessary information, profile image, and bio.
Ensure that every profile reflects your values, what you want to showcase to your audience, and your overall message.
Sometimes we add information to our profile, and over time it stops being relevant to us, or we no longer want to be shared publicly due to our careers or values, so making sure that public information is indeed information we want the public to see is important.
3. Analyze Data
If you want to grow your online presence, analyzing your data is crucial. You can use various tools to check your social media metrics, such as likes, comments, shares, and followers.
You can use this data to assess which posts drive the most engagement and what time of day is the most effective to post. This information can help you strategize and create better content that will resonate with your audience.
This is particularly important for business accounts and if you want to become recognized as an expert in your field.
4. Identify and Remove Negativity
Identify and remove anything creating negativity in your life — We can get caught up in creeping profiles of ex-boyfriends, their new girlfriends, celebrity gossip accounts, and more.
If you find yourself engaging in these behaviors, removing and blocking the accounts that are taking up your time and impacting your mood can boost your mood and improve your well-being. Following our ex-boyfriend or ex-friend’s every move is normalized, but it’s not healthy behavior.
5. Clean up your accounts
Remove any accounts that are no longer active or that you may not be interested in. Our interests and circle change over time, so keeping our friends and followers relevant, along with followed accounts, means when we browse social media, we will see more things that matter to us.
How Can a Social Media Audit Improve Your Well-being and Productivity Levels?
1. Improved Time Management
If you find yourself getting lost in the world of social media and scrolling for hours, an audit can help you eliminate aspects of social media that are hurting your productivity levels.
Identify which social media platforms are most beneficial to you, decide how much time you should spend on these platforms, and then set reasonable time limits for yourself.
Making posts and responding to messages is great for staying in touch with friends and family, both near and far. But at the same time, engaging with content that can help you improve your career or personal development can also make time on social media a more positive experience.
2. Decreased Anxiety and Stress
You may find you spend a lot of time comparing your life with other people’s social media posts. This often leads to anxiety and stress as we constantly feel like we’re not doing enough or not good enough.
During a social media audit, take an opportunity to delete and unfollow those whose posts make you feel inferior or anxious. This cleansing process can provide emotional relief and increased feelings of self-worth.
3. Increased Productivity
While social media can be great, it can also be a huge distraction that limits our productivity. It’s so easy to log onto social media and find yourself getting lost in hours of scrolling.
Your audit can help you identify areas of distraction within your favorite platforms, helping to combat procrastination and ultimately boosting productivity levels.
4. Improved Online Reputation
Having a poor online reputation can harm your career and your well-being. A social media audit can help you ensure nothing is shared publicly online that could affect your reputation. Ensure any negative content is eliminated or addressed.
This cleaning process helps maintain a positive image, enhancing your online reputation and reducing any anxiety or stress tied to it.
Remember, social media audits are essential to get the most out of our social media experience.
Completing a social media audit helps evaluate your social media accounts, identify negative content, analyze data, and use social media efficiently. The result of the cleanup can lead to increased productivity and well-being by reducing stress and anxiety and increasing self-worth.
Once you take the initiative to audit your social media accounts, you may be surprised by how much your outlook on life can be impacted positively.
