5 Steps to Conduct a Year-End Social Media Review

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As the year winds down, we often find ourselves reflecting on our goals and progress made. This is especially true for those building online brands and businesses. After all, you want to know that your hard work is paying off. And you want to make strategic plans for the new year so you can ensure you’ll see the growth you desire.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct a year-end social media review as a way to analyze past performance and map out your strategy for the year ahead. It’s an important step to set yourself up for success, so don’t overlook this!

5 Steps to Conduct a Year-End Social Media Review

Here are a few steps you can follow to analyze your social media performance from the past year and plan for the new year:

1. Analyze Key Performance Indicators

An important part of your social media review is to measure your performance from the past year. This will help you to see where you’re doing well and what can be improved upon. As part of this step, you’ll want to track the traditional key performance indicators. This includes things like follower growth, engagement rate, conversion rate, etc. However, there may also be a few other metrics to track based on the personal goals you’ve set.

If you’ve seen stellar performance in the aforementioned areas this year, then you’ll know you’re doing something right. If not, then that’s an indicator you should change up your social media strategy. What can you do to attract more followers? How can you increase engagement and generate more conversions? These are crucial questions to answer.

2. Take Note of Your Top Posts

It’s also smart to check out what some of your top-performing posts and campaigns from the past year have been. Why? Well, it’s a good indicator of what your audience enjoys! When you learn more about what resonates with your target audience, you can replicate that success time and time again. So, analyzing your previous posts as part of your social media review is crucial. You can learn so much from this one simple task.

Determine which topics seem to garner the most attention. Find out if your audience prefers written posts with an image or if they’re more responsive to videos. This will help shape your content strategy moving forward. It’s also going to be helpful when you’re stuck for ideas.

3. Check Out the Demographics of Your Audience

Many of the built-in social media analytics share a few details about the demographics of your audience. This includes their gender, age, and location. While you might not think to look at this information often, it would be wise to do so now. You should take every chance possible to learn more about those who are consuming your content.

It’s a great opportunity to see if those following you are within your target audience. If they are, fantastic. If not, you might need to switch up your content so you can appeal to the right people. In the process, you might also learn some interesting facts about those following you.

4. Choose Which Platforms You’ll Prioritize in the New Year

The thing about social media is that it’s always changing. The hot platform this year might be replaced with something shiny and new in the year ahead. That’s why you have to be prepared to make changes to your social media strategy at a moment’s notice. So, at the end of every year, ask yourself if you’re dedicating your time to the right platforms.

Which platforms performed well for you this year? Make sure you keep them as part of your overall strategy. Which platforms didn’t do as great? You can choose to drop them or completely revamp your strategy to see if you can boost performance. And which platforms would you like to start using in the year ahead?

You don’t want to pour too much time and effort into the wrong platforms. That’s why you need to focus on what’s working and be willing to experiment with what’s trending if it’s where your audience is active. Doing this will help you see more success online, so make sure it’s part of your year-end social media review.

Related: 3 Questions to Decide Which Social Media Platforms You Should Use

5. Set Goals for the Year Ahead

Once you’ve completed the above steps, the final step of your social media review is to set goals. You don’t want to mindlessly post on social media without some sense of purpose. Otherwise, how will you know what you’re working toward? Or if your hard work is paying off?

Determine what you’d like to achieve with your social media presence in the next year. Would you like more followers or engagement? Do you want to be more consistent with posting? Are you hoping you can drive more sales through your social media platforms? Don’t be afraid to dream big here! When you have a few goals in mind, you can start mapping out how you’re going to make them happen over the course of the next year.

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