A Five-Step Strategy for Spring Cleaning Your Social Media Accounts

As the calendar flips towards spring, it's time to embrace a season of renewal not just in our personal lives but also in our professional ventures. Just as we spring clean our homes, our digital presence too, requires a thorough cleanse, especially for entrepreneurs and businesses. Caught in the daily hustle, the weekly and monthly planning, sometime we forget to set aside some time to reassess everything, to brainstorm new ideas or just to clean the list of followers/following. If you don’t have a social media manager to do this for your business, then all the social media tasks are falling on your head, and we all know how much time they take – time that you have to take away from actually working on the business itself. Why add more to it and do a social media spring cleaning, you ask? 

Regular maintenance ensures your digital presence remains fresh, relevant and engaging, and perfectly aligns with your overall business objectives. A neglected social media account can lead to a stagnant follower count, decreased engagement, and a diluted brand image. Moreover, an unoptimised social media strategy can consume valuable resources without delivering expected results. A well-maintained social media presence can bolster your business image, deepen customer relationships.

There are many steps to take for a social media spring cleaning, but I will only take you through five of them, the ones that will make the quickest impact on your account. Let's delve into the steps to revitalise your social media accounts this season.

Step 1: Audit Your Accounts and Content - The Groundwork

Start by listing all your social media accounts along with relevant statistics such as follower count, engagement rate, and post performance. For this, you can use the built-in analytics tools each platform offers or invest in third-party tools that provide detailed reports. This overview helps paint a clear picture of your current situation and sets the foundation for future strategy. 

Four key metrics to track are:

• Impressions: How many times a post shows up in someone’s timeline.
• Reach: The number of users who see your content, even if they see your content multiple times. 
• Engagement: The number of likes, comments and shares on your content.
• Engagement rate: The number of engagements divided by impressions or reach. The higher the engagement rate, the more likely it is that audiences find the post interesting or relevant.

Look at your content for the past few months and see what worked best and what didn’t. Is your audience more aligned with infographics? Do they engage more with videos? Check for outdated, irrelevant or low-performing content and archive it or delete it. 

Dedicated time: up to two hours.

Step 2: Refine Your Branding - Consistency is Key

Next up is a deep dive into your branding. Consistency across platforms reinforces your brand identity. 

• Check if your logo matches on all platforms.
• Take some time to review your business’s profile information, including your bio, contact information, and website links. It’s time to re-write the descriptions, update any relevant information like opening times, address. Refresh your profile photos or cover photos, if necessary. Are you using a Linktree? Refresh the links or reorganise them.
• Check your highlights (on Instagram), featured and pinned posts (Facebook and LinkedIn). Are they still relevant? Make the necessary changes.
• Go through your visuals (you should have a folder with images to use on social media – be it photos taken for you by a photographer or stock photography). Archive the ones that have been used too many times, are not relevant anymore or are not aligned with your brand. Add new photos to the folder. 

Dedicated time: up to 4-5 hours.

Actionable Tip: If you haven’t already, develop a brand style guide outlining your logos, colour palette, fonts and language tone. Refer to this document to ensure brand consistency.

Step 3: Review Your Connections - Quality Over Quantity 

Spring cleaning involves my favourite thing: decluttering - and this extends to your connections too. Go through your followings. Unfollow inactive or irrelevant accounts and replace them with industry leaders, potential partners or influencers. While it may seem counterintuitive, refining your connections to align with your business objectives can lead to more meaningful interactions. 
Go through your followers as well: get rid of those fake, spammy accounts. Removing them will help improve your engagement and make sure you are reaching the right audience. You might ask me why you should remove them, when that will make your following go down? Well, think about this: most social networks show your posts to about 10%of your audience. If half of these accounts are fake accounts, then your content will reach only 5% of relevant audience. So it’s better to have less followers, but the right ones, than have fake or irrelevant ones that will take no action on your offers.

Dedicated time: 1-2 hours. 

Step 4: Update Your Content Strategy - Keep it Fresh 

This spring, it's time to rejuvenate your content strategy. Make sure you are posting content that aligns with the latest trends and audience preferences. Is it time to post more videos or rely more on storytelling? Is your audience not responding well to infographics? The goal is to find a balance between what your audience enjoys and the new ways you can engage them.

If you have a posting routine, think about ways to refresh it. Everyone loves change and you don’t want your followers to get bored by seeing the same content week after week. Follow industry leaders and marketing experts, attend webinars, stay current on latest trends and let yourself be inspired by others. By staying current and relevant, you not only retain your existing follower base but also attract new ones - a sign of a healthy and growing social media presence.

Dedicated time: 1-2 hours.

Step 5: Plan Ahead - Update Your Content Calendar

Or create it, if you don’t have one. I said it before and I will keep saying it: a content calendar will save you a lot of time in the long run. Start with two weeks, if a month is too much for you. Based on the information you got at the Step 1, decide what and when you will post. You don’t have to write the posts right now, but mark them in the calendar as ideas. For now, just brainstorm ideas, look for inspiration, evaluate (objectively) how much time you have to prepare them and decide on the frequency that you are sure you can keep up with. It’s easy to get ahead of yourself when doing this, but there is no point in adding five posts each week when you know you only have time for three.

When choosing ideas, pick the ones that will make the most impact and will be of the most interest for your audience. Avoid “empty” posts, fillers; there is already too much content out there for anyone to go through. Make sure you provide value and also promote your business from time to time. 
Then you will set another block of time in your calendar to prepare those posts (write, film, take photos etc). 

Dedicated time: depending on how long you’ll spend researching and brainstorming, but take at least 2 hours for this. 

This looks like a lot of work (and it is), but you don’t have to do it all at once. Start next week and do one step a week, and by the end of March, you are all set! Your social media accounts will be refreshed and set for success, and you will feel better once you’ve accomplished these tasks. If you have any questions or you need guidance, you can always contact me!