The northern hemisphere is thawing out of winter, which means it’s time to give your social media accounts a spring clean! You know what I mean: you need to do all those little things you know don’t take much time, but forget to do in the day to day. Who knows what kind of treasures you’ll find while doing so?

1. Change your passwords!

Look, I hate this as much as you do, but save yourself the heartache of a break-in by changing your passwords every so often. If you’re worried you’ll forget the new password(s), I really recommend LastPass, which saves all your passwords for you, and can also generate extra complicated ones. Try to pick different passwords for each of your social media channels.

2. Audit permissions

It’s very easy to accumulate apps, especially on twitter (but also as browser extensions for instance). Not all of them are useful, or safe, so I would suggest going through them and deleting the ones you no longer need or want.

For Twitter, click on your icon > Settings > Apps, then select ‘revoke access’ to the apps you no longer want. If you are using Chrome, click here to see your extensions.

3. Give your profiles a spruce

Have a look at your profiles on all the social media channels you use: are they consistent? Is that profile picture out of date? Does the description reflect your brand?

The dimensions for headers might have changed since you last updated them. Use a tool like Canva to make sure you keep looking current.

4. Delete unused accounts

Do you have a bunch of social media accounts lying around unused? Delete them. Having tumbleweed-filled accounts kicking around doesn’t reflect well on your business, or you. If you think they have potential, then it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get them going again.

5. Analyse

If you have access to analytics for any of your accounts or websites, then take the plunge and analyse the figures. Most social media platforms provide you with free analytics.

Using these figures, determine which platforms are working best for your business, which strategies have been the most successful, which channels give you the most traffic. It’s not necessarily a case of axing the channels that don’t work so well, but maybe also reconsidering your approach to them.

6. Spring clean your audience

This is a big one! I wrote a post about cleaning up your followers here, but you might also think about growing your audience (I’m talking to you, drawer full of business cards!) Follow up on leads, add them to your social media channels, send them an email… It’s worth putting the effort in.

All year round

Ideally, you should be doing this throughout the year, but I understand how easy it is to let these things fall by the wayside. Hopefully these tips will help you begin this new season with a spring in your step!

This post was originally published on 31 March 2015 and has now been updated.