How to Run a Social Media Audit in 8 Steps (+ Free Template)

Have you ever wondered if your social efforts are driving results?

Imagine this: You’ve spent tens of hours crafting posts, scheduling them across platforms, and engaging with your audience. But despite all that effort, you’re not getting views and likes. Sound familiar?

That’s where a social media audit comes in. Think of it as a health check for your social media strategy. It helps you analyze how your social media is performing, understand which platforms are delivering, and spot opportunities for improvement. Are your posts reaching the right people? Is your engagement where it should be? Auditing your social media uncovers all the answers.

By diving into key social media metrics, you’ll finally know what’s working, what’s falling flat, and where to focus your efforts.

Ready to stop guessing and start growing?

Let’s break down how to conduct a powerful audit that sets your strategy on the right path.

What is a Social Media Audit?

A social media audit is a holistic evaluation of your brand’s social media performance. It involves analyzing your social media accounts, content, engagement, and overall strategy to determine what’s working and what’s not.

During an audit, you’ll review key metrics like follower growth, engagement rates, and content performance across different platforms. The goal is to identify areas where you’re excelling and pinpoint where you need to restrategize.

It’s your roadmap to a stronger, more effective social media strategy. By conducting regular audits, you can stay ahead of trends, refine your approach, and ensure you’re making the most out of your social media presence.

What You Need to Do a Social Media Audit

You know what auditing means, but why should you make this a regular process in your marketing journey??

A social media audit isn’t just about gathering data; it’s about solving real problems. An audit reveals a lot of underlying data and helps you identify the bigger picture.

Here’s how it addresses key pain points you may be facing:

• Lack of Direction: Auditing gives you a clear understanding of what’s working, so you can focus on strategies that drive real results.
• Wasted Resources: Stop spending time and money on platforms or tactics that don’t align with your goals. An audit shows you where to cut back or double down.
• Low Engagement: Identify which content resonates with your audience and optimize your strategy for better interaction and reach.
• Missed Opportunities: Find gaps in your strategy, whether it’s a platform you’re underutilizing or an untapped audience segment.
• Inconsistent Branding: Audits ensure your brand voice and messaging stay consistent across all platforms, creating a cohesive experience for your loyal followers.
• Unclear ROI: The audit brings up hard data for you to measure success and prove the value of your social media efforts to stakeholders.

Regular audits put you in control, making it easier to adjust and improve as you go. Ready to start?

How To Conduct a Social Media Audit: 8 Steps

Regardless of the nature of your or your client’s business, the audit process shared below will work for you. As you embark on your first audit, you’ll likely go through the ensuing steps.

Download our social media audit template to facilitate a smooth auditing experience. Use it to document the information articulated in each step, ensuring a cohesive and comprehensive auditing process.

While our audit template has all the essential metrics, we understand that every audit may have unique objectives. That’s why we’ve included customizable sections, enabling you to integrate metrics that align with your needs.

Step 1: Define Your Goals and Establish KPIs

The first and foremost step in conducting an audit is defining your goals and KPIs. Conducting an audit without clear social media goals is akin to driving a car through a pitch-black freeway without headlights.

By setting appropriate goals for each platform, identifying and assessing relevant KPIs in your audit becomes easier. It’s crucial to remember that different social channels warrant different goals.

Whether you’re increasing your follower count, boosting conversions, or fostering a community, having well-defined goals will effectively guide the direction of your audit.

Here are some of the common goals:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Driving website traffic
• Generating leads
• Building community
• Enhancing customer service

Ensure you set SMART goals, i.e., Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. This framework helps you build a laser-focused strategy and increases your chances of achieving your goals.

After clearly outlining your goals, pinpointing the relevant key metrics to monitor in your audit becomes more straightforward. For instance, if one of your objectives is to increase engagement on Facebook, tracking KPIs like engagement rate, comments, likes, and shares is essential.

Here are some of the standard social metrics to include in your audit:

• Engagement metrics
• Publishing frequency
• Audience demographics
• Referral traffic

Refer to the KPIs table included in our social media audit template; input the relevant figures.

Here’s something you should also remember:

The primary objective of your inaugural audit is to examine the existing state of your social media presence and establish a benchmark for subsequent audits. Therefore, your audit must showcase the month, quarter, or year-over-year percentage change of different KPIs.

Why?

• Timely tracking will allow you to spot regular seasonal changes
• It gives you a better picture of growth with time
• Helps in making timely changes

Step 2: Make a List of Your Social Media Accounts

Once you know your goals and KPIs, begin by assembling all the social media profiles under your name in a Spreadsheet. Does this seem rudimentary? Yes. But…

You will be well aware of all your social media profiles. This crucial step ensures that no inactive profiles, created and forgotten long ago, are overlooked.

You might also uncover unofficial accounts representing your brand created by affiliates or impostors. Identifying and closing these is essential. If you struggle to access those accounts, find out if your other team members, ex-members, or your clients might have access.

The goal here is to consolidate a comprehensive list of all your social profiles in one location, enabling efficient supervision and exploring new or missing opportunities on any channel.

Therefore, prepare to thoroughly search for your brand name on Google and every other social media network. Whether conducting an Instagram audit or taking stock of your Facebook pages, every network is important.

Step 3: Establish Benchmark

A benchmark is a standard or point of reference against which you compare your current performance. In the context of social media audit, a benchmark is a set of performance metrics that serve as a baseline to measure the effectiveness and success of your social media efforts.

Benchmarks help you understand how your current performance stacks up against your historical performance, industry standards, and competitors.

Here’s how you can establish benchmarks effectively:

• Gather your historical data – Collect your past data from social media platforms using their native analytics tools (e.g., Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, or Instagram Insights). To make data collection streamlined and smooth, you can use social media analytics tools like SocialPilot to gather data from all your accounts in one place and export it in a PDF.
• Understand industry standards – Research benchmarks specific to your industry to see how your performance compares to typical standards within your niche.
• Track competitors – Review your direct competitors’ performance, engagement rates, follower counts, content types, and posting frequency.

Step 4: Find out the Performance of Individual Channels

It’s time to analyze each social media channel’s performance individually to determine which platforms are driving the most value for your business and which may need your attention or a revised strategy.

Some of the common metrics across social media include engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares, retweets, and overall engagement rates), reach and impressions, follower growth, CTR, and conversion rates.

To find out the performance of each channel, you can consider these questions:

• How much traffic are we driving to our website from this social media platform?
• Is the platform helping you meet your business goals?
• How do these KPIs align with our business objectives?
• How do these rates compare to industry benchmarks?
• Are there platforms where we should increase our efforts or reconsider our strategy based on performance?

Based on these metrics, analyze which platforms are the gold mine for your business. By comprehending these numbers, you can discover new opportunities.

For example, if the analysis shows a major spike in Reddit traffic, maybe you should allocate a resource and consider revising your Reddit marketing strategy.

Step 5: Assess the Best Performing Content

Breaking down your marketing efforts and identifying which channels are meeting your business goals is fundamental.

The core objective of a social media audit is to create content that brings value to your customers and returns to your investments. Hence, it’s crucial to discern which content types already garner positive reviews and then intensify your focus on those.

Ask yourself, what is your audience gravitating towards? Are they educational videos, reels, polls, Q&A videos, chats, or memes?

Another way to put it – which posts are helping you achieve your social media goals?

To answer these questions, delve deeply into your analytics to determine which social media posts achieve the highest engagement, impressions, and reach. If you’re looking for a more streamlined approach, use SocialPilot to view your best-performing posts and the most effective hashtags for multiple accounts in one place.

Step 6: Dig into Audience Data

The chances of your content getting viral largely depend on how relevant it is to your target audience. So, when compiling your social media audit report, dedicate a section to audience analysis across platforms.

This part of the audit report should include demographics like age, gender, location, interests, and when they are most active. This data will help you tailor your content and publishing schedule based on your audience’s needs and preferences.

Start by digging into the audience data of all your social media accounts and understand who your audience is. Pay attention to things like age, location, interests, and how they engage with your content—including their reviews on social platforms. This helps you tailor your strategy and messaging to match what your real audience cares about.

Here are some key areas to focus on:

• Demographics: Look for age, gender, location, language, and occupation.
• Psychographics: What are their interests, hobbies, lifestyle choices, and beliefs?
• Behavioral insights: What type of content does the audience engage with? Are they interested in TikTok videos, Reels, or Twitter threads?

With all this information, you can create a winning social media content calendar with high-performing content.

Step 7: Analyze the Audit Using SWOT Analysis

Now that your audit report has ample data, it’s time to break it down into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

Identify key strengths and weaknesses in your social media strategy and find opportunities and threats in the market. The goal is to find gaps and opportunities and use them to create an actionable plan.

Here is how you can conduct a SWOT analysis:

• Strengths: Identify the strong points of your social media presence, such as high engagement rates or a well-established brand voice.
• Weaknesses: Recognize the areas that need improvement or are lacking, like inconsistent posting or low follower count.
• Opportunities: Explore potential areas for growth and development, such as new social media platforms or untapped audience segments.
• Threats: Determine external factors that could pose challenges, like competitors or changes in platform algorithms.

Step 8: Prepare Action Items and Update Strategy

Once you’ve collected the data, it’s time to revise your marketing strategy and plan actions to achieve your social media goals. This step is crucial to ensuring that the insights you worked hard to collect are translated into practical actions and enhance your social media presence to achieve your goals.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to streamline the process of listing action items and updating your strategy:

• Which social media platforms are delivering the best results for us and why?
• What type of content is performing best, and how can we create more of it?
• When is our audience most active, and how can we adjust our posting schedule for maximum engagement?
• What are the most significant strengths identified in our social media audit?
• What weaknesses need immediate attention and improvement?
• What new metrics or KPIs should we track to ensure our updated strategy works?

By addressing these questions, you can ensure your updated strategy is effective and aligns with your business goals.

What about the results?

Reflecting on the results of your actions might take time based on how you execute them and several other factors. Thats why running audits on a regular basis is crucial to optimize your strategy for better results.

Your audits can be as thorough and extensive as you want and include paid advertisements as well.

Wait, you don’t need to scratch your head off; we have created an extensive audit template to do the heavy lifting for you.

Examples of Successful Social Media Audits

Audits are a great way to evaluate your social media presence and performance and identify areas for improvement. However, knowing how to do a social media audit is important to assess all metrics carefully and in a staged manner.

To showcase how you can run a comprehensive audit, let’s illustrate with a practical example. We will conduct a hypothetical social media audit for “EcoTech Solutions,” a company that specializes in eco-friendly technology products.

We’ll conduct an audit focusing on their primary platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Goals and Established KPIs

We have defined our social media goals and KPIs based on our business goals. Here are the following:

• Goal 1: Increase brand awareness
• KPI: Number of impressions and reach
• Goal 2: Boost engagement
• KPI: Engagement rate (likes, comments, shares)
• Goal 3: Drive website traffic
• KPI: Click-through rate (CTR) and referral traffic

List of Social Media Accounts

• Facebook: facebook.com/EcoTechSolutions
• Instagram: instagram.com/EcoTechSolutions
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/EcoTechSolutions

Our Benchmark Scores

Following are some of the benchmarks based on the industry, competitors, and our past data:

Facebook:

•  Average engagement rate: 4%
•  Average reach per post: 1,000

Instagram:

• Average engagement rate: 5%
• Average impressions per post: 1,200

LinkedIn:

• Average engagement rate: 3%
• Average impressions per post: 800

Tools Used: Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, LinkedIn Analytics, Google Analytics

Performance Data of Social Media Accounts

Here is the performance data of our social media accounts:

Facebook:

• Followers: 10,000
• Average Engagement Rate: 3.5%
• Average Reach per Post: 900
• Top-Performing Content: Videos

Instagram:

• Followers: 8,000
• Average Engagement Rate: 6%
• Average Impressions per Post: 1,500
• Top-Performing Content: User-generated content (UGC)

LinkedIn:

• Followers: 5,000
• Average Engagement Rate: 2.5%
• Average Impressions per Post: 700

Best Performing Content

We reviewed our best-performing posts, and here is what we found out:

• Facebook: Real-life product use case videos received the highest engagement.
• Instagram: User-generated content (UGC) and behind-the-scenes Reels got the most impressions and engagement.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn posts about industry trends and company achievements had the highest engagement rates.

Our Audience Data

Following is the data of our audience:

Facebook:

• Demographics: 60% male, 40% female; Age: 25-45
• Active Times: 7-9 PM

Instagram:

• Demographics: 55% female, 45% male; Age: 18-35
• Active Times: 6-8 PM

LinkedIn:

• Demographics: 70% male, 30% female; Age: 30-50
• Active Times: 8-10 AM

Doing SWOT Analysis

After going through all the audit analysis, we found out these:

Strengths:

• Very good engagement on Instagram
• High-quality video content on Facebook
• Industry leader on LinkedIn

Weaknesses:

• Less engagement rate on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Inconsistent posting schedule
• Limited use of paid ads

Opportunities:

• Increase the use of videos across all platforms
• Utilize user-generated content more on Instagram
• Use LinkedIn for B2B marketing and partnerships

Threats:

• Competitors have higher social media engagement rates
• Changes in social media algorithms
• Emerging social media platforms

Listing Action Items and Updating Strategy

Action Items

Increase Video Content:

• Responsible: Social Media Manager
• Deadline: Ongoing
• Resources: Video production team, budget for video ads

Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC) on Instagram:

• Responsible: Content Creator
• Deadline: Monthly
• Resources: Collaboration with customers and influencers

Optimize Posting Schedule:

• Responsible: Social Media Analyst
• Deadline: One month
• Resources: Social media scheduling tools

Launch Paid Ad Campaigns:

• Responsible: Digital Marketing Specialist
• Deadline: Next quarter
• Resources: Budget allocation, ad creative team

Enhance LinkedIn Engagement:

• Responsible: Content Strategist
• Deadline: Two months
• Resources: Industry news sources, internal content

Next Steps

• Monitor Progress: Review the performance metrics bi-weekly to ensure the action items are being effectively implemented.
• Update Strategy: Make necessary adjustments based on ongoing performance data and feedback.
• Regular Audits: Schedule regular social media audits every six months to stay updated and continuously improve the strategy.

By following these steps and leveraging the insights gained from this audit, EcoTech Solutions boosted its social media presence and achieved its business objectives effectively.

Additionally, to run a comprehensive audit, you require tools to extract data and compile it to craft strategies. We have compiled a list of some tools you can use for a successful audit.

Best for:

Star Rating:

4.5/5 (G2), and 4.4/5 (Capterra).

Apps:

Android and iOS Mobile App and Web Version.

Social Media Platforms Supported:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, Google Business Profile, Threads, TikTok, Pinterest, and Bluesky..

About SocialPilot:

SocialPilot is a social media management tool that provides an extensive look into your social media analytics for an effective auditing process. Whether you’re handling your own social media audit or your clients, this tool helps you track down all the important metrics across channels from one centralized dashboard.

Connect your accounts, and the tool will start pulling data for you. You can see your posts’ likes, comments, shares, and engagement rates. Find out how many new followers you got in a particular period of time, what type of content is rocking for you, and which accounts are the lead performers.

Data charts and visual graphs make it easier to understand and communicate the data. The advanced reports feature also allows you to merge reports from different channels into a single downloadable PDF that you can schedule for sharing with just one click.

SocialPilot Pricing:

SocialPilot offers a 14-day free trial and access to all premium features (no credit card required & cancel any time). Choose a plan that fits your needs.

Overall Verdict:

SocialPilot offers comprehensive insights into your overall social media performance. You can dive into tracking the performance of your individual pages and posts without any hiccups.

Additionally, the platforms offer branded and customizable reporting, which is ideal for agencies that want to make their own mark.

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Best for:

Star Rating:

4.3/5 (G2), and 4.3/5 (Capterra).

Apps:

Web Version

Social Media Platforms Supported:

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Our Experience:

Talkwater is a renowned social media monitoring platform that is best suited for large enterprises. It offers extensive listening, benchmarking, monitoring, and audience insights functionalities. This AI-powered tool uses NLP and Generative AI to help businesses enrich and categorize data quickly to produce actionable insights.

Businesses use this tool in their auditing process to analyze engagements, track brand mentions, sentiments, reach, top social media posts, and more. You can use Talkwater to compare your social media performance against your competitors or the industry and identify what part of your strategy is working and what is not.

Pricing Plans:

Overall Verdict:

We found this tool ideal for enterprises seeking comprehensive reports across all social media profiles, with the ability to monitor conversations from over 150 million data sources to enhance marketing strategies. However, users face challenges with the interface and steep learning curve, and the lack of pricing transparency requires reaching out to the team for negotiation.

Best for:

Star Rating:

4.5/5 (G2), and 4.4/5 (Capterra).

Apps:

Android and iOS Mobile App and Web Version.

Social Media Platforms Supported:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, Threads, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Our Experience:

SproutSocial is a robust social media tool that helps businesses audit their social media accounts and track what part of their strategy works and where it needs to be updated. The tool lets you analyze metrics such as engagement rates, audience growth, reach, conversions, post-performance, and more.

During our analysis, we found that its competitor’s analytics collect and compare data from your competitors to monitor their progress and benchmark progress. You can also track how your paid advertising campaigns are performing on social media. The tool supports Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok, Threads, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Pricing Plans:

Overall Verdict:

From our experience, the tool offers extensive social media analytics capabilities and is very suitable for enterprises. Even though the pricing is on the higher side and there is some lack of active customer support, the tool is well-suited for enterprise businesses that want comprehensive analytics features, paid analytics, and access to competitor analysis.

Best for:

Star Rating:

4.1/5 (G2), and 4.3/5 (Capteera)

Apps:

Mobile and Web Version

Social Media Platforms Supported:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more

Our Experience:

Brandwatch is a comprehensive social media audit tool combining customer intelligence, social media management, and influencer marketing. It uses sentiment analysis to assess brand reputation and provides real-time analytics on engagement rates, share of voice, and audience demographics. Businesses can compare performance with competitors and uncover areas for improvement to refine their social media strategies effectively.

Pricing Plans:

Overall Verdict:

Brandwatch is a powerful social media auditing tool, offering advanced analytics, social listening, and data-driven reports, making it ideal for businesses seeking deep insights. Although it’s on the higher pricing side, its extensive features and support make it worth the investment; however, exploring Brandwatch alternatives may help find tools better suited to specific needs and budgets.

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Best for:

Star Rating:

4.2/5 (G2), and 4.4/5 (Capterra)

Apps:

Android, iOS, and Web Version

Social Media Platforms Supported:

Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube

Our Experience:

Hootsuite is a popular social media management tool that helps businesses schedule posts and access comprehensive analytics across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It lets you track key metrics such as engagement, follower growth, and post-performance while offering competitor insights.

Its customizable reports and collaboration features make it ideal for businesses looking to manage and audit social media effectively.

Pricing Plans:

Overall Verdict:

Hootsuite is a solid choice for auditing social media, offering essential features and ease of use to optimize strategies. While its high pricing and lack of specialized features may not suit all, it’s ideal for large-sized businesses and Enterprises.

Now that you’re equipped with the tools to audit your social media, it’s time to make the process even easier. Our free Social Media Audit Checklist will guide you through each step, ensuring you don’t miss any crucial details. Let’s dive into the checklist and get your strategy on track!

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Free Social Media Audit Checklist

Are you ready to take control of your social media strategy? Streamline your audit process with our free checklist! This simple, step-by-step guide will help you evaluate your accounts, identify key insights, and optimize your strategy for better results.

Ready to Audit Your Social Media Profiles?

Elevating your brand’s social media presence hinges on a strategy informed by rich, actionable data.

A social media audit checklist is your gateway to such invaluable insights, enabling you to refine and optimize your approach across various platforms. The steps provided are your roadmap to conducting a comprehensive audit, ensuring your strategies are always aligned with the dynamic digital landscape.

Remember, regular audits are key to staying ahead. They allow you to seize new opportunities and address any setbacks promptly.

And, when you’re ready to implement your audited strategies, tools like SocialPilot are your allies in seamless growth, offering unmatched scheduling, analytics, and collaboration features.

Dive in with a free trial to experience the transformative impact of SocialPilot on your social media endeavors!