Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Bluesky, Mastodon, the platform formerly known as Twitter—there are more social media platforms to keep up with than ever.Â
The problem (and the benefit) is that each has its own distinct value for its own distinct audience, so you can't overlook any of them. That also means you can't phone in the same tactics for every platform and expect the same results.
A social media audit shows you whether you're getting the most value out of every social channel available. It also gives you the validation you need to stop trying to make things work on the ones that don't (looking at you, corporate cringe TikTok dance trend posters).Â
Don't know where to start? I put together a social media audit template to help you analyze your social presence across channels.
Table of contents:
Social media audit template
The first sheet serves as a summary overview of your social presence as a whole. The second sheet is its own template for individual social profiles—just click the caret next to Platform 1, and hit Duplicate to create a new one, then rename each sheet for the outlets of your choice.
How to use the social media audit template
The summary sheet should be pretty self-explanatory—just fill in each cell with the information you have. You can delete columns for platforms you don't use, rename ones you don't use, or copy/insert the Etc. column and rename it for additional platforms.
The platform-specific sheet is a bit more nuanced (and should be easier to fill out if you automate social media monitoring), so let's walk through it.
General overview: This row repeats essential account-level details from the summary sheet.
Priority KPIs + benchmarking: For each of the KPI placeholders, enter the KPI of your choice. These should be listed in the first sheet as well and can include things like likes, shares, followers, CTR, and conversions. In the Performance column next to the KPI, list the number associated with that KPI. For example, next to a KPI for CTR, you could put "4%" if your posts receive clicks on 4% of impressions.
Performance summary: This one will require a bit of legwork in counting up. Tally up the number of likes and shares for your last 30 posts combined, and it'll show you the average engagement per post. Then, count how many times someone has posted to the account in the last 90 days, and it'll give you a post-per-week rate over the last three months. For the KPI columns, hyperlink to the posts that perform best for your priority KPIs, noting the performance metric.
Audience overview: Here you'll need to lean on the native analytics dashboard or your third-party social media management tool to find breakdowns of your followers and their engagement patterns.
Competitor analysis: List a competitor post that can compare to your priority KPIs, note the performance number, and tally up the gap between their performance and your top posts' performance for those KPIs.
Cost analysis + ROI estimator: This one's got a bunch of preset formulas. This may not be applicable to all social media auditors, but if you're able to get estimates on costs, time spent on platforms, conversion rates, and conversion value, you can get a handy figure showing you what each platform is worth in real dollar amounts.
What a social media audit can tell you
You could keep running your social media campaigns the same way forever and just hope for the best—or you could run a social media audit and know how your campaigns are performing.Â
Put simply, a social media audit clues you into the strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns while identifying opportunities for growth. Less simply, that means helping you:
Identify the platforms giving you the greatest ROI
Align with the expectations of your audiences
Learn which types of posts are successful
See how your platform aligns with company goals
Gain real metrics for engagement
Find new opportunities for increasing reach
Establish performance benchmarks for scalable analysis
Measure brand reputation
Develop data-driven, actionable plans for social posting
All the above benefits help you optimize your efforts by dedicating more of your resources to the platforms and tactics that are most likely to hit your KPIs.
How to do a social media audit: 7 steps
If you've already downloaded the audit template above, you could just… do that.
If you've already downloaded the audit template above but still want a general overview of the social media audit process, that's cool too. Here's a higher-level breakdown of how to dig deep enough to find the untapped potential of your social media presence.
1. Establish KPIs
Quick question: how do you know if a campaign is successful?Â
Quick answer: you don't if you don't know what outcomes you're looking for.
Establishing sales-focused KPIs (key performance indicators) from the outset gives you a specific metric for gauging success. Social campaigns are inherently subjective, so setting up a measurement of success lets you turn otherwise uninspiring data into actionable takeaways that relate to your brand's goals.
Below, I'll list the kinds of KPIs you might try to make your social platforms live up to (by category). Note that the terminology might vary a bit by platform, but the concepts are pretty universal.
Market potential metrics
Impressions: Number of times your content was displayed to users
Reach: Total number of unique users who saw your content
Followers: Total number of accounts that subscribe to your feed
Follower growth rate: Rate of follower increase over a specific period
Engagement metrics
Likes: How many times your posts have received a "like"
Comments: Number of comments on your posts
Shares: Number of times someone shared your content
Engagement rate: Total engagement (across engagement types) divided by impressions
Conversion metrics
Click-through rate (CTR): Percentage of users who clicked on a link in your post
Qualified lead generation: Number of visitors who converted on a splash page after arriving from a link in a social media post
Conversion rate: Percentage of website visitors coming from social media who completed a desired action (e.g., purchase, signup, contact, or download)
Return on investment (ROI): Revenue generated from social media efforts compared to costs associated with lead generation and campaign execution
Cost per acquisition (CPA): Cost of acquiring a new customer through social media
Customer satisfaction metrics
Customer sentiment: Analysis of customer feedback and opinions
Social media mentions: How often your account is tagged or your brand is named by users
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measurement of customer loyalty and likelihood of recommending your brand on social media
2. Round up your social media platforms
To step forward, you've got to know where you stand. (Feel free to quote me on that.)Â
This is the core of where the social media audit template comes in, as it gives you a structured, visually simplified way to list key details and metrics for all your active social media accounts. So even if you decide not to use it, you'll still need some kind of log to keep your accounts organized.
Once you've got all your accounts rounded up into one single document, you'll want to list out all relevant essential information about them as well as performance metrics that can map back to your KPIs (if you're DIYing, Zapier has a guide for tracking those, too).
Here, you can compile basic descriptive information like this to give you a top-level overview of the status of your various accounts:
Handles or account names
Bios or profile descriptions
Summary descriptions of profile photos, backgrounds, and banners
Verification status
CTAs, landing page links, and noted contact information
Any listed branded hashtags
Who's responsible for the account
3. Review performance metrics for each platform
Whether through each platform's built-in analytics dashboards or more nuanced third-party applications, you'll want to do a deep dive into how your past campaigns have performed.
These initial account performance metrics should show the general state of each platform as well as performance snapshots that help you compare them—both to your other platforms and to your competition's campaigns. Here are some metrics to start with in your audit:
Your own targeted priority KPIs
Benchmarks of KPIs over the previous three years
Total number of followers
Dates of your three most recent posts
Number of posts per week over the past three months
Top posts by shares, comments, and likes
Costs associated with executing content
4. Keep an eye on your competitors
To help set benchmarks, it's useful to see how your realistic market competitors' profiles are performing. These competitors could fall into either of two camps.
Content competitors | Direct competitors |
|---|---|
These don't necessarily compete in your market, but their profiles model the types of campaigns you want to execute. | These are the brands your products or services compete against. Their campaigns could be totally different from yours, but they're attempting to reach the same general market. |
In both cases, you can perform a competitor analysis that programmatically lists all relevant internal information and performance insights noted in the sections above.Â
For example, you could identify three to five content and industry competitors and list their handles, bios, CTAs, and commonly used hashtags to start. From there, you could identify their posting frequency, followers, and typical engagement statistics.
5. Check for brand consistency and accuracy
As any coach, trainer, or therapist will tell you about pretty much anything, consistency is key. That's especially true for the way you present your brand.
Your brand should look the same, feel the same, sound the same, and be described the same way in each of your profiles. Otherwise, users could be confused about your brand tone, the products you offer, or how to engage with the company. Plus, it just looks sloppy if you have an outdated logo on one profile, a broken link in another, and different brand descriptions across accounts.
I could list out common points of inconsistency to look into across each of your accounts, but instead, I'll refer you back to the core information list you did for your audit. From profile images to handles to contact information, all of those elements should be as close to the same as possible on every profile.
6. Identify your audiences
If you've ever jumped from TikTok to Facebook to LinkedIn in a single sitting, you've probably noticed at least a slight difference in the types of people who post on each. Even if you just think about the platforms you use personally, you probably go to different platforms for different reasons.
That's all to say that what you post—and how you post—on one platform may not work on another. Users on X, for example, are probably expecting quick, informal, less developed content from people and brands they follow, while Facebook users may be more interested in photos and longer-form content from people they know personally.
As part of your internal audits and competitive analyses, you should also be logging user characteristics for each platform to find clues on how to engage with them better. Here are some to look for:
Demographics: Look for identifying elements like age, gender, location, and language preferences.
Content preferences: Compare the types of content that get the most engagement on each platform.
Engagement patterns: Analyze when each audience is most active and what kind of content they engage with.
Platform usage: Determine which platforms your target audience primarily uses—you may be on Instagram, for example, but your target demo may be more active on TikTok.
Hashtags: Analyze the hashtags your audience uses and engages with.
7. Apply what you learn
Once you've effectively finished your social media audit, your next step should be using what you learned to identify opportunities and create actionable, specific plans. If you have any internal frameworks for goal-setting (looking at you, SMART goals), you can apply those here as well.
These goals don't have to be set in stone at this point, but your audit is a good place to record brief notes based on early analyses that you can expand into fully formed campaign concepts later. Again, if it helps, you can also apply internal analytical frameworks like SWOT analyses.
As you review your audit, look to turn learning opportunities like these into next steps:
Learnings from competitor performance
Posting frequency insights
Missed engagement opportunities
User engagement patterns
Notably successful posts
Strengths and weaknesses by platform
Gaps between your performance and your competitors'
Social media audit checklist
If a template isn't your game, you can also dive right into your analysis a bit more cavalierly with this social media audit checklist. It's basically a single document distilling everything I just painstakingly wrote out in the 1,300+ words above into a single handy list. (Who said writing was a dying art?)
Remember that even the most intrepid cavaliers (probably) used checklists to keep their own missions organized, and you should follow suit. But an audit doesn't do much good if it doesn't show progress or lead to action. Remember to log your audits and keep performing them regularly to keep your profiles in line, and record your learnings to turn those observations into campaigns.
Automate your social media audit tools
As you fill out your social media audit template, you can use the native reporting dashboards for each platform, but there's a good chance you'll also use third-party tools and social media AI apps for help with tasks like scheduling, writing, and reporting.Â
Generally, most platforms' native reporting features should be plenty useful for performing an audit. But no matter which tools you use to build your social media presence, automation can help you get bigger gains faster.
No-code automation from Zapier can connect social platforms and social media management tools to thousands of other apps to help you build out smarter, more effective workflows that help you meet your social media goals. Social media automation can handle tasks like sharing WordPress posts on your Facebook page, emailing you with new Reddit mentions, uploading Instagram content to YouTube, and logging Hootsuite messages as Sheets rows. Here are a few examples to show you how it works.
Log new Hootsuite outbound messages as rows in a Google Sheets spreadsheet
Zapier is a no-code automation tool that lets you connect your apps into automated workflows, so that every person and every business can move forward at growth speed. Learn more about how it works.
Social media audit FAQ
What is a social media audit?
A social media audit is a systematic process of logging essential details and performance metrics for all of a brand's social media accounts. These can be used to determine the value of individual social outlets, assess performance, and optimize future campaigns.
How do you structure a social media audit?
You can structure a social media audit on two levels: a brand-wide summary of all the social media platforms you use and an individual assessment of how each of your profiles is performing. Scroll up for templates for both parts of an audit.
How do you perform a social media audit?
To perform a social media audit, list all the outlets you use, analyze their performance and consistency, perform a competitor analysis, assess your audiences, and turn what you learn into campaigns that align with key KPIs. You could also read the rest of this very article.
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