How to Do a Social Media Marketing Audit

A social media audit is the fastest way to turn scattered posts into an intentional, high-impact strategy. Instead of guessing what works, you'll get a clear, data-backed picture of what your audience wants and where your efforts are paying off. This guide will walk you through a complete social media marketing audit, step by step, to help you refine your approach and get real results.

Step 1: Set Your Goals and Define What Success Looks Like

Before you look at a single post or profile, you need to know what you're aiming for. An audit isn't just about finding what's wrong, it's about measuring your current performance against your business objectives. Without clear goals, your data will just be a collection of numbers without meaning.

Ask yourself: What is the primary purpose of our social media marketing? Your answer will probably fall into one of these categories:

• Brand Awareness: Getting your name and message in front of new people.
• Community Engagement: Building a loyal following and fostering conversations.
• Lead Generation: Driving traffic to your website or capturing contact information.
• Sales & Conversions: Directly encouraging purchases or sign-ups.

Once you have a primary goal, attach specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to it. These are the metrics you'll use to track your progress.

Examples of Goals and Their KPIs:

• If your goal is Brand Awareness, your KPIs are: Reach, Impressions, Follower Growth Rate.
• If your goal is Community Engagement, your KPIs are: Engagement Rate (likes, comments, shares per post), Comments per Post, DMs.
• If your goal is Lead Generation, your KPIs are: Website Clicks, Landing Page Views, Email Sign-ups from Social.
• If your goal is Sales, your KPIs are: Conversion Rate, Revenue from Social Referrals.

Write these down. This framework will be the lens through which you examine every part of your social media presence.

Step 2: Take Inventory of All Your Social Profiles

You can't audit what you don't know exists. The next step is to create a master list of every social media account associated with your brand. You might be surprised by what you find - old, abandoned profiles from a past campaign or unofficial pages created by fans or former employees.

Create a simple spreadsheet with the following columns:

• Platform: (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn)
• URL: A direct link to the profile.
• Owner/Login Access: Who on your team has the credentials?
• Date of Last Activity: When was the last time a post was made?
• Stated Purpose: What is this specific channel used for? (e.g., "Hiring on LinkedIn," "Behind-the-scenes on Instagram Stories").
• Action: Keep, Optimize, or Delete?

Search each platform for your brand name and common variations to find any rogue accounts. Any profiles that are off-brand, inactive, or irrelevant should be flagged for deletion. Having a few well-maintained, active profiles is far better than having a scattered presence across ten platforms you can’t manage effectively.

Step 3: Analyze and Optimize Your Profile Presence

Your social media profile is often the first impression a potential customer has of your brand. It needs to be professional, consistent, and clear. For each of the profiles you decided to keep, perform a quick optimization check. Go through this list and evaluate each element:

• Username/Handle: Is it consistent across all platforms? Is it easy to remember and spell? If your ideal handle is taken, is your alternative logical?
• Profile Photo: Is it your high-resolution logo or a professional headshot? It should be instantly recognizable and consistent everywhere.
• Bio/Description: Does it clearly and concisely explain what you do and for whom? It should resonate with your target audience and use your brand voice.
• Call-to-Action (CTA) & Link: Is there a clear action you want visitors to take? Is your link-in-bio up-to-date and directing traffic to a valuable destination?
• Pinned Content: Are you using pinned posts on platforms like X, Facebook, and TikTok? This is prime real estate to showcase a top-performing post, current promotion, or important announcement.

Inconsistencies here can damage your brand credibility. If your X profile feels completely different from your Instagram, it creates a disconnected experience for your followers. Make notes in your audit spreadsheet of any profiles that need updating.

Step 4: Conduct a No-Holds-Barred Content Review

This is where you'll spend most of your time. Your content is the engine of your social media strategy, and this audit will help you understand what's fueling growth and what's holding you back. For each platform, look at your posts from the last 90 days.

Identify Your Top-Performing Content

Dive into your platform analytics and identify the 3-5 posts with the highest reach, engagement, or clicks. Don't just list them - analyze them. Ask why they performed so well:

• What was the format? Was it a Reel, a carousel, a Story poll, a behind-the-scenes video?
• What was the topic? Was it educational, entertaining, inspirational, or a customer story?
• What was the tone? Was it funny, serious, casual, or highly polished?
• What was the call-to-action? Did you ask a question? Did you ask for saves or shares?

You're looking for patterns. If your top five posts on Instagram are all educational Reels, that’s a massive insight into what your audience wants from you on that platform.

Identify Your Worst-Performing Content

Do the same for your bottom 3-5 posts. What do they have in common? Often, low-performing content is too salesy, low-quality visually, or completely irrelevant to the audience's interests. Be honest with yourself here. Identifying what doesn’t work is just as valuable as knowing what does.

Review Your Content Pillars and Brand Voice

Are your posts aligned with your content pillars - the core themes you talk about to position your brand? If you don’t have defined pillars, now is the time to create them based on your high-performing posts. Your brand voice should also be consistent. Do you sound like the same brand in every post, or is your tone all over the place?

Step 5: Dig Into Audience and Engagement Metrics

A large follower count doesn't mean much if it's not the right audience. Check your native analytics on each platform to get a snapshot of your follower demographics:

• Age & Gender: Do they align with your target customer persona?
• Location: Are you reaching people in the right cities or countries?
• Active Times: When is your audience most active online? This is critical for optimizing your posting schedule.

Next, look at how you engage with your audience. Healthy engagement isn't a one-way street. Review your comments sections and DMs. Are you responding to questions and feedback? How quickly? A responsive, conversational brand builds a much stronger community than one that just broadcasts content. If reply time is slow or non-existent, that's a major area for improvement.

Step 6: Size Up Your Competition (Briefly)

You don't need to do a full-blown competitive analysis, but a quick look at 2-3 of your top competitors can provide valuable context. For each competitor, look at:

• Platforms: Where are they active? Are they on a platform you’ve ignored?
• Content Strategy: What types of content are they posting? What seems to be working for them?
• Engagement: How is their audience responding? Are they getting a lot of comments and shares?

The goal isn't to copy them. It's to identify opportunities. Maybe your competitors are all posting boring, corporate content on LinkedIn, creating a perfect opening for your brand to stand out with a more human, engaging approach. Or perhaps they are getting tons of engagement on TikTok, signaling that it’s a platform your audience uses actively.

Step 7: Build Your Action Plan

An audit is pointless without action. Now, take all your findings and turn them into a clear, actionable plan for the next 90 days. Go back to your spreadsheet and fill out the "Action" column for each finding.

Your plan should be specific. Instead of "post better content," it should be "Create three educational Reels per week based on our top-performing topics of X and Y."

Here’s what a good action plan might include:

• Profile Optimization: "Update Instagram and LinkedIn bios by Friday with the new CTA."
• Content Strategy Changes: "Phase out single-image posts and focus on carousels and short-form video. Test a new 'Meet the Team' content pillar."
• Engagement Goals: "Commit to responding to all comments within 12 hours."
• New Initiatives: "Start testing TikTok with 2-3 videos per week beginning next month."

Finally, schedule your next audit. A social media audit isn’t a one-time task. Plan to repeat this process every 3-6 months to stay agile and ensure your strategy remains effective as platforms and audience behaviors change.

Final Thoughts

Conducting a social media audit moves you from reacting to creating. It provides a strategic roadmap based on what's already working, giving you the confidence to double down on your strengths and fix what isn’t hitting the mark. This structured process is your key to unlocking sustainable growth.

Once you’ve built your new plan, consistent execution is everything. Trying to juggle multiple platforms, especially with a renewed focus on video, can feel overwhelming with tools that were built for an older era of social media. At Postbase, we designed a simple, modern platform specifically for today’s content formats. You can use our visual calendar to map out your shiny new strategy, schedule your short-form videos across all platforms from one place, and use our unified inbox to stay on top of those critical community conversations you've committed to improving. It’s built to make executing your audit's action plan feel effortless, not like a chore.