How to Run an Instagram Audit

Feeling like your Instagram growth has flatlined, or that you're just posting into the void? An Instagram audit is the single best way to figure out what's working, ditch what isn't, and build a strategy that actually moves you closer to your goals. This guide breaks down every step of a thorough Instagram audit, giving you an actionable checklist you can follow to refresh your presence and grow with intention.

Step 1: Define Your Goals and Review Your Profile Basics

Before you look at a single post's performance, you need to know what you're trying to achieve. An audit is most effective when it measures your efforts against a clear set of goals. Why are you on Instagram in the first place? Are you trying to:

• Increase brand awareness?
• Drive traffic to your website or blog?
• Generate leads and sales?
• Build a dedicated community around your brand?
• Position yourself as an authority in your niche?

Pick one or two primary goals. Everything you review from this point forward should be assessed on whether it supports these goals. Once your "why" is clear, you can focus on the first thing every visitor sees: your profile.

Assess Your Brand's First Impression

You have about three seconds to convince a new visitor to tap that "Follow" button. Your profile's core elements need to work together to make a compelling case.

• Profile Picture: Is it a high-resolution, easy-to-see version of your business logo? If you're a personal brand, is it a clear, professional headshot where your face is visible? Avoid busy images that are hard to decipher in that tiny circle.
• Username (@handle): Is your username simple, memorable, and available on other social platforms for consistency? Try not to use too many numbers, underscores, or confusing spelling. The easier it is to remember, the easier it is for people to find and tag you.
• Name Field: This is a powerful, searchable field. Don't just put your brand name here. Add a keyword that describes what you do. For example, instead of just "The Indigo Plant Co.," use "The Indigo Plant Co. | Rare Houseplants." Instead of "James Smith," use "James Smith | Fitness Coach."
• Bio: Your bio needs to answer three questions quickly: Who are you? What do you do/offer? And why should someone care? It should be concise and packed with value. Use emojis to add personality and break up the text, but don’t overdo it. Finish with a strong call-to-action (CTA) that tells people what to do next (e.g., "👇 Tap the link to shop" or "✉️ Get our weekly newsletter").
• Link in Bio: First, check if your link even works. Then, ask if it's the right link. Does it support your primary goal? Whether you use a landing page tool like Linktree or send people directly to your website, make sure the destination is mobile-friendly and delivers on the promise made in your CTA.

Step 2: Dive Deep into Your Audience

You can create the best content in the world, but if it’s not reaching the right people, your efforts will fall flat. Your Instagram Insights hold the key to understanding who is currently following you. Navigate to your Professional Dashboard > Account Insights > Your Audience to get started.

Analyze Your Follower Demographics

Under the "Total Followers" section, you can find a breakdown of your audience demographics:

• Top Locations: Where do your followers live? This is powerful information for local businesses or brands considering shipping expansions or targeting ads. It also helps you understand cultural context.
• Age Range & Gender: Does the data align with your target customer profile? If you're trying to reach Gen Z women and your audience is primarily Millennial men, there’s a major disconnect between your content and your goals. This isn't about being exclusionary, it's about seeing if your message is landing with the audience you intend to serve.

Identify Most Active Times

Further down in the Audience tab, you’ll find a chart showing the "Most Active Times" for your followers, broken down by days of the week and hours of the day. This is a fantastic starting point for scheduling your content. Posting when your followers are already online gives your content its best initial chance to gain traction.

However, a word of caution: these are the times when your current audience is most active. If you’re also aiming to attract a new audience segment (perhaps in a different time zone), you should experiment with posting outside these peak hours.

Step 3: Conduct a Thorough Content Audit

This is where you’ll spend the most time, and for good reason - your content is the engine of your Instagram growth. The purpose here is to identify patterns. What makes your audience stop scrolling, and what makes them scroll on by?

Analyze Post-by-Post Performance

Go to Account Insights > Content You Shared. Here, you can filter all of your content by type (Posts, Reels, Stories) and metric over a specific time period (e.g., Last 90 Days). This is your treasure map.

Analyze your top-performing content by sorting for these key metrics:

• Reach: This shows you how many unique accounts saw your post. Sort by Reach to see what content is grabbing the most new eyeballs. This is often driven by Reels and highly shareable content. What topics or formats were consistently at the top?
• Likes: While sometimes considered a "vanity metric," likes still indicate general resonance. What posts get a quick, positive reaction from your audience?
• Comments: Comments indicate a deeper level of engagement. What posts sparked a conversation? These are often posts that ask questions, state a strong opinion, or are incredibly relatable.
• Saves: Saves are one of the most valuable engagement metrics. A "save" means your content was so useful or inspiring that someone wants to come back to it later. Look at your most-saved content - it's likely educational, a how-to tutorial, a "listicle" in a carousel, or something deeply inspirational. This tells you what your audience finds truly valuable.
• Shares: Shares show what content your audience is proud to be associated with or wants to send to a friend. Memes, strong points of view, and highly relatable carousels often get a ton of shares.

Identify your top 5 and bottom 5 posts for each metric. What patterns emerge? Maybe your tutorials get tons of saves, but your behind-the-scenes photos fall flat. This is data, not judgment. Use it to decide what to double down on and what to put on pause.

Audit Your Hashtag Strategy

Effective hashtags help categorize your content and get it discovered by users who don’t follow you. Are yours doing the job? Review the hashtags on your last 10-15 posts.

• Are they relevant? Don't just use generic tags like #marketing. If your post is about email marketing for small businesses, use #emailmarketingtips #smallbusinessmarketing. Be specific to the content in the image or video.
• Are you using a mix of sizes? An effective strategy includes broad tags (1M+ posts), niche community tags (50k-500k posts), and highly specific tags (under 10k posts). This gives you a chance to rank in smaller pools while still reaching a broader audience.
• Are they working? On an individual post, click View Insights and scroll down to 'Impressions.' It will show you how many impressions came 'From Hashtags.' If these numbers are consistently low, it's time to test new ones.

Above all, stop copying and pasting the same block of 30 hashtags on every post. Not only is this ineffective, but it can also be flagged by Instagram as spammy behavior. Take a few minutes to customize your hashtags for every single piece of content.

Step 4: Evaluate Your Brand and Profile Aesthetic

Your content's performance is paramount, but how everything looks together influences brand perception and follower loyalty. After all, Instagram is a visual platform.

The Grid Check

Go to your profile page and look at your feed as a whole. Pay attention to your last 9 to 12 posts. Is there a cohesive visual identity? This isn’t about creating a perfect, rigid pattern. It's about consistency.

• Colors & Filters: Are you using a consistent color palette or a set of filters? This creates an immediate visual signature for your brand.
• Fonts & Graphics: If you create graphics, are you using an established set of brand fonts and styles? When someone sees your graphic in their feed, they should recognize it as yours before they even see your username.
• Content Mix: Does the grid reflect a healthy variety of content types? Is it a good mix of videos, graphics, and photos, or is it one-dimensional?

Voice and Tone Review

Branding is more than just visuals, it's also your voice. Read the captions of your last 10 posts aloud. Do they sound inconsistent? Is the tone jumping between funny, formal, and overly corporate with no clear reason?

Your brand’s voice should be authentic and consistent across all captions. A strong caption doesn’t just describe the visual - it adds context, tells a story, provides value, and includes a call-to-action that encourages engagement. Make sure your captions are pulling their weight.

Step 5: Put It All Together and Create an Action Plan

An audit without action is just data. This final step turns your findings into a simple, straightforward plan for the next 30-90 days.

Create a simple document or spreadsheet with four columns:

• Area: The part of your Instagram you reviewed (e.g., Bio, Reels Content, Hashtags, Grid Aesthetic).
• What's Working: A quick note on something positive you discovered (e.g., "Educational carousels get the most saves," or "Our blue-and-yellow brand colors stand out.").
• What Needs Improvement: Where is the opportunity for growth? (e.g., "Captions aren't asking questions," or "Hashtag reach is very low.").
• Action Step: A single, concrete step you will take to improve (e.g., "Add a question to every caption for the next 30 days," or "Research and create 3 new sets of niche hashtags to test.").

Based on this roadmap, set 1-3 specific, measurable goals for the next quarter. Forget vague goals like "get more followers." Instead, aim for something like, "Increase average Reel saves by 20%" or "Improve Story completion rate from 80% to 90%."

Final Thoughts

Running a comprehensive Instagram audit helps you cut through the confusion, providing a data-driven roadmap based on what your own audience is telling you. By regularly reviewing your goals, your followers' behaviors, your best-performing content, and your brand's overall impression, you can make smarter decisions that lead to real, sustainable growth.

Once you develop this action plan, consistency becomes the most important factor. That’s where we find a modern social media management tool like our own Postbase makes all the difference. Using the visual planner helps us easily lay out our content calendar based on audit findings, and we built it with a rock-solid scheduler to ensure all our video content - especially the Reels proven to work in an audit - goes live every single time. It's a great way to turn insights into action without all the manual stress.