Guides
How to Do a Social Media Audit (With a Free Template)
By PostMediaAI5 min read
Short answer: a social media audit is a structured review of every account you run — what exists, whether profiles are current, what content worked, how each channel performed against its goal, and what to change. Do it in seven steps: list accounts, check profiles, find top posts, score each channel, look at your audience, glance at competitors, and write an action list. Run a full audit quarterly and a quick check monthly.
Hootsuite’s and Sprout Social’s published audit guides follow the same core sequence and both recommend a quarterly cadence (blog.hootsuite.com and sproutsocial.com). The version below is sized for a small team that wants useful decisions in an afternoon.
Step 1: List every account
Include active, inactive and forgotten accounts — the Pinterest board from a past campaign, a regional Facebook Page, an old X handle. For each, record the network, handle, URL, who owns the login, and whether it is active. Canva’s audit guide recommends searching manually or with a management tool to surface forgotten profiles (canva.com).
Step 2: Check profiles and branding
- Profile photo and banner match your current brand.
- Bio says what you do today, in plain words.
- Bio link works and points to a current page.
- Contact details, location and hours are correct.
- Pinned post is still relevant.
- Handles are consistent across networks where possible.
Step 3: Find your top-performing posts
For each active account, list the top five posts from the period you are auditing, with links. Rank by the metric that matches the channel’s goal: reach for awareness, saves and shares for usefulness, link clicks for traffic. Hootsuite suggests ranking by engagement rate when the goal is finding what your audience likes best (blog.hootsuite.com). Then look for patterns: formats, topics, hooks, length, time of day.
Step 4: Score each channel against its goal
Write one goal per channel, then record a few numbers for the audit period and the one before it so you can see direction.
- Posts published per week (consistency).
- Followers at start and end.
- Reach or impressions per post.
- The goal metric (saves, clicks, sign-ups, enquiries).
- Time spent on the channel per week, if you know it.
A channel that takes hours a week and moves no goal metric is a candidate to cut back. A channel with strong per-post results but few posts is a candidate for more.
Step 5: Check who your audience really is
Native analytics on most networks show follower locations, age ranges and active times. Compare them with who you are trying to reach. If your customers are local and most followers are abroad, or your posts go out while your audience sleeps, note it. Time-zone fixes are often the quickest win.
Step 6: Glance at two or three competitors
Look at which networks they are active on, how often they post, which formats get responses, and what questions their audience asks in comments. The goal is gaps and ideas, not copying. Keep this step short; your own data matters more.
Step 7: Turn findings into an action list
An audit that ends as a report changes nothing. Hootsuite recommends giving each finding an owner and a deadline (link above). Limit yourself to five actions per quarter, for example:
- Close the inactive Pinterest account and update links that pointed to it.
- Move Instagram posts from mornings to late afternoons for four weeks and compare.
- Make two more carousels per month on the topic that topped saves.
- Rewrite the LinkedIn Page bio and banner.
- Cut X to three posts a week and spend the time on LinkedIn.
Free social media audit template
Create a spreadsheet with one tab per section and these columns.
- Accounts tab: Network | Handle | URL | Login owner | Active? | Keep / merge / close.
- Profile tab: Network | Photo OK | Bio current | Link works | Pinned post OK | Notes.
- Content tab: Network | Post link | Date | Format | Topic | Goal metric | Result | Pattern noted.
- Channel tab: Network | Goal | Posts per week | Followers start / end | Reach per post | Goal metric this period | Last period | Hours per week.
- Actions tab: Finding | Action | Owner | Deadline | Status.
The 15-minute quick audit
Between full audits, answer these yes-or-no questions monthly. They are adapted from Sprout Social’s quick-audit example (sproutsocial.com).
- Has every active account published in the last week?
- Have all comments and messages been answered?
- Do bio links point to current pages?
- Is branding consistent across accounts?
- Which channel grew or engaged most this month?
Common audit mistakes
- Judging every channel by the same metric, so a traffic channel looks weak next to an awareness channel.
- Auditing only follower counts, which say little about whether posts are working.
- Comparing a busy launch month with a quiet one without noting why.
- Writing twenty actions, finishing none.
How often should you do a social media audit?
Quarterly for a full audit, with monthly quick checks, is the cadence recommended by Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Canva (links above). Sprout also suggests an extra audit after a major campaign, a rebrand, a team change or inheriting accounts (sproutsocial.com).
Auditing a client’s social media
For agencies and freelancers, an audit is often the first deliverable. Ask for read access to analytics before you start, agree the audit period, and present findings as the action list first and the data second. Clients care about what will change. Keep the template the same across clients so audits are comparable over time.
Making the next audit easier
Most audit time goes into collecting numbers from each network. Two habits shorten it: record a one-line result next to each post on your calendar every week, and keep all channels in one tool. PostMediaAI lets you compare post performance across your channels in one place, with coverage depending on what each network shares, and shows every published post on the same calendar as your drafts (postmediaai.com). For the metrics worth watching, see Social Media Analytics for Beginners; for turning results into a monthly summary, Social Media Report Template (Monthly); and for adjusting cadence after an audit, How to Maintain Consistent Social Media Posting.
FAQ
What is a social media audit?
A structured review of all your social accounts, their profiles, content performance and results against goals, ending in a list of actions.
How long does a social media audit take?
A quick audit takes about 15 minutes. A full audit for a small business with three to five channels usually fits into an afternoon once the template is set up; the first one takes longest.
What is a social media content audit?
The part of the audit that looks only at posts: which topics, formats and hooks performed best and worst, and what to make more or less of. It is steps 3 and 4 above.
Is there a free social media audit template?
Yes. The five-tab template above is free to copy into Google Sheets or Excel.
Related guides: Social Media Competitor Analysis Guide, A/B Testing on Social Media: How to Do It and Social Media Goals: 12 SMART Examples.