Social Media Audit Checklist: 50 Things to Review Right Now
Most social media audit guides read like a textbook. This one reads like a to-do list.
Below are 50 specific items to check across your profiles, content, analytics, competitors, and strategy. Work through them in order or skip to the section that matters most. Either way, you should be done in about 60 minutes.
If you want to automate the boring parts, run a free social media audit through PostEverywhere first. It pulls your metrics into one dashboard so you can focus on decisions, not data entry.
How to Use This Checklist
Each item is a checkbox. Go through them one by one and mark what needs fixing. Some items need a quick yes/no answer. Others ask you to pull a specific number. Write the numbers down — you will need them later when you update your social media strategy.
Time needed: 60 minutes for a thorough audit, 30 minutes if you already have your analytics open.
Tools you will need: Native analytics for each platform (or a social media management tool that consolidates them), a spreadsheet or notes app, and this checklist.
Section 1: Profile Audit (10 Items)
Your profile is the first thing people see. These checks take 10 minutes across all platforms.
Profile photo is current and consistent. Use the same headshot or logo across every platform. Check that it is not pixelated, cropped badly, or outdated. According to Sprout Social, profile images should be at least 400x400px for clarity on all devices.
Bio clearly states what you do and who you help. Read your bio as if you have never heard of your brand. Does it communicate your value in under 10 seconds? Include one keyword your audience would search for.
Bio link points to the right destination. Click it. If it goes to your homepage, consider whether a link-in-bio page, current campaign, or free trial landing page would convert better.
Handle/username is consistent across platforms. List every handle. If one platform has a different spelling, underscore, or abbreviation, note it for a future change. Consistency builds brand recognition and makes you easier to find.
Contact information is accurate. Check email, phone number, business address, and website URL on every platform that supports it. One outdated email can cost you leads.
Cover image or banner is up to date. Banners on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and YouTube should reflect your current branding, offer, or campaign. If yours still promotes a 2025 event, replace it.
Pinned post is relevant. Your pinned post is free real estate. It should be your best-performing content, a current promotion, or an evergreen introduction to your brand. If it is more than 3 months old, swap it out.
Verification status is checked. Are you verified where it matters? On Meta platforms, X, and LinkedIn, verification adds credibility. If you are eligible but not verified, start the process.
Category and business details are correct. On Facebook, Instagram, and Google Business Profile, check your business category. A wrong category can hurt discoverability.
Inactive accounts are identified. List every social account your brand has ever created, including old ones on platforms you no longer use. Decide: reactivate, archive, or delete. Abandoned accounts with outdated info can confuse customers.
Speed this up: PostEverywhere's social media audit tool pulls all your profile details into one view, so you can spot inconsistencies in seconds instead of logging into six platforms. Try it free for 14 days — no credit card required.
Section 2: Content Performance Audit (10 Items)
Open your analytics. You need data from the last 90 days for most of these.
Identify your top 5 posts by engagement rate. Not just likes — calculate the actual engagement rate (engagements / reach x 100). What do these posts have in common? Format? Topic? Time posted?
Identify your bottom 5 posts by engagement rate. What went wrong? Bad timing, weak hook, wrong format, or irrelevant topic? Sometimes the worst posts teach you more than the best ones.
Calculate your average engagement rate per platform. Compare it to industry benchmarks. If you are below average, prioritize content quality. If you are above, double down on what works.
Review your content mix ratio. What percentage of your posts are educational, promotional, entertaining, or conversational? A common baseline is 80/20 (value to promotion), but check what your data actually says. Refer to latest social media statistics for benchmarks by platform.
Check posting frequency against recommended benchmarks. Are you posting enough? Too much? Compare your actual output to the frequency that drives engagement on each platform.
Audit your visual quality. Scroll through your last 30 posts. Are images high-resolution? Are videos properly formatted for each platform? Do carousels render correctly? Low-quality visuals kill engagement regardless of how good your copy is.
Review caption and copy quality. Are your hooks strong enough to stop the scroll? Do your captions include clear calls to action? Are you using relevant keywords naturally?
Check hashtag performance. Which hashtags actually drive reach? Most platforms now show hashtag-driven impressions in analytics. Cut the ones that do nothing and replace them. PostEverywhere's hashtag generator can help you find better alternatives.
Identify content gaps. Look at your top posts and your audience questions. What topics are people asking about that you have not covered? These are your next content opportunities.
Review content repurposing opportunities. Do you have blog posts, podcasts, or long-form videos that could be broken into social content? Most brands leave 80% of their content value on the table. A proper social media scheduler makes repurposing across platforms much faster.
Section 3: Analytics and Metrics Audit (10 Items)
This section is about trends, not vanity numbers. Look at direction, not just totals.
Follower growth rate over the last 90 days. Calculate: (new followers / starting followers) x 100. Is growth accelerating, flat, or declining? A healthy account grows at 1-3% per month minimum, according to Hootsuite's social media trends report.
Reach trend over the last 90 days. Is your content reaching more people or fewer people than 3 months ago? If reach is dropping while followers grow, your content is not resonating with your audience — the algorithm is suppressing it.
Impressions vs. reach ratio. If impressions are significantly higher than reach, people are seeing your content multiple times. That is usually good for brand recall, but it can also indicate a shrinking audience seeing the same posts.
Click-through rate on link posts. If you share links (to your site, blog, or product), what percentage of people actually click? Benchmark: 1-3% is average for organic social. Below 1% means your hooks or CTAs need work.
Conversion rate from social traffic. Open Google Analytics or your web analytics tool. How many social visitors take a desired action (sign up, buy, download)? If conversions are low despite decent traffic, the problem is your landing page, not your social content.
Best-performing posting times. Check your analytics for when your audience is most active. Compare this to when you have been posting. If there is a mismatch, adjust your schedule. PostEverywhere's best time to post feature calculates this automatically.
Video completion rates. For Reels, TikToks, Shorts, and LinkedIn video: what percentage of viewers watch to the end? Under 30% means your videos are too long, too slow, or too weak in the first 3 seconds.
Story engagement metrics. Check tap-forward rate, exit rate, and reply rate on Instagram and Facebook Stories. A high exit rate on a specific frame tells you exactly where you lose attention.
Save and share rates. Saves and shares are the strongest engagement signals on most platforms. If your content gets likes but no saves, it is entertaining but not valuable. Aim to increase saves by creating reference-worthy content.
Profile visit to follower conversion rate. How many people who visit your profile actually follow you? If this rate is below 10%, your bio, highlights, or recent content grid is not convincing visitors to stay.
Section 4: Competitor Audit (5 Items)
You do not need to audit every competitor. Pick your top 3 — the ones your audience also follows.
Identify 3 direct competitors and their follower counts per platform. Document these numbers now so you can track changes over time. Use a spreadsheet or the social media benchmarks tool to compare side by side.
Compare posting frequency. How often do your competitors post vs. you? If a competitor posts daily on LinkedIn and you post twice a week, that alone could explain a growth gap.
Analyze their top-performing content. Look at their most-engaged posts from the last 90 days. What formats do they use? What topics get the most response? You are not copying — you are identifying what the audience already wants.
Note what they do that you do not. Do they use carousels and you only post single images? Do they reply to every comment while you reply to none? Do they run collabs, go live, or use specific features you have ignored? These are tactical gaps you can close.
Check their audience sentiment. Read the comments on their posts. Are people enthusiastic, complaining, or asking questions the competitor is not answering? Those unanswered questions are opportunities for your content. As Harvard Business Review notes, social listening is increasingly a cross-functional discipline, not just a marketing task.
Save 30 minutes on competitor analysis. PostEverywhere's social media audit tool benchmarks your performance against competitors automatically — follower growth, engagement rates, and posting frequency side by side. Start your free trial.
Section 5: Platform-Specific Audit (10 Items)
Each platform has unique features and quirks. Check these platform-by-platform.
Highlights are organized and current. Each Highlight should have a clear cover image and title. Remove Highlights with expired content (old promotions, outdated FAQs).
Reels are a consistent part of your strategy. Instagram prioritizes Reels in its algorithm. If you are only posting static images, you are missing reach. Check the engagement rate benchmarks to see how your Reels compare.
Alt text is added to all images. Instagram lets you add alt text for accessibility and SEO. Most brands skip this. Do not be most brands.
Company page "About" section is complete. LinkedIn rewards complete profiles with more visibility. Fill in every field: industry, company size, specialties, and a keyword-rich description.
Employee advocacy is activated. Are team members sharing and engaging with company content? LinkedIn's algorithm gives significant reach boosts to content that gets early employee engagement. Growing your presence on LinkedIn depends on this.
TikTok
Bio link is set up. TikTok only gives you one link (business accounts get more). Make sure it points somewhere useful and is trackable with UTM parameters.
You are using trending sounds. TikTok's algorithm heavily favors content using currently trending audio. Check the "Trending" section in the Creative Center regularly.
X (Twitter)
Pinned post drives a specific action. On X, where content moves fast, your pinned post is critical. It should convert profile visitors into followers, subscribers, or customers.
You are using X's long-form features. If you are still only posting short tweets, you are leaving reach on the table. X now supports long posts, articles, and spaces — all of which get algorithm boosts.
YouTube
- Channel page sections are organized. Featured video, popular uploads, and playlists should be curated. An unorganized channel page looks abandoned, even if you post regularly. Check the latest YouTube statistics to benchmark your channel.
Section 6: Strategy and Goals Audit (5 Items)
This is the "so what?" section. Everything above is data. This section is about decisions.
Your social media goals are written down and measurable. "Grow our social media presence" is not a goal. "Increase Instagram followers by 15% and LinkedIn engagement rate by 0.5% in Q2" is a goal. If your goals are vague, rewrite them now.
Each platform has a defined purpose. Not every platform should serve the same function. Maybe LinkedIn is for thought leadership, Instagram for brand awareness, and TikTok for top-of-funnel discovery. If all your platforms post the same content with no strategic differentiation, you are wasting effort.
Your content calendar is documented, not improvised. Do you have a social media calendar with planned content for the next 2-4 weeks? If you are winging it day by day, you will never be consistent. Consistency is the number one factor that separates growing accounts from stagnant ones.
You have a clear reporting cadence. How often do you review performance? Weekly check-ins on key metrics and monthly deep dives on strategy is a good baseline. If you only look at analytics when something feels wrong, you are always reactive and never proactive.
Action items from this audit are prioritized. Do not try to fix everything at once. Pick the 3-5 items from this checklist that will have the biggest impact and tackle those first. Schedule the rest for next month. A focused plan beats an overwhelming one every time.
Make your audit actionable. PostEverywhere gives you analytics, scheduling, and AI content generation in one platform — so you can go from audit findings to published improvements in the same tool. Plans start at $19/mo. Start your 14-day free trial.
What to Do After Your Audit
Finishing the checklist is step one. Here is what comes next:
Document your findings. Put your numbers and notes in a spreadsheet or doc you can reference next quarter. You need a baseline to measure progress.
Prioritize ruthlessly. You probably found 10-20 things that need fixing. Rank them by impact and effort. High impact, low effort items go first.
Update your social media strategy. Your audit probably revealed gaps between what you planned and what actually happened. Adjust your strategy to match reality, not the other way around.
Set a recurring audit schedule. A full audit every quarter is ideal. A lighter check-in (Sections 2 and 3 only) every month keeps you on track between full audits.
Use the right tools. Manual audits work, but they are slow. A social media management platform like PostEverywhere consolidates your analytics, automates reporting, and lets you act on audit findings immediately — from adjusting your posting schedule to generating new content ideas.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I do a social media audit?
A full 50-point audit should happen quarterly. Between full audits, do a monthly check-in focused on content performance and analytics (Sections 2 and 3). If you launch a new campaign, enter a new market, or notice a sudden drop in engagement, run a targeted audit immediately.
How long does a social media audit take?
With your analytics already open, 60 minutes for all 50 items. If you need to log into each platform individually and export data, allow 90 minutes. Using a tool like PostEverywhere that consolidates analytics cuts this to about 30 minutes.
What is the most important section of a social media audit?
Content performance (Section 2) has the most direct impact on results, because it tells you what to create more of and what to stop doing. But if your profiles are a mess (Section 1), fixing that first gives you the biggest quick win.
Do I need a paid tool to do a social media audit?
No. You can do everything on this checklist using each platform's native analytics for free. A paid tool like PostEverywhere (starting at $19/mo) saves time by consolidating data and benchmarking against competitors, but it is not required.
What metrics matter most in a social media audit?
Engagement rate, reach trend, and follower growth rate are the big three. Engagement rate tells you if your content resonates. Reach trend tells you if the algorithm is working for or against you. Follower growth rate tells you if your audience is expanding. Everything else supports these three. See our engagement rate benchmarks for platform-specific targets.
Should I audit every platform or just the ones I use most?
Audit every platform where you have an active account. Even platforms you have deprioritized deserve a 5-minute check — an abandoned profile with outdated info can hurt your brand more than having no profile at all.
Founder & CEO of PostEverywhere. Writing about social media strategy, publishing workflows, and analytics that help brands grow faster.