How To Do a Social Media Audit [+5 Templates and Examples]

If you work in digital marketing and have been entrusted with your company’s social media campaigns, then a social media audit should be high on your to-do list. As the name suggests, a social media audit is a process of identifying and assessing the efficacy and reach of your company’s current social media presence. This involves tracking down your company’s social media accounts and profiles, consolidating login information, running the accounts through analytics software, and measuring their performance against your company’s goals and key performance indicators. In short, it’s a survey of the landscape that precedes developing and implementing a social media strategy.

Social media audits may seem intimidating, but they don’t have to be. In fact, if you’re running any kind of digital marketing campaign or social media strategy, then audits are your best friend. The data collected from social media audits can give you a complete picture of how your campaigns are performing, the reach of your messaging, and whether your social media efforts are bringing you closer to your marketing goals. 

Read on to learn more about the tools, templates, and techniques for conducting a successful audit. 

What Is a Social Media Audit?

A social media audit is when an organization evaluates its presence on social media platforms. This involves tracking the organization’s social media accounts, monitoring its social activity, measuring the effectiveness and reach of its social accounts, gleaning audience insights, and using this data to inform the social media marketing strategy. 

In other words, social media audits let you know where your social strategy currently stands so that you can make better marketing decisions. 

Social Media Audits: How They Work

Social media audits don’t have to be complicated. Thanks to tools such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite Analytics, and easy-to-use templates, the process can be streamlined and social media audit results can be put to use right away. 

When Should You Do One?

Social media audits should be conducted regularly—on a quarterly basis for most organizations, and monthly for those who run many different campaigns. Regular audits will offer insight into the performance of a campaign (i.e. the efficacy of campaign hashtags, whether the target demographic is being reached, etc.) 

What’s the Goal?

With better data comes more informed decision-making. Social media audits shed light on an organization’s online presence, the types of content that are performing well, the social accounts that are underperforming, the channels that are worth investing in, and where the target audience is spending most of their time. With this information, marketing teams can evolve their content strategy to better reach their marketing goals.  

What Are the Requirements?

Social media audits are accessible to organizations of all sizes. In fact, audits make use of digital marketing skills that many digital marketers already possess, such as data analysis, competitive analysis, project management, and long-term planning. In addition to these skills, all you need are analytics tools and templates (many of which are free to use), access to your organization’s social media profiles, and the time to parse through the data.  

What’s the Process?

The social media auditing process begins by first wrangling the logins to an organization’s social channels, then running the social accounts through analytics platforms, reviewing brand copy and design, analyzing competitors, and setting goals. Goal-setting is a particularly important part of the process because it determines how audit results will be used. Is your company looking to improve conversions, increase audience engagement, or raise brand awareness? Does the company have a different goal for each platform? In what ways can the data gathered be used in service of those goals?

What Tools Will You Use?

Whether you use a free social media audit template or pay to use feature-packed analytics tools will depend on how many social accounts your organization runs, and the complexity of both the campaigns and metrics tracked. There is no shortage of tools and templates to streamline your social media auditing process. 

How To Do a Social Media Audit

Ready to perform a social media audit? Follow these steps to get started: 

Make a List of All Your Profiles

Create a centralized list of all the social media profiles associated with your organization—this includes test accounts, inactive profiles, and imposter accounts that might be infringing on your company’s copyrighted material. Take steps to address each type of account. Which ones need to be reported to platform administrators? Which ones should be referred to your company’s legal department? What needs to be deleted or restarted?

Choose (or Create) a Template To Streamline the Process

Social media audit templates can help you streamline the auditing process by creating a centralized place to track social profiles and their metrics. Templates can offer a fuller picture of an organization’s social media strategy and ensure that no social media stone is left unturned.  

Review Your Brand Positioning, Copy Guidelines, User Personas, etc.

Evaluate your brand’s presence across all social media channels for brand integrity and consistency. Do all images, banners, hashtags, copy, and phrases adhere to your company’s brand guidelines? Are usernames and social media handles consistent across platforms? Do links and URLs lead to their intended locations?

Review Account Owners and Access Permissions

Each social media account should be assigned an “owner”—someone who is responsible for login information, adding users, and keeping the platform updated. Consider using analytics and template tools such as Hootsuite to keep the company’s accounts secure.

Revisit (or Set) Goals for Each Platform

As with any digital marketing campaign, a social media strategy should include goals. What does your company hope you achieve by having a social media presence? Is the organization focused on increasing conversions or raising brand awareness? Depending on the marketing or business goal, how might a social media strategy serve those goals? 

Review the Analytics for Each Platform

Many social platforms have built-in analytics tools that show audience engagement, clicks, and views, with Google Analytics filling in the blanks of traffic and conversion data. 

Best Performing Posts

Use analytics tools and templates to identify the top-performing posts on each platform and figure out why it worked. Is there a certain type of content that appeals to a certain audience? Did campaign hashtags play a role? Did timing affect a post’s success? These data points can be used to inform campaign content in the future. 

User Demographics

Your user demographics will likely differ from platform to platform. As you audit your social media accounts, look for data points on who is viewing your content, where most of your target audience is spending their time, and how you might craft different campaign angles for different audiences. 

Core KPIs and Metrics

When developing a social media strategy, it’s important to come up with KPIs (key performance indicators) and other social media metrics to measure the success of your campaigns. Once you’ve defined what success looks like, assess the performance of your company’s social media presence one platform at a time.  

Review Non-Social Analytics

Social analytics—such as likes, shares, comments, and post engagement—are important to track. But non-social analytics—such as conversion and traffic to your company’s website—are also valuable metrics. Social media audits can give you a holistic overview of how the different components of your digital marketing strategy are working together. 

Traffic to the Website

One way of measuring audience engagement is by looking at whether social posts are referring traffic to your organization’s website. When conducting a social media audit, consider what types of content are leading to increases in referral traffic. 

Conversions from Social Traffic

Conversions—which can include direct sales, sign-ups, and subscriptions—are often the ultimate goal for digital marketing campaigns. When auditing your company’s social media presence, consider the extent to which social posts contribute to conversions. Are certain types of posts encouraging people to go through the sales funnel? Are conversions occurring after a certain number of campaign impressions? What is the tipping point for customers? 

Performance in Other Marketing Channels Like Retargeting, Email, etc.

If your company has taken a multi-pronged approach to its digital marketing campaign, it’s worth assessing the performance of other marketing channels such as email marketing, influencer marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), referral marketing, media buys, and SEO, and whether these other channels have boosted the messaging from social media or vice versa. 

Review Your Top Competitors on Each Platform

A key component of any social media audit is a review of the competition. In order to determine where your company’s social media strategy might be coming up short, look at where competitors are excelling—what are their most popular posts? What are their strengths? On which platforms are they having the most success? How does your organization’s social strategy compare? Knowing the answers to these questions can inspire new social strategies, offer fixes for struggling campaigns, and help marketing teams understand where they should be investing their resources. 

Look for (and Record) Patterns and Opportunities

If you notice patterns in both your own social media analytics or among competitors, use them to your advantage. For example, if one type of post seems to be performing well, you might want to double down on producing that type of content. If a particular competitor is finding success with visual content on a specific platform, you can use that data to inform your next social media campaign. 

Use All Insights for Your Social Media Planning

Social media audits are essentially fact-finding missions. Your goal is to collect as much data and glean as many valuable insights as possible to inform your social strategy. A social media audit can influence your company’s social media goals, content calendar, social media posts, and broader digital marketing strategy. 

Review and Update Regularly 

It’s a good idea to conduct a social media audit on a quarterly basis so that you can track changes in trends, audience movements, and social media algorithms. New social media platforms, tools, and best practices are developed all the time, and an audit will allow you to stay on top of the latest.  

Social Media Audit Examples

Want some social media marketing experts to walk you through a social media audit? Then check out these videos that cover the basics:

Lyfe Marketing’s Guide to Conducting A Social Media Audit

In this brief video, digital marketing agency Lyfe Marketing gives viewers a quick overview of how to conduct a social media audit. The video covers core aspects of audits such as how to set social media goals, what types of metrics are worth tracking, and how to track those metrics. 

Jamie Higuera’s Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Social Media Audit for Businesses

Entrepreneur Jamie Higuera offers a step-by-step guide for conducting a social media audit with a focus on pitching auditing services to a business and conveying audit findings to stakeholders. Higuera’s guide is particularly useful for those who already know social media auditing basics and want tips to bring stakeholders on board. 

Social Media Audit Templates

There are many free templates available, many of which function as social media audit checklists that guide users through the platforms, social networks, and metrics that are worth tracking.

Backlinko’s Social Media Marketing Template

Backlinko’s free template is available as a simple Word document or PDF in which organizations can create a centralized list of social media accounts, types of activity, login information, business metrics, and competitors to watch. 

Clickminded’s Social Media Audit Template

Similar to Backlinko’s template, Clickminded’s social media audit template creates a centralized location for accounts, logins, and competitors to watch. However, it includes additional fields for follower numbers, monthly growth, average engagement, and profile images and banner images to track visual consistency. 

Google Sheets Social Media Audit Template

For those wanting a template in Google Sheets, this straightforward template can be used to track social media accounts, follower counts, follower growth, reach, changes in traffic, and clicks per post. 

Social Media Audit FAQs

Still have questions about conducting a social media audit? We have answers to some frequently asked questions below.