Social media audit checklist: what we check first

A social media audit is a review of every account your business has: whether the profiles are complete and consistent, which content works, how each channel performs against its goal, and who has access. It should end with two or three clear fixes, not a long report. Hootsuite suggests running a full audit at least quarterly, and a small business can do a useful first pass in an afternoon.

Every one of our management packages includes a profile audit and optimization, covering the bio, highlights and search keywords. That's why profiles come first below. The rest of the checklist combines the steps published by Hootsuite and Socialinsider, and you can run all of it yourself.

Key takeaways

• List every account first, including old ones and any you didn't create.
• Fix profiles before content. They're quick to change, and every new visitor sees them.
• Find your top five posts per platform and look for what they share.
• Compare with your own history first, and use outside benchmarks only as a rough check.
• Finish with two or three changes. Then book the next audit.

How often should you run a social media audit?

Twice a year is a good minimum for a small business, and quarterly is better. Hootsuite says to "run a full audit quarterly at minimum" and adds monthly check-ins of 30 to 60 minutes for busy accounts. Socialinsider recommends quarterly or twice a year, and running one before and after a major campaign. It describes a basic pass as taking a couple of hours, while Hootsuite says a full audit takes several.

Also run one when you hire someone new, change your offer, or feel your posts have stopped working.

The social media audit checklist

Open a spreadsheet with one row per account. Then work through the steps below in order.

Step	What to check	What good looks like
1. Accounts	Every profile, active or not	One list, with an owner for each
2. Profiles	Photo, name, bio, links, pinned posts	Complete and the same across platforms
3. Goals	What each channel is for	One goal and one number per channel
4. Content	Top five posts per platform	You can name what they have in common
5. Consistency	Posts per week over 3 months	A rhythm you can keep
6. Performance	Reach, engagement, clicks, enquiries	Trend compared with your own past
7. Audience	Location, age, language	They match who you actually sell to
8. Competitors	2 or 3 similar accounts	You know what they do better
9. Access	Logins, admins, former staff	Only current people have access
10. Actions	Two or three changes	Each has an owner and a date

Step 1: How do you find every account?

Search your business name on each platform and on Google. Hootsuite suggests including inactive accounts, newer platforms such as Threads and Bluesky, and any rogue or unauthorised profiles, since impostors do exist.

Then decide what to do with each one: keep it, merge it or close it. An abandoned page with a last post from 2021 can make a business look closed. If you can't keep a platform going, it's better to close it, or to pin a post saying where to find you.

Step 2: What should you check on each profile?

This is what we start with, because it's the fastest win. Check each one as a new customer would:

• Name. Does it say what you do? Meta's documentation of Instagram search lists the similarity between search words and an account's username or profile name as a signal, so a keyword here can help people find you.
• Photo and cover. Are they the same or clearly related everywhere, and still sharp when small?
• Bio. Can someone tell within seconds what you offer and who it's for?
• Link. Does it work, and does it go to one useful page?
• Contact details. Are your phone, email, address and hours correct where they're shown?
• Highlights and pinned posts. Are they current, or do they still show last year's offer?
• Verification and categories. Is the business category correct?

Keep your details the same on every platform, so customers never wonder whether two accounts are both you. Our Instagram strategy guide has more on writing a profile that turns visitors into followers.

Step 3: Does each channel have a job?

Write one sentence per platform: what it's for, and how you'd know it's working. Hootsuite suggests tying each channel to specific numbers, such as website visits from social.

A made-up example: Instagram brings enquiries, LinkedIn builds trust with business buyers, and Facebook serves existing local customers. If you can't write the sentence, ask whether that channel deserves your time.

Step 4: What does your best content have in common?

List your top five posts per platform, as Hootsuite suggests, ranked by engagement rate or by a number tied to your goal. Then note the topic, format, hook and length of each.

Socialinsider suggests asking three questions: does one format dominate engagement, has any content pillar been weak for months, and do your top posts share a hook, topic or format? Write down one thing to do more of and one thing to stop. Our guide to the Instagram algorithm explains which reactions matter most there, which helps you rank posts on Instagram.

Step 5: Are you posting often enough?

Count posts per week per platform for the last three months, and look for gaps. Buffer's study of 2.1 million Instagram posts found the biggest jump in follower growth when accounts moved from 1 or 2 posts a week to 3 to 5. Long gaps are the thing to fix first. If you can't sustain the pace, reduce the number of platforms before you reduce quality. Our content plan guide shows how to set up a calendar you can keep.

Step 6: How do your numbers compare?

Compare against your own past first: last quarter, then the same quarter last year. Your own trend tells you more than any industry average.

For a rough outside check, Buffer's 2026 engagement report, based on more than 52 million posts, gives these 2025 medians. Buffer sells social media software, so they're vendor-reported.

Platform	Median engagement rate
LinkedIn	About 6.2%
Facebook	About 5.6%
Instagram	About 5.5% of reach
TikTok	About 4.6%
Pinterest	About 4.0%
Threads	About 3.6%
X	About 2.5%

Buffer notes that engagement is calculated differently across platforms, so don't rank one against another. Use the figures only to spot a channel that's far below normal. More benchmarks are in our social media statistics.

Also check the numbers that reach the till: link clicks, messages, calls, bookings and sales. A channel with modest engagement that brings steady enquiries is doing its job.

Step 7: Are you reaching the right people?

Open each platform's audience insights and compare them with your actual customers. Socialinsider suggests checking whether geography, time zones and language match your assumptions, and whether age or interests have shifted. Say a shop sells in one city but most of its followers live overseas: that is an audience problem, whatever the follower count says.

Step 8: What are 2 or 3 competitors doing?

Pick two or three accounts similar in size to yours, not the biggest name in your field. Note how often they post, which formats they use, what people comment on, and what they're missing. Questions that go unanswered in their comments are good content ideas for you. Copy the insight, not the post.

Step 9: Who has access to your accounts?

Hootsuite includes compliance and governance in its audit, and it's easy to skip. For a small business, the main checks are simple:

• List everyone with a login or admin role, and remove former staff and old suppliers.
• Make sure the business, not one person, controls each account's recovery email and phone.
• Turn on two-factor authentication where you can.
• Check any rules that apply to your field, such as those for health, finance or competitions.

Step 10: How do you turn the audit into action?

Hootsuite suggests prioritising two or three high-impact changes, and that's the right scale for a small team. Choose by asking which changes are quick, and which are closest to your goal. A typical list could be:

1. Rewrite the Instagram bio and replace the link this week.
2. Close the unused account and redirect people to the active one.
3. Make more of the format behind your top posts for the next 30 days.

Give each change an owner and a date, then put the next audit in your calendar. Without those, an audit is just a document.

Should you do the audit yourself or hire someone?

Do it yourself first if you have the time, because you'll learn a lot about your own accounts. An outside view helps when you're too close to the work, or when you know what's wrong but have no time to fix it.

In our management packages, the audit leads straight into the work: we optimize your profile, plan and design the posts, schedule them, and finish with reporting and an action plan, as described on our packages page. Our reporting and insights section covers more detailed analysis. To see what that costs against other options, read how much social media management costs.