Social media audits: The starting point for scaling your digital presence

Have you been posting content and investing in campaigns for months but still don’t know what’s actually working? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. 80% of brands are active on social media, but few know how to measure it properly.

That’s why you need an audit. And no, we’re not talking about a 40-page report no one reads. We’re talking about stopping, analyzing, and making decisions based on real data.

Here’s your ultimate checklist to run a social media audit.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What is a social media audit?
• How to run a social media audit step by step (with intention, not inertia)

What is a social media audit?

Basically, it’s like giving your social profiles a health check. But instead of checking your blood pressure and cholesterol, you’re looking at things like:

• What content works (and what your community couldn’t care less about)
• Are you attracting the right audience?
• Are your campaigns bringing results or just burning budget?
• Does your brand have a consistent and professional presence?

How to run a social media audit step by step (with intention, not inertia)

1. Take inventory of all your social media channels

Before diving into metrics or content, you need to know which digital assets you're auditing. Make a full list of your accounts: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, X (yes, Twitter is still around), Pinterest, etc. Make sure:

• All profiles are active and under control (no lost access or abandoned accounts).
• There are no duplicate or inactive channels that might confuse your audience.
• Each channel has a clear role in your social ads strategy. Not every network serves the same purpose—TikTok may be ideal for awareness, while LinkedIn is better for B2B lead generation.

Example: A cosmetics brand with Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook discovered during their audit that 90% of sales from social came through Meta campaigns, but they were spending 80% of their time creating organic content for TikTok. They reallocated efforts and improved ROAS.

2. Review your brand presence and visual consistency

A strong brand should be instantly recognizable. Do a full review of how your brand appears across each platform:

• Is your visual identity consistent? (profile pictures, cover images, colors, typography...)
• Is your tone of voice coherent and adapted to the platform? (You don’t speak the same way on TikTok as on LinkedIn.)
• Are your bios and descriptions well-written and optimized? Do they include effective CTAs?
• Are you making the most of each network's features? (IG highlights, link hubs, hashtags, etc.)

Pro tip: Create a channel-by-channel checklist and review each one systematically. Simple updates like refreshing your bio with a campaign-specific CTA can immediately boost your CTR.

3. Analyze performance metrics: organic and paid

It’s not just about “likes and followers.” Go deeper and focus on performance:

Organic:

• Average reach per post.
• Real engagement rate (interactions vs. reach).
• Community growth: are you gaining relevant followers or are things stagnant?

Paid campaigns:

• What active campaigns do you have, and what objectives are they tied to?
• Key metrics: CTR, CPC, ROAS, frequency, conversion rate.
• Segmentation: are you targeting the right audience?

Practical example: If a campaign has great conversion but low CTR, review your creatives and copy. If CTR is high but conversions are poor, the problem may lie on the landing page.

4. Evaluate your content strategy

A proper audit looks beyond numbers to understand what you're publishing and how:

• What types of content do you publish? (educational, promotional, emotional, UGC, corporate…)
• Which formats perform best on each platform? (short-form video, carousels, stories…)
• Is there a balanced mix according to the conversion funnel? (Not everything should be product-focused or purely motivational.)
• Which posts performed best and why? Is it replicable?

Pro tip: Pull your top 10 posts from the last 3 months and analyze their structure, copy, design, posting time, and CTA. You'll find patterns you can scale.

5. Review who follows you—and whether they match your ideal customer

Having 100,000 followers means nothing if 90% aren’t your target audience. Look into:

• Demographics and location: where is your community and how old are they?
• Interests and behaviors: do they align with your buyer persona?
• Active engagement: do they interact, comment, and share—or just lurk?

Example: An online education brand discovered that 30% of their community came from countries where they didn’t operate. After adjusting their organic and paid segmentation, their lead conversion rate improved by 25%.

6. Do a smart competitive benchmark

Analyzing your competitors isn’t gossiping—it’s understanding the playing field. Choose 3 to 5 direct competitors (or industry benchmarks) and evaluate:

• Which channels do they focus on?
• How frequently do they post, and what’s their engagement like?
• What themes do they explore and in what tone?
• Are they running paid campaigns? What kind?

Useful tools: Not Just Analytics, Similarweb, Fanpage Karma, Meta Ads Library (to check active ads).

Practical tip: Build a monthly comparison table by channel to track key shifts in your competitive landscape.

7. Evaluate attribution and real business impact

If your social media isn’t connected to your website, CRM, or eCommerce… you're flying blind.

• Are you tracking traffic from social? Are your UTM tags properly configured?
• Do you have pixels or events properly installed on your site?
• Can you trace which content or campaign generated sales, leads, or visits?
• Do you have dashboards or regular reports to keep an eye on performance?

Pro tip: If you use GA4, create custom reports by social channel and cross-reference them with platform-specific insights.

8. Align social media with your overall marketing goals

Not every platform needs to drive sales. Some may focus on brand awareness, others on lead generation or customer service. But every one of them should have a clear purpose in your global strategy.

• What’s the objective of each channel? (reach, traffic, leads, sales…)
• Do you have SMART goals defined per channel?
• How are you going to measure success?
• Is your time and budget investment truly justified?

Example: If LinkedIn only brings in 2% of your traffic but takes up 40% of your content production effort, it might be time to reconsider its strategic role.

9. Define a concrete and realistic action plan

An audit shouldn’t end with a pretty report—it should end with clear, actionable decisions:

• What should you stop doing because it adds no value?
• What should you double down on because it’s working?
• What new formats, audiences or channels will you test?
• What can you change immediately in your content, campaigns, or strategy?

Useful format: Build a 30 / 60 / 90-day roadmap with actions, owners, and success metrics. That way, things won’t just get left for “later.”

Why does all this matter?

A proper audit is the first step toward getting out of autopilot. It helps you:

• Prioritize your efforts and stop publishing “just because.”
• Redefine your strategy (yes, that one you wrote in 2022 and haven’t updated since).
• Make decisions based on data, not gut feelings.

How do we do it at Adsmurai?

If after all this you’re thinking, “Okay, cool, but I don’t have time to do all this manually…”, don’t worry — this is where we come in.

Here’s how we handle social media audits (with care, not chaos):

• With proprietary tools and access to premium data from platforms like Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, or Google. We don’t guess — we use real, verified data.
• We cross organic, paid, and sentiment analysis data to understand not just what’s happening, but why it’s happening.
• Everything is integrated into clean, actionable dashboards — no endless spreadsheets or 100-slide decks. Visual, clear, and practical.
• And the best part: we give you clear recommendations, not a 80-page report no one will read. No fluff like “you should improve engagement,” but real, concrete actions like: “change this CTA, reduce that frequency, drop this format, test this hook.”

The best part? You walk away with a real roadmap to improve your social media strategy in 30, 60, and 90 days. And if you want, we can help you implement it too.

Social media isn’t some abstract art. It’s just another channel in your marketing strategy. And like any channel, it needs to be measured, optimized, and aligned.

A good audit gives you back control: you’ll know what’s working, what’s not, and where to invest more (or less).