Quick answer: the 90-minute social media audit at a glance
To audit social media in 90 minutes, inventory your accounts, confirm each channel's job, fix profile gaps, review 90 days of native analytics, identify repeatable post patterns, check audience fit and risk, then choose three actions for the next 30 days. You do not need paid software. A spreadsheet, platform analytics, and website analytics are enough.
A social media audit is a decision-making review, not a report-writing exercise. Use the last complete 90 days, and audit organic activity separately from paid campaigns. Mixing them can hide what regular content is doing.
Create one spreadsheet with columns for account details, channel goal, publishing, reach or impressions, interactions, clicks, conversions, follower change, top posts, issues, and next action. Mark unavailable data clearly. Do not turn missing data into a zero.
| Time | Audit task | What to record | Decision to make |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-10 minutes | Account inventory | Profiles, owners, access, status | Keep, park, reclaim, or investigate |
| 10-25 minutes | Profile and safety check | Bio, visuals, links, pinned content, permissions | Fix now or assign |
| 25-50 minutes | Performance review | Goal-linked metrics for one 90-day period | Focus, maintain, or reduce effort |
| 50-65 minutes | Post pattern review | Five strong posts and three weak posts per priority channel | Repeat, test, or stop |
| 65-75 minutes | Audience, competitor, and risk scan | Audience fit, open questions, gaps, compliance issues | Protect, clarify, or explore |
| 75-90 minutes | 30-day action list | Three actions, owners, dates, measures | Commit the next month |
Keep the scope tight. If you manage more than three active channels, focus the performance review on those tied to a current business goal. Inventory the rest and flag obvious risks.
Minutes 0-25: inventory accounts and fix profile basics
List every official, inactive, regional, founder-led, and campaign account connected to the business. Search for the business name, old names, and product names to catch abandoned or duplicate profiles.
For each account, record the URL, handle, current owner, admins, last post date, and one-sentence purpose. A purpose should describe the customer and job of the channel, such as "help nearby customers discover weekly specials" or "help buyers understand our B2B service." "We should be on Instagram" is not a purpose.
Use this decision rule:
- Keep active when the account reaches a relevant audience, supports a business goal, and has a clear owner.
- Maintain lightly when customers use it for verification or contact, but regular publishing is not a priority.
- Park clearly when you cannot support it. Update the bio and destination link rather than leaving stale offers visible.
- Investigate when ownership, verification, or brand authenticity is uncertain. Do not delete or rename anything until access and business impact are clear.
Then view every active profile as a first-time customer. Check current images, a clear bio, accurate contact details and hours, working mobile links, pinned content, location details, and calls to action. Remove expired campaigns and unsupported claims.
Finish with access and safety. Confirm control of the recovery email, remove outdated admins, enable multi-factor authentication where available, and name an owner for future access reviews.
Minutes 25-50: calculate the metrics that match the goal
Choose one primary goal per channel before opening analytics. Awareness channels need visibility measures. Community channels need conversation and response measures. Demand channels need clicks, inquiries, bookings, trials, or purchases. A customer-service channel may be judged by response coverage and recurring issues rather than follower growth.
Pull the same complete 90-day period from each platform's native analytics. Use the platform's definitions, since labels and counting methods vary. Consult Meta Business Suite Insights or LinkedIn Page content analytics for field definitions. Compare with the prior period only when tracking and campaign mix are comparable.
Calculate a small set of rates rather than copying every number:
- Publishing completion rate = posts published / posts planned x 100. This shows whether the plan matched your capacity.
- Engagement rate by reach = chosen interactions / reach x 100. Define interactions once, such as comments, shares, saves, and reactions, then use the same definition next quarter.
- Click-through rate = link clicks / impressions x 100. Use reach instead only if you label the formula and keep it consistent.
- Follower growth rate = (ending followers - starting followers) / starting followers x 100. If the starting count is zero, report the net change instead.
- Social conversion rate = tracked conversions / social sessions or social clicks x 100. Pick one denominator and write it beside the result.
- Response rate = messages and comments answered / messages and comments requiring a response x 100. Define what requires a response before counting.
Do not combine unlike platform totals. Views, impressions, reach, saves, and clicks can mean different things in different dashboards. Compare each channel with its own prior period and purpose. If a metric cannot guide an action, leave it out.
For future traffic and conversion tracking, use consistent tagged links. Google's guide to campaign URL parameters explains how source, medium, and campaign values appear in traffic acquisition reporting. Test every tagged link before publishing.
Minutes 50-65: find the post patterns worth repeating
Account-level averages tell you what changed. Post-level review helps explain why. For each priority channel, select the five posts that performed best against that channel's goal and three that performed weakly. A top post for demand may have the most qualified clicks, not the most likes. A top community post may have the most useful comments or saves.
Label each post by topic, format, hook, visual, proof, call to action, context, and production effort. Then ask:
- Which customer question, problem, or moment did the strong posts address?
- Did they show a real product, person, process, place, or customer outcome?
- Which formats earned the desired action more than once?
- Did the result depend on paid support, a giveaway, a partner mention, or a timely event?
- Which weak posts were unclear, mistimed, or aimed at the wrong audience?
- Which results would be too costly to repeat?
Separate a pattern from an outlier. One unusually strong post is a clue. Repeated performance across comparable posts is better evidence. Write observations as testable statements: "Customer process videos appear to drive more saves than polished product stills" is more useful than "Video wins."
Do not rebuild your entire editorial plan during the audit. If the review exposes missing or unbalanced themes, use Beevi's guide to social media content pillars after the timer ends. The audit should identify the gap, not become another long planning session.
Minutes 65-75: check audience fit, competitors, and risk
Check whether the audience resembles the customers you want. Treat available demographic estimates as directional. Look for stronger intent signals in comments, direct messages, search terms, profile actions, and recurring questions.
Next, choose two or three relevant peers. Look at their recent public profiles and posts, not their private performance. Note one content angle they explain well, one customer question nobody answers clearly, and one tactic that would not fit your brand. Competitor follower counts do not reveal revenue, lead quality, paid spend, or production cost, so do not use them as a verdict on your own account.
Run a short risk check: expired offers, inaccurate prices, broken links, missing captions, unclear sponsorship disclosures, unapproved customer photos, exposed personal information, unsupported claims, and comments or messages waiting for a reply. If customer-created material appears in your strongest posts, confirm the permission record before reusing it. Beevi's small-business UGC guide covers a practical consent and reuse process.
This fast audit has limits. It trades depth for repeatability. Native dashboards may use different definitions, attribution can miss offline or cross-device sales, and a 90-day period can be distorted by seasonality, a launch, paid promotion, or one viral post. It also does not replace a paid-campaign review, customer research, social listening, or a full measurement plan. Mark uncertainty instead of forcing a confident conclusion.
Minutes 75-90: turn findings into a 30-day action list
An audit is complete only when it changes what happens next. Copy every finding into a short backlog, then rate each one by likely business impact, effort, urgency, and confidence in the evidence. Choose three actions at most: one immediate fix, one pattern to repeat, and one controlled test or activity to reduce.
Write each action as evidence, decision, owner, deadline, and measure. Example: "Product demonstrations produced the strongest tracked click-through rate. Maya will publish two new demonstrations by October 15 and compare qualified visits with the current baseline." Use your audit, not an outside benchmark.
Use this four-week sequence:
- Week 1: repair and instrument. Fix profile, access, link, tracking, or compliance issues. Save the baseline and metric definitions.
- Week 2: repeat one proven pattern. Keep the topic, audience need, and desired action consistent while producing a fresh post.
- Week 3: run one controlled test. Change one meaningful variable, such as format, hook, visual approach, or call to action. Avoid changing everything at once.
- Week 4: review and decide. Continue, adapt, or stop based on the same goal-linked measure used in the audit.
Now hand the actions into the right planning system. Use the 30-day social media calendar template to place approved work on dates, the small-business social media workflow to assign ownership and approval, or the 42 ideas by goal only when the audit shows you need fresh concepts. This keeps the audit focused and prevents overlap between diagnosis, planning, production, and scheduling.
Make the next quarterly audit easier
Run the full reset once per quarter for a stable, owner-led social presence. Add a short monthly check when you publish at high volume, run frequent promotions, or need to catch access and customer-service issues sooner. Also audit after a major rebrand, channel handoff, product launch, tracking change, or sudden performance shift.
Save the spreadsheet, exports, date range, formulas, and metric definitions together. Duplicate the file next quarter. Consistent definitions let you see whether your decisions improved goal-linked measures.
For alternative audit formats and deeper checklists, review the guides from Hootsuite, Sprout Social, SocialBee, and Buffer. Use them to extend your process, not to collect fields you will never act on.
Your finished social media audit checklist should leave you with a clean account inventory, comparable baseline, clear content hypotheses, resolved risks, and three owned actions for the next 30 days. If you want a calmer way to turn those decisions into on-brand posts, visuals, approvals, and a working publishing rhythm, see how Beevi supports the social content process.
