Most advice on how to run a social media audit checklist starts with a spreadsheet: follower counts, engagement rates, competitor benchmarks. That is the wrong place to begin.
Before anyone replies to your email or picks up the phone, they look you up. They open your LinkedIn page, glance at the last few posts, check Google and read the reviews. What they see in those ten minutes is the audit that matters.
So the order is: judge every profile as a buyer would, then look at the numbers. The checklist below can be finished in an afternoon and ends with a keep, fix or archive verdict per account.
What belongs on a social media audit checklist?
A social media audit checklist covers six areas: a profile inventory, profile basics, a content review, engagement and replies, a short set of results, and a ranked action list. Work through them in that order, judging each through a buyer's eyes first and the metrics second.
Most templates cover four of these. Inventory, performance, content and action plan are the standard structure, and they are sound. What they tend to skip is what a stranger actually sees and what happens when someone writes to you.
1. Have you listed every account, including the abandoned ones?
Start with a plain inventory of every profile that carries your name. Include the ones nobody has touched for years.
An inventory comes first, because you cannot judge or fix an account you have not found.
Abandoned profiles with outdated logos and dead links are the most common audit finding, and the cheapest to fix. They also show up in search results beside your live pages, so a buyer can land on a dead account before the active one.
For each account, record:
- Where it lives: platform, URL and the name it appears under.
- Who has access: the login owner and at least one other admin. If a former employee set it up, find out now.
- Duplicates and unowned pages: auto-created company pages, old Instagram handles, a second Google listing.
- The verdict: keep, fix or archive.
Keep what is active and useful. Fix what is worth saving. Archive or claim and close the rest, so nothing stale represents you.
2. Does each profile show a buyer who you are and what you do?
Open each profile logged out, on a phone if you can. Ask whether a stranger would know what the firm does, for whom, and how to get in touch.
LinkedIn and Instagram basics
On the LinkedIn company page, check the logo, banner, one-sentence description, website link and a clear call-to-action button. For a LinkedIn profile audit of the founder, check the headline says what you do for whom, not just a job title.
On Instagram, the bio should name the service, the type of client and one next step. The link should work and go somewhere relevant. Names and logos should match across every platform.
Google Business Profile and reviews
Search your firm's name as a buyer would. Check the Google Business Profile for correct hours, phone number, address or service area, services listed and recent photos. If it needs regular care, our Google Business Profile management covers it.
Then read the reviews. Note how recent the latest one is and whether anyone has answered.
3. Is your content showing expertise or just activity?
Pull the last 90 days of posts from each active account. Sort them into one pile by a single test: would this make a stranger trust us?
A post about how you handled a tricky VAT change, a walkthrough of an onboarding process or a straight answer to a common client question belongs in the first pile. Office birthdays and generic quotes do not.
A post with low reach can still be your best one for B2B. Ten right people reading a clear explanation of how you work does more than a thousand passing views on something unrelated to your service.
Count how many posts pass the test. If it is a handful, the fix is a clearer content plan, which is what our social media management for B2B companies is built around.
4. What happens when someone comments, messages or reviews you?
Most audit templates skip this, yet it is where a buyer tests whether anyone is home. Check each of the following:
A buyer tests whether anyone is home, so every comment, message and review needs an owner.
- Unanswered comments: scroll back through 90 days and note any question left hanging.
- Direct messages: check LinkedIn, Instagram and the Google messaging inbox, including message requests that are easy to miss.
- Review replies: every review, good or bad, should have a courteous, specific answer. Our review replies service handles this for firms without time.
- Response time: record roughly how long replies take, and who is responsible for checking each inbox.
If nobody owns the inboxes, name someone. That alone fixes most of what you will find here.
5. Which numbers actually matter, and how do you turn findings into an action list?
Keep the metrics short: reach, engagement, profile visits and enquiries from social. Use 90 days of data, which is enough to show a pattern without special software. The NHS Select social media audit template is a useful reference for the review questions: purpose, audience fit, what performs and what to improve.
Read the numbers against what you found earlier. Strong reach on posts that fail the trust test is not a win. Enquiries from a profile with a weak bio suggest the fix is cheap and worth doing.
Then turn everything into three lists:
- Fix now: broken links, wrong contact details, unanswered reviews and messages, archive decisions.
- Fix next: rewritten descriptions, a better posting plan, photos and banners.
- Stop: accounts or content types that earn no trust and no enquiries.
FAQ
How often should you do a social media audit?
At least once a year, since platforms keep changing. A B2B firm with a small team benefits from a quick buyer's-eye check of profiles and replies every quarter, with the full audit kept annual.
How long does a social media audit take?
A repeatable structure, 90 days of data and about two hours is enough for the core review, with no special software. Allow an afternoon if you have several old accounts to track down and decide on.
What is the first step in a social media audit?
List every account that carries your name, including abandoned and duplicate ones, with who holds the login. You cannot judge or fix what you have not found, and old profiles are often the quickest wins.
Next step
An audit works best when it starts where your buyers start: what they see, and whether anyone answers. Numbers come after that.
If you would rather have the team that runs B2B accounts look at yours, request a free marketing audit and see what a buyer sees.
