Why does a social media marketing audit matter in 2025? (Plus FREE template)
In 2025, the question shouldn't be whether your social media marketing contributes to the business objective but HOW (well) it is doing so. Whether you're a marketing manager at a large corporation, the head of digital marketing at a mid-size company, or a CMO at a start-up, running a social media audit is the best next step to optimising your social media marketing strategy and achieving your goals.
In this article, you'll discover why a social media audit matters and how it can significantly enhance your strategy. We'll walk you through our comprehensive seven-step audit process, including setting clear goals per channel, checking your branding, analysing content performance, understanding your audience, and more. To simplify this process, we're offering a free social media audit template and checklist that you can download and use to conduct your audit effectively.
If you're looking for expert advice and deeper insights, our social media marketing experts are here to support you. Contact us to help you run the audit, analyse the results, and define and implement your business's right social media strategy.
The seven-steps social media audit
1. Set clear goals per channel.
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”
Before digging out the data, you must clarify what goal(s) you are trying to achieve with your social media channels.
Every channel is different and serves a different purpose, so having different KPIs on different platforms is perfectly normal.
What truly matters is to ensure these KPIs are well-defined and aligned with your business goals.
For example, an established brand that is trying to reach younger audiences could use TikTok to "increase the reach of their brand among Gen-z" and X (formerly Twitter) to "provide a speedy customer service".
In this light, the KPIs for TikTok could be Reach, and Impressions among Gen-Z, and the KPIs for X could be Time to Response or Customer Satisfaction.
The best way to establish platform-first goals is to start with a short mission statement defining what you are trying to achieve with that channel.
Once you are happy with the mission statement, you can explore which KPIs will help you track the progress.
Sometimes, connecting your business goals with channel statements and finding the correct KPI can be tricky. Luckily, our team has been doing this for large and small businesses across different B2B and B2C sectors, book a call to understand how we can help solving your social media marketing challenge.
2. List all your existing accounts
“Less is more”
Creating a list of your business's existing social media accounts sounds tedious (spoiler: it's not fun), but it is a foundational element in running a thorough audit with actionable recommendations.
You will find inactive accounts, profiles on never-activated platforms, and even unofficial copycat handles.
Take note of them, write down the handle, platform, and URL, and specify whether it is an active channel and whether you still retain access to it.
Once your list is complete, go through it and decide (based on your business objectives above) which one is worth keeping and which might be worth deleting.
If you can't access a specific account belonging to your business, you can contact platform support to try to recover access.
In our Social Media Audit template, we have created a dedicated section to list your accounts. We've also collected the links to the support service of the major social media platforms.
If the account proliferation gets over your head and you need an extra pair of hands, get in touch, we will gladly assist you.
3. Check your branding
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”
A consistent brand is critical for any business that wants to build trust and increase awareness among its audience. However, we often encounter company channels starring old logos, outdated bios, or broken links.
Reviewing your branding across all your social platforms is the easiest way to avoid looking sloppy in the eyes of your followers.
Your brand is not just your logo. Consider reviewing your profile and cover picture. Is your bio still up-to-date? Are the links still working? What about the pinned posts and hashtags; are they still relevant?
Go through every element and note whether anything needs to be reviewed and updated.
Doing a branding check with our template is very straightforward; you even get a branding score to see how well you have been doing.
4. Content performance analysis
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”
It's time to get analytical and measure your content performance based on your goals at point 1.
You want to grasp your content strategy and identify patterns in this step.
You can look at things like:
Content types - Are videos reaching more people than photos? Or are carousels driving more traffic? Are stories more engaging than feed posts? What about reels? And shorts? Are you balancing the different content formats?
Content buckets - Does any content series get more video views than others? Does your audience engage with product content?
Content frequency - Are you posting enough? Too much? Do you publish your content at the right time?
Community management - Are the comments and private messages answered? Do you engage with your fans and content that mentions you? What is the sentiment?
Once you have a clear idea of what you should continue and stop doing, you can optimise your content strategy accordingly.
In our free template, you have a content deep dive sheet (you can always duplicate it if you want to track a new channel) where you can input the results of the posts published within the analysis range.
We also created a smart tab in the summary sheet to see the three top-performing posts per goal at a glance.
Warning: Data input can be long, repetitive and prone to error.
We can support you with automated solutions and custom templates, run the content analysis, and provide ready-to-implement recommendations. Book a call to discover how
5. Audience analysis
“Are you talking to me?”
Audience analysis is often one of the most overlooked steps in a content audit, yet it doesn't matter what you say if you are talking to the wrong people.
Most social media platforms offer a breakdown of your followers, including age range, gender, country of origin, and sometimes city and interests.
Does your social audience reflect your target audience?
Which segment is engaging the most with your content?
If you notice a mismatch, you might want to consider boosting your social media content towards a more aligned crowd.
In conjunction with the content performance analysis, understanding your audience can also give you new content ideas (what is trendy within the segment you want to target?).
Using our free template, you can create an overview on the channel summary sheet. If you are unsure about the next steps, you can reach out, and our team will be happy to assist you with a bespoke boost and content strategy to recalibrate your audience to your desired target.
6. Competitors' analysis
“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Now that you have a pretty good idea of your performance, it's worth looking around and understanding what others are doing. Unlike Mr. Van Bismark, I don't think you should get obsessed with competition, but sometimes you can learn a lot.
Your analysis will be limited to publicly available data, but thankfully, lots is public on social media. Try to answer questions like - How often are your competitors posting? How many likes/comments do they have on average? Followers? Do they answer public comments?
If you want to dig deeper, you can also perform a qualitative content analysis to understand whether they leverage trends or specific formats like stories, reels or shorts. Is any of their content series particularly successful? Try to do this at least twice yearly to ensure you are still up-to-date with their strategies.
When listing your competitors, keep an open mind and look at the direct and indirect ones. Think of companies that sell products or services that satisfy the same need.
7. Consolidate social media audit findings and recommendations
“Congratulations, you have finally reached the end of the internet!”
You have made it. It's time to analyse your findings and consolidate some actionable recommendations.
This step will provide valuable information to inform your new social media strategy, and at the end of it, you will be able to answer questions such as:
What goals and KPIs will drive the new strategy?
Where should we focus our efforts? What channels should we keep?
Is our content strategy working?
Are we talking to the right people?
What are our competitors doing well?
You can also formulate more tactical recommendations about frequency, content types, channel clean-up, and identity realignment, which can drive a few quick wins.
At Critikal, we specialise in digital marketing strategy and support our clients in defining, implementing, and managing their social media marketing. Get in touch if you want to know how can we support taking your social media marketing to the next level.
Conclusions and Takeaway
As promised at the beginning of the post, we worked on a FREE social media audit template, which we want to share with you. We won't ask for your email address, telephone number or any of it; go ahead and save your copy.