What it is
An outside read of your social media.
A social media audit is a structured review of an account as it is today: what it posts, how often, how people respond, and what a new visitor understands in the first ten seconds.
An account that looks stuck is often doing several things at once, and only some of them work. The audit finds which ones.
You get the findings as a document, not as a sales call. Each finding says what we saw, why it matters, and what we would do about it. You can act on it yourself, hand it to your team, or ask us to run it.
When to run a social media audit.
An audit is most useful right before a decision. These are the six moments where it pays for itself.
The momentWhat the audit answers
Growth has stalledWhether the content changed, the audience changed, or the platform changed. The fix is different for each.
Before you spend on adsWhich organic posts have already proven themselves, so the budget goes behind something that works.
A new person takes overWhat they are inheriting: what to keep doing, what to stop, and what nobody has tried.
Before a launch or a seasonWhether the profile, the highlights and the pinned posts are ready for a wave of new visitors.
After a rebrand or a new product lineWhether a stranger landing on the account today understands what is sold now, not two years ago.
Once a quarter, as a habitA lighter version of the same eight areas, so small drifts get caught before they become the norm.
The metrics we read.
With a viewer role we can see insights. Without one, we work from what is public and say so in the document.
MetricWhere it livesWhat it tells us
ReachInsights, per post and per account, split by followers and non followers.Whether content travels beyond the people who already follow. What the number counts is explained in what accounts reached means.
Watch time and retentionReels insights and TikTok analytics, per video.The second where viewers leave. That second is the edit to fix.
SavesPost insights.Content useful enough to come back to. The strongest signal for how to and product education.
Shares and sendsPost insights.Content people vouch for. It is what carries a post to strangers.
Profile visits after a postPost insights.Which posts make a stranger curious enough to look at the rest.
Follows per postPost insights.Which posts turn that curiosity into a follow.
Link and button tapsAccount insights.Where buying intent shows up: website, call, directions, shop.
Comments and DMsRead by hand, not counted.What buyers actually ask. It is the most useful part of an audit, and no tool reads it.
We do not give an account a single grade. A score out of 100 is easy to sell and impossible to act on.
How it goes.
Four steps, and none of them is a call unless you want one.
- 01You send the handle.Public accounts need nothing else. For insights we ask for a viewer role, never a password.
- 02We read the account.Post by post, on a phone, the way your buyers see it.
- 03You get the document.Findings in order of impact, each with the fix we would make.
- 04You decide what happens next.Do it yourself, ask questions by email, or ask for a quote.
The social media audit template, column by column.
There is nothing to download. It is a spreadsheet with eleven columns, and the whole method fits in them.
ColumnWhat goes in itWhy it earns its place
DateWhen the post went out.Gaps show up as missing rows, which is the only honest way to see cadence.
FormatReel, carousel, single image, story, photo post.Sorting by format usually answers the strategy question before any of the others do.
TopicThree words, your own vocabulary.The topics that repeat in the top five are the content plan. You do not have to invent one.
HookWhat is on screen in the first two seconds.Written down, the pattern behind the posts that worked stops being a feeling.
ReachSplit into followers and non followers.One number tells you nothing. The split tells you whether the account travels.
SavesFrom post insights.The strongest signal for anything that teaches or explains a product.
SharesFrom post insights.What people will vouch for, which is what reaches strangers.
CommentsCount, and the questions inside them.Repeated questions are next month's posts, already written by your buyers.
Profile visitsFrom post insights.Which posts made a stranger curious enough to look further.
FollowsFrom post insights.Which posts turned that curiosity into something lasting.
EffortYour own estimate, in hours.The column nobody keeps, and the one that finds the format quietly eating the week for nothing.
The goal goes at the topOne sentence, above the table: what the account is for. Orders, bookings, walk ins, wholesale leads. Every column below is read against that sentence, and an account with no sentence at the top produces an audit full of numbers and no decisions.
Why there are no benchmark numbers in this template
Most audit templates hand you a target: an engagement rate to beat, a posting frequency, a follower growth figure. Ask where those numbers came from and the trail runs out in another blog post.
The platforms do not publish them. Instagram publishes the signals it uses to order a feed and does not publish a rate anyone should hit. TikTok publishes its ranking factors and no target either. Benchmarks that get quoted are usually one tool vendor's sample of the accounts that happen to use that tool, which is not your industry and not your size.
So the comparison in this sheet is against itself. Thirty posts, sorted by saves and shares, tell you which of your own content works, and that answer is true for your account in a way no industry average can be. The second audit, a quarter later, is the only benchmark worth having.
An audit is not a strategy.
Three words get used for three different pieces of work, and buying the wrong one is the most common way this goes wrong.
The workWhat it answersWhat it will not do
Social media auditWhat is happening on the accounts now, measured against what the business wants from them.It does not set the goals. It tells you whether the current content serves the ones you have.
StrategyWho the audience is, what the brand says, which platforms it says it on, and what success looks like.It does not look backwards. A strategy written without an audit is a guess with a deadline.
Content planWhat gets posted, in what format, how often, and who makes it.It does not question the direction. It executes one.
The order matters. An audit reads the performance you already have, a strategy decides where the engagement should come from next, and the plan turns that into a week of work. Most brands ask for the third, and most of the value sits in the first.
Audit, tool report, pitch deck, teardown.
Four things get called an audit. They are not the same document.
WhatMade byWhat you getWhat it cannot do
Automated reportA toolCounts: frequency, averages, best times, hashtag lists.Watch a video, read a comment, or tell you why a number moved.
Pitch deck auditAn agency, to win youProblems, framed so the answer is their retainer.Tell you what already works, because that does not sell.
Varmerk auditA person, for youEight areas, findings in order of impact, rewrites, a four week plan.See numbers you do not share with us.
Varmerk teardownA person, in publicThe same read of a public account, published on teardowns so you can judge how we think.Use insights at all. It is an outside read by design.
Questions
About the audit.
Is the social media audit really free?+
Yes. The first audit of an account is free and you keep the document. It is how we show our work before anyone pays for anything.
What do you need from me?+
The handle and an email address. If you want us to look at insights as well, a viewer role in Meta Business Suite or TikTok Business Center. We never ask for a password.
Do I have to get on a call?+
No. The audit arrives by email and stands on its own. If you want to talk it through afterwards, we are glad to.
Will you try to sell me a retainer?+
The document ends with one line saying we can run the plan if you want, and the pricing page has the numbers. There is no follow up sequence.
Can you audit TikTok as well as Instagram?+
Yes, either or both. If you run both, we also look at how content moves between them and where it should not.
How is this different from an automated audit tool?+
A tool counts. It can tell you your posting frequency and your average likes. It cannot watch your Reels and tell you that the product does not appear until second six.
Do you sign an NDA?+
Yes, on request. We also never publish anything about an account we audit unless the owner asks us to.
How long does a social media audit take?+
Three working days from the moment we have the handle. The reading takes most of a working day per platform. The writing takes as long again.
Do you have a social media audit template?+
The checklist above is the template. Copy the ten steps into a spreadsheet, add a row per post, and you have the same working document we use. We do not gate it behind an email address, because a checklist you have to trade for is not much of a gift.
How often should a social media audit be run?+
A full audit once a year and a lighter pass every quarter, plus one before any decision that costs money: ads, a new hire, a rebrand. A month is too short to separate a change in direction from a good week, and a year without a look is long enough to waste a whole content direction.
What if my account is new?+
With fewer than a dozen posts there is nothing to read yet. We will tell you that, and send a short starting checklist instead of an audit.
Do you audit YouTube, LinkedIn or Pinterest?+
Not now. We audit the two platforms we work on, Instagram and TikTok, because an audit is only as good as the auditor's hours on the platform.
What happens to my data?+
We keep the audit document and our notes. We do not add your email to a mailing list, and we delete everything on request.