How to do a social media audit: a step by step process for SMEs

1. Decide what social is meant to achieve

Start with the commercial objective, not the channels. Awareness in a defined market, enquiries, recruitment, customer retention and credibility for a sales team are all valid, and each one is judged on different evidence.

Write the objective down in one sentence. Everything you look at afterwards is measured against that sentence, which is what stops an audit turning into a list of interesting facts.

2. List every account you own

Find all of them, including the ones nobody has touched for two years and the regional or product accounts set up by someone who has since left. Dormant profiles still rank, still receive messages and still shape a buyer's impression of you.

For each account, record:

• The platform, handle and URL
• Who owns the login and who actually posts
• Date of the last post and the last reply to a message
• Follower count and whether the profile is verified or claimed
• Whether it should stay, be merged or be closed

3. Check the profile basics

This is the least glamorous part of an audit and usually the fastest win. Bios, profile and cover images, pinned posts, contact details, opening hours, service lists and links should be consistent and current across every platform.

Look at the profile as a buyer arriving cold. Can they tell within five seconds what you do, who you do it for and what to do next? On many SME accounts the answer is no, and no amount of content fixes that.

4. Review the audience you actually have

Use the native analytics on each platform to look at location, age, job titles or industry where available, and how the audience has grown over the last twelve months.

The question is not whether the audience is big. It is whether it is the right one. A thousand followers in your sector and region is worth far more than ten thousand who will never buy, and a follower count that grew during a competition or a giveaway usually flatters the numbers.

5. Audit the content itself

Take at least three months of posts and categorise them by theme, format and intent. Themes might be product, people, expertise, customer stories or recruitment. Formats cover static image, carousel, video, link and text. Intent is whether the post is meant to inform, entertain, prove credibility or prompt an action.

Most SME accounts discover two things here. First, that the content is far more about them than about the customer. Second, that one or two themes are quietly doing most of the work while the rest fills the calendar.

6. Look at performance, in context

For each platform, pull twelve months of data and look at:

• Reach and impressions, split between followers and non-followers
• Engagement rate by reach rather than raw likes
• Saves, shares and comments, which say more about value than a like does
• Video views and the point at which people drop off
• Click throughs to the website, and what those visitors did once they arrived
• Direct messages and enquiries received through the platform

Rank the top ten and the bottom ten posts, then look for what the top performers have in common. Nine times out of ten it is a theme or a format rather than a posting time, which is where too many audits stop.

7. Connect social to the website and to enquiries

Check the analytics on your website for social referrals, then check whether those sessions convert. If campaign tagging has never been set up, that is a finding in itself, and one worth fixing before the next quarter of activity.

Also ask sales and customer service what they hear. On LinkedIn in particular, the value often shows up as a prospect saying they have been following you rather than as a tracked click.

8. Benchmark against competitors

Pick three to five competitors, ideally a mix of direct rivals and the best operator in your sector regardless of size. Review the same things for each: posting frequency, themes, formats, tone, engagement rate and how they handle comments and messages.

The point is not to copy them. It is to find the gap. Where a whole sector posts the same product photography, the business that shows the people, the process and the problem solving stands out for very little extra cost.

9. Review the operation behind the account

Content quality is usually a symptom of how the work is organised, so check:

• Who creates, approves and publishes, and how long that takes
• Whether there is a planned calendar or a scramble each week
• What tools are being paid for and whether they are used
• How quickly comments and messages are answered
• Whether anyone reports on results, and to whom
• Whether paid promotion is running, and whether it is separated from organic in reporting

10. Turn findings into decisions

An audit that ends in observations changes nothing. The output should be a short set of decisions: which channels to keep and which to close, the three or four content themes worth committing to, a realistic posting frequency, who owns the work, and the handful of measures you will report on.

Set a baseline from the twelve months you have just reviewed, then review again after ninety days. Comparing the new numbers against a documented baseline is the only way to tell whether the changes worked or the market simply moved.

How long a social media audit takes

Run internally, expect one to two focused days for the data gathering and analysis, plus half a day to write it up in a form other people will read. It takes longer if analytics access is scattered across former employees, which is worth checking before you start.

Done properly it is not an annual ritual. Audit once to establish the baseline, then review the key measures quarterly and repeat the full exercise when the business, the market or the team changes materially.