Your 2026 Social Media Audit Guide

Happy New Year! Are you feeling refreshed and eager to jump into your business plan? Before you do, how’s your social media presence? Is it working for you, maintaining connections and making new ones, or has it been stagnant? Regardless, now is a good time for a social media audit to give yourself direction for the new year. Set aside some time this month to evaluate and review your social media in detail so you can optimize your presence and create a strategy for the rest of the year.

1. Create A List Of Your Social Accounts

   • This includes inactive accounts.

   • What accounts need to be deactivated? Not performing.

   • What needs to be prioritized? Audience is interacting.

   • What could possibly be added? Works with your top performing post styles.

     • Ex. You’re Reels are doing really well, try YouTube Shorts or Tiktok.

2. Define Your Goals

   • Should align with your marketing strategy so things are working in tandem.

   • Each platform can have different goals.

3. Check Your Branding

   • Your voice should be the same across all platforms.

   • Make sure there is consistency with your profile/banner images, bio/about, link in bio, hashtags, etc. [A good read regarding social bios.]

4. Learn About Your Audience

   • Is your current audience’s demographics aligning with your target audience?

     • If not, look at how your target audience prefers to consume content?

       1. Videos, Shorts, Carousels, Infographics, Articles, etc

       2. Focus on what they want.

     • If not, are you using their preferred platform?

       1. Focus on where they are.

5. Review Your Top Posts

   • These are posts that meet your social media goals

     • Ex. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, a post with more clicks is better than one with more likes.

   • Analyze your most successful posts to understand what resonates.

     • Find patterns (format, topics, day of the week, etc.)

     • Use this to guide future posts.

6. Track Analytics

   • Impressions (views your content is getting)

   • Reach (unique users seeing your post)

   • Engagement Rate (likes, comments, shares, saves)

     • Likes = A vanity metric, not super important.

     • Comments = Post resonated enough to elicit a comment. 

     • Shares = Post resonated was important/relevant enough to share.

     • Save = Post was solid and deserves to be referenced back.

   • Followers (see if you’re hitting your target audience)

   • Referral Traffic (website visits from social, can find in Google Analytics)

7. Analyze Your Findings

   • Gather all the information from the above steps and start reviewing.

     • Try the SWOT method.

   • This information should be the foundation to creating a strategy for moving forward on each platform.

Don’t have time to do a full audit? Write these three questions down and keep them somewhere you can easily see them each time you post.

• Does this post align with your marketing goals?

• Is this platform actually working for you?

• Is this post something that resonates with your target audience?

Here’s to a more aligned and purpose driven 2026!