How to Do a Social Media Audit (+8 Tools for Better Results)

Struggling to make sense of your social media performance? Managing multiple accounts or campaigns can feel overwhelming without the right tools.

Social media audit tools are key; without them, you might waste your budget, miss valuable insights, or overlook underperforming content.

As a seasoned strategist, I’ve tested countless tools for agencies, SMBs, and brands. In this guide, I’ll teach you how to conduct a thorough social media audit and share eight tools that analyze data, help optimize strategies, and benchmark competitors, all without breaking the bank. Let’s dive in and get your social media performance on track!

Ready to level up? Let’s dive in!

What Is a Social Media Audit?

A social media audit systematically evaluates the performance data across all your social media profiles. Social media audit pulls key metrics like engagement rate, follower count, reach, click-through rate, and conversion data from various social media platforms.

The goal? To assess whether your social media efforts align with your marketing goals and business objectives.

A comprehensive social media audit helps spot issues and provides actionable insights to optimize underperforming content, streamline social media management, and boost overall campaign efficiency.

How to Conduct a Social Media Audit? ( 9 Easy Steps)

I’ve done countless social media audits, and trust me—getting it right can make or break your social media strategy. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you audit your social media accounts like a pro.

Step 1: List All Your Active Social Media Profiles

• Create a document or spreadsheet to list every social media account your brand owns, including old or inactive profiles.
• Ensure you include all social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, etc.

Once you have a complete list, it’s time to ensure they all align with your brand’s identity.

Step 2: Check Branding Consistency

• Audit your profile pictures, bios, handles, and links to ensure brand consistency across social media channels.
• Look for outdated info, broken links, and missing brand elements like CTAs.

Next, it’s time to understand your audience and whether your content effectively reaches them.

Step 3: Analyze Audience Demographics

• Pull audience insights from native platforms (e.g., Instagram Insights, LinkedIn Analytics).
• Review demographic data such as age, gender, location, and interests to ensure you’re reaching your target audience.

Once you know your audience, you can dive into how your content performs with them.

Step 4: Review Content Performance

• Dive into your engagement metrics (likes, shares, comments, CTRs) and identify your top-performing content.
• Highlight underperforming posts and patterns that could signal content fatigue or misalignment with your audience.

Now that you’ve reviewed content performance, let’s look at how your audience has grown and engaged.

Step 5: Measure Follower Growth & Engagement Rates

• Track follower count trends, engagement rates, and audience growth over time across multiple accounts.
• Identify sharp increases or drops and dig into the possible causes.

After evaluating growth, it’s time to see how your performance stacks up against your competitors.

Step 6: Conduct Competitor Benchmarking

• Audit 3-5 competitors and benchmark your social media performance metrics against theirs.
• Look at community engagement, post frequency, content types, and follower interactions.

With this competitor data, you can assess how well your efforts are paying off.

Step 7: Evaluate Social Media ROI

• Use tools like Google Analytics to assess how much traffic and conversions your social media efforts drive.
• Compare these numbers to your business objectives and KPIs.

Identifying ROI helps spot areas for growth, so now, let’s uncover gaps and opportunities in your strategy.

Step 8: Spot Gaps & Opportunities

• Identify gaps, such as platforms you’re underutilizing or missing social media trends you could leverage.
• Suggest improvements like new content types, posting frequency adjustments, or testing new social media platforms.

Finally, it’s time to summarize everything into a clear, actionable plan.

Step 9: Prepare a Comprehensive Audit Report

• Compile findings into a social media audit template or report with clear recommendations.
• Use visual aids like graphs, heat maps, and comparison charts to present performance data.

Once your report is complete, you’ll have a clear roadmap to optimize your strategy and make informed decisions to boost your brand’s social presence.

Now that you’ve completed your audit, it’s time to equip yourself with the right tools to make the process more efficient and insightful. Here are the top tools to help you dive deeper and optimize your social media strategy.

Top 5 Social Media Audit Tools at a Glance

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of the top 5 social media audit tools to help you find the perfect fit for your business needs and budget.

For more in-depth information, here are the 8 best Facebook publishing tools that can help streamline your social media management and enhance your publishing strategy.

8 Social Media Audit Tools to Analyze & Optimize Your Social Media Performance

1. Brandwatch

Best for:

Medium to Large Businesses and Enterprises.

Rating:

4.1/5 (G2) & 4.3/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

Key features:

• Advanced Social Listening
• Sentiment Analysis
• Competitor Benchmarking
• Audience Insights & Demographics
• Crisis Detection Alerts

My Review:

When it comes to social media audit tools that deliver enterprise-grade insights, Brandwatch is one I’ve personally leaned on.

Brandwatch is a powerhouse for social listening, tracking brand mentions, and conducting sentiment analysis across multiple social media platforms. I’ve used it to dive deep into audience demographics, monitor engagement metrics, and spot emerging trends long before competitors did.

The platform’s ability to aggregate and visualize performance data across all major social channels (plus forums, blogs, and news) is a game-changer for teams that need more than surface-level metrics.

However, it’s not without flaws—expect a steep learning curve and a premium price tag, which may feel heavy for smaller teams.

Choose Brandwatch if you need enterprise-level social media audits and granular audience insights. Skip it if you’re a small team that only needs simple metrics and basic reporting.

Pricing:

Brandwatch offers three fully customizable plans tailored to users’ specific feature requirements.

Pros and Cons:

Jackie B. – 5 Stars

I’m currently still learning and going through the Academy, but so far, I love that as soon as I connected our social accounts, it generated the content we’ve already published in the past. I also love the little baseball cards that get created when people interact with out content. This is a whole new world for me!

Thomas P – 3 Stars

The user interface in browser. The user interface on desktop is acceptable but the most recent update has done more harm than good in my opinion. Eventhough there is an app available on mobile platform accessing Falcon.io via browser on mobile is bad experience.

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2. Sprout Social

Best for:

Large businesses, Enterprises, Brands, Big teams, and Businesses.

Rating:

4.4/5 (G2) & 4.4/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, Threads, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Key features:

• Social Media Analytics
• Social Media Audit Reports
• Competitor Analysis
• Audience Engagement
• Sentiment Analysis

My Review

I’ve worked with Sprout Social extensively, especially as one of the tools for social media auditing for brands and enterprises.

Sprout Social is a highly versatile social media management tool with strong auditing capabilities baked right into its analytics suite. I love how it pulls clean, visual reports on engagement metrics, audience growth, and social media performance across all major social platforms.

I’ve used it to identify underperforming content quickly, streamline social media strategies, and benchmark against competitors. Its built-in social listening and Google Analytics integration helps link social media efforts to business outcomes.

Use Sprout Social for an all-in-one audit, management, and reporting solution, but not if you require in-depth competitor analysis.

Pricing:

Sprout Social’s pricing plans are as follows: Standard ($249 per seat/month), Professional ($399 per seat/month), and Advanced ($499 per seat/month). For large Enterprises, you need to contact Sprout for pricing.

Pros and Cons:

Shane S. – 5 Stars

Sprout has it all. Analytics, content scheduling, ability to reply, etc. We use many features of Sprout and they all perform really well and consistently over time. It is easy to engage with our community with Sprout and repost UGC, a huge plus for our line of work.

Matt V. – 1 Stars

Everything else. They sign you up for a one year contract and then auto-renew you for another year. We didn’t even see the email as it went to spam. They will not let us out of the contract early. This is an overpriced system. There are dozens of other systems that do what they do for much cheaper and without these crazy ONE YEAR terms for a piece of SaaS. I was honestly stunned.

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3. Talkwalker

Best for:

Larger enterprises, Mid-size businesses, and Brands.

Rating:

4.3/5 (G2) & 4.3/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Key features:

• AI-powered Sentiment Analysis
• Crisis Detection & Alerts
• Advanced Competitor Analysis
• Audience Demographics & Behavioral Data
• Influencer Tracking & Analysis

My Review

Using Talkwalker feels like putting on X-ray glasses for your brand’s social media presence. I find this social media audit tool very useful while monitoring blogs, news, and forums—all from one dashboard.

Talkwalker is brilliant for spotting audience sentiment, brand mentions, and even visual elements like logo usage in images (thanks to its visual listening feature). For larger clients, I’ve leveraged Talkwalker to detect emerging trends, run competitive analyses, and send real-time alerts on potential PR crises.

Its AI-powered sentiment analysis and audience insights are ideal for auditing social media performance and brand reputation at scale. But here’s the flip side—it’s not as user-friendly for beginners, and smaller teams may feel overwhelmed by its depth.

In short, choose Talkwalker for global social listening and reputation audits. It’s not for those who need basic social media metrics or light competitor benchmarking.

Pricing:

Talkwater offers four pricing plans: Listen, Analyze, Business, and Premium. All Plans have Custom pricing.

Pros and Cons:

Younes B. – 5 Stars

I have been using Talkwalker for more than 3 years now. I like the depth the tool can go into bringing results. Even when a nano influencer or small media website mentions your brand, Talkwalker’s web crawlers don’t disappoint you and show you the results. In almost real-time. The email alerts are a huge time saver, too. I don’t bother signing in unless it is necessary.

Daisy K. – 4 Stars

Talkwalker isn’t without its glitches. Tagging in Talkwalker can be slow to update, without notifications when tagging is complete, and delays in updating new tags to the filters section.

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4. Hootsuite

Best for:

Brands, Large enterprises, Large businesses, and Multi-locational brands.

Rating:

4.2/5 (G2) & 4.4/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Key features:

• Cross-Platform Analytics Dashboard
• Post Performance Reports
• Team Performance Insights
• Competitor Benchmarking
• Social Listening Add-Ons

My Review

Hootsuite has been my go-to for managing multiple social media accounts while auditing social media performance for brands and multi-locational businesses.

Hootsuite has an all-in-one dashboard that lets me track engagement metrics, follower growth, and post-performance across major social platforms. I’ve used it to generate simple, customizable reports, spot underperforming content, and even assign tasks within teams for smoother workflows.

When auditing for clients, the integration with Google Analytics is super helpful in tying social media traffic to business outcomes. But here’s the catch—it’s great for standard reporting. Still, if you’re chasing deep competitor or sentiment analysis, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium version, including advanced tools like Hootsuite Insights.

The premium version offers advanced features that aren’t available in the basic version, focusing only on essentials like post-scheduling, engagement, and basic reporting.

In short, Hootsuite is great for managing and auditing social media channels. However, it may not be the best choice for those looking for an easy, intuitive interface with no learning curve.

Pricing:

Hootsuite offers three pricing plans: Professional ($99 per month/10 social accounts), Team ($249 per month/20 social accounts), and Enterprise (Custom/50 social accounts).

Pros and Cons:

Srikanth C. – 5 Stars

The scheduling option helped us to be on top of our social media marketing game. Moreover the best part is, we’re now able to see the reports across all channels in a single dashboard, helps us to manage everything under one roof.

This helped us to understand what worked and what didn’t go well.

Mohamed Y. – 3 Stars

The least helpful thing, from my point of view, is the reporting and analytics metrics. Hootsuite missed a lot of performance metrics, and also they need to add a feature that allow us to put our sentiment on each message.

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5. Agorapulse

Best for:

SMBs, Marketing Agencies, Retail, and E-commerce

Rating:

4.2/5 (G2) & 4.6/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, Google Business Profile, and TikTok.

Key features:

• Social Listening Capability
• Social Media Management
• Smart AI Image and Content Assistant
• Detailed Analytics & Reporting
• Excellent Customer Support

My Review

Agorapulse has been a reliable pick whenever I needed to audit social media accounts while juggling client management and reporting.

I’ve used Agorapulse to track engagement metrics, audience growth, and response times across major social media platforms. I appreciate the unified inbox—perfect for auditing community engagement and team responsiveness. It’s excellent for pulling competitor benchmarking reports, labeling content for deeper performance insights, and creating white-labeled client audit reports.

Agorapulse is straightforward, and the learning curve is minimal, which helps onboard tiny teams. However, I did find that its sentiment analysis and trend detection aren’t as robust as enterprise-level tools.

In short, Agorapulse is a great choice for agencies and SMBs needing client-friendly audits and engagement insights. Avoid it if you need advanced social listening.

Pricing:

Agorapulse offers four paid plans: Standard ($99 per month), Professional ($149 per month), Advanced ($199 per month), and Enterprise (Custom). There is also a Free plan.

Pros and Cons:

Verified User in Design – 5 Stars

Agorapulse is a game-changer for social media management. Its intuitive interface makes scheduling posts a breeze, and the user-friendly design ensures a seamless experience. Navigating through its broad array of features is surprisingly easy, making it a go-to platform for beginners and seasoned professionals. From analytics to collaboration tools, Agorapulse combines simplicity with functionality, making social media management a joy.

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising – 2 Stars

We had so many development issues and glitches. We were unimpressed by the lack of urgency their developers showed for finding solutions. We couldn’t trust the platform to post accurately.

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6. Iconosquare

Best for:

Creators, Brands, Enterprises, and Marketers.

Rating:

4.2/5 (G2) & 4.4/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and TikTok.

Key features:

• In-depth Visual Content Performance Analysis
• Engagement Rate Tracking
• Competitor & Industry Benchmarking
• Audience Growth & Demographic Data
• Content Labeling & Campaign Tracking

My Review

Iconosquare is one of the great social audit tools with a heavy focus on visuals—think Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

Iconosquare is fantastic for drilling into engagement metrics like saves, shares, and comments; plus, it’s one of the best tools for auditing Instagram Stories, Reels, and hashtag performance. This tool simplifies pulling competitor benchmarks and spotting trends in visual content for agencies working with lifestyle, fashion, or creator brands.

It also helps optimize posting times and delivers audience demographic insights for refining social media strategies. That said, it’s very niche—while perfect for visual-first social platforms, it lacks depth in social listening and isn’t ideal for brands looking to audit non-visual networks or sentiment analysis.

In short, Iconosquare is a no-brainer for brands prioritizing visuals and engagement audits. It’s not for those needing a broader cross-channel listening or text-heavy platform analysis.

Pricing:

Iconosquare offers three pricing plans: Launch ($39 per month/1 user), Scale ($83 per month/3 users), and Excel ($139 per month/6 users). There is also a 14-day free trial.

Pros and Cons:

Karli W. – 5 Stars

The insights available made monthly reporting a breeze at our agency. The format of everything was super intuitive and it not only saved our team time but gave deeper insights than most platforms allow.

Verified User in Individual & Family Services – 3 Stars

I wish I could more easily select which metrics I want included in my analysis csv. There’s a lot of detail I don’t need. It’s not a big deal though. I also want to be able to post stories with links and reels with text overlay.

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7. SocialPilot

Best for:

Agencies, Small to medium-sized businesses, and Social media managers

Rating:

4.5/5 (G2) & 4.4/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube, Google Business Profile, Threads, and TikTok.

Key features:

• In-Depth Page Analytics
• Post Analytics
• Most Active Likers, Commenters, and Sharers
• Audience Growth Metrics
• Hashtag Performance
• Performance Comparison with Time Filters

My Review

SocialPilot is a go-to tool for SMBs and agencies that need to audit multiple social media accounts on a tight budget.

SocialPilot is excellent for tracking engagement metrics like clicks, shares, and follower growth across multiple social media platforms. I’ve found it helpful to create white-labeled audit reports and monitor overall social media performance without overwhelming clients with data overload.

The platform identifies underperforming content quickly and optimizes posting schedules based on previous campaign insights. However, when working with more prominent brands or agencies needing deep competitor analysis or sentiment tracking.

In short, SocialPilot is ideal for freelancers, agencies, or SMBs looking for simple, effective audit reports and social media metrics. Skip it if you need social listening and competitor analysis.

Pricing:

SocialPilot offers four pricing plans: Essentials ($30 per month for 1 user), Standard ($50 per month for 3 users), Premium ($100 per month for 6 users), Ultimate ($200 per month for unlimited users, and Enterprise (Custom).

Pros and Cons:

Brookelyn W. – 5 Stars

I looked for a while to find the perfect tool for my social media marketing agency. Everything was too expensive, didn’t have exactly the tools I needed, or just didn’t work right. SocialPilot has been the best tool I’ve found! It has everything I could need! Scheduling, analytics, ease of use, affordable, and more! Highly suggest for anyone looking to run their social media channels!

Megan H. – 4.5 Stars

I wish I could run ads or boost posts through social pilot. This would help make it so I barely had to physically go onto the actual Meta platform and indivdual pages.

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8. Buffer

Best for:

Individuals, Small businesses, and Startups

Rating:

4.3/5 (G2) & 4.5/5 (Capterra)

Platforms Integrations:

Facebook, Google Business Profile, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Pinterest, Shopify, Threads, TikTok, Twitter / X, YouTube

Key features:

• Post Performance Analytics
• Engagement Rate Tracking
• Follower Growth Monitoring
• Audience Engagement Reports
• Exportable Audit Reports

My Review

Buffer has been my go-to when working with freelancers, startups, or small businesses who need simple tools for social media audits without the bells and whistles.

I’ve used Buffer to track engagement metrics like clicks, shares, and comments across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Its clean interface makes pulling basic performance reports quick and easy—ideal for clients just needing to know “what’s working.” The best time to post insights is handy for fine-tuning social media strategies, and its multi-account dashboard simplifies managing several social media profiles at once.

However, Buffer isn’t built for deep dives—there’s no sentiment analysis, competitor benchmarking, or advanced audience insights here, making it less ideal for complex audits.

In short, Buffer is perfect for small teams or individuals seeking a lightweight audit solution. Skip it if you need robust competitor data or social listening.

Pricing:

Buffer offers two pricing plans: Essentials ($6 per month/channel) and Team ($12 per month/channel). There is also a Free plan.

Pros and Cons:

StartupStage S. – 3.5 Stars

Simplcity of sending and adjusting tone and hastags by platform. However I did notice a a 20% decrease when I start using the feature. I am unsure if it was my content of a bad week for social engagement.

Jose A. – 3.5 Stars

As I said earlier, I have used Buffer for a long time with no main issues but the use of emojis was quite tedious for many years of using the tool. Recently Buffer has solved it by showing your most used emojis first to select instead of having to scroll down all the emojis if it happened you needed to select a country flag…one of the last emojis in the list, which was really annoying.

Which Social Media Audit Tool Are You Picking?

To wrap it up—auditing your social media accounts isn’t just about numbers; it’s about unlocking what’s driving your social media performance.

• If you’re after deep social listening and crisis detection, Brandwatch or Talkwalker are your powerhouses.
• Want a balance of management and audits? Sprout Social and Hootsuite won’t let you down.
• Agorapulse and SocialPilot are gems for agencies that need client-ready reports.
• If you’re running visual-first campaigns on Instagram or TikTok, Iconosquare is sharp.
• SocialPilot and Buffer? Great picks for budget-friendly, straightforward audits.

No matter where you are in your journey—freelancer or Fortune 500—there’s a tool here to sharpen your strategy and uncover actionable insights. Ready to level up your social media audit game? Let’s make every post count!