How to audit social accounts you inherited
Taking over an account means taking over somebody else's decisions, most of which were never written down. An audit is not a report for a folder; it is the half-day that tells you what to keep, what to stop and what to fix first.
Here is the process, in the order that produces answers fastest.
The half-day process#
- Export the last twelve months of posts with their reach and engagement.
- Sort by reach and read the top ten and the bottom ten. Patterns appear immediately.
- Count posts per month to find the gaps, and ask what was happening in the quiet months.
- Check what the account says it is: bio, pinned post, link. Is it still true?
- Read the last fifty comments and messages and note what people actually ask.
- Write three sentences: what works, what does not, what nobody has tried.
What to look for#
| Signal | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| A few posts far above the rest | You have a format and did not notice |
| Steady decline over months | Frequency dropped or the format aged out |
| High reach, no enquiries | The content is entertaining but not connected to what you sell |
| Comments asking the same question | A content series is sitting in your inbox |
| Long gaps | Production was never resourced |
Housekeeping worth doing once#
Fix the bio so it says what you sell and to whom. Make the pinned post the one that answers the most common question. Check that the link works and goes somewhere relevant. These take twenty minutes and improve every future post's conversion.
Do not delete old posts wholesale. History is context, and a thin archive looks worse than an uneven one.
What an audit should end with#
Not a slide deck. One page: the format worth repeating, the platform worth dropping, the question worth answering in a series, and the number you will watch for the next quarter.
Frequently asked questions
How often should we audit?
Once a year, plus whenever the account changes hands. More often and you are reacting rather than measuring.
Do we need an audit tool?
No. Native exports plus a spreadsheet answer the questions that matter.
What if there is no historical data?
Then the audit is shorter: fix the bio, pick one format and start measuring from today.
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