Building a social media presence for your brand on Instagram definitely increases your chances of success and improves your ROI.
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1.4 billion users worldwide in 2024. Your chances of getting noticed will increase if you promote your products and services on Instagram.
To ease your work and make sure you're on the right track, you need to measure your performance and results regularly. This evaluation helps you establish what is working in your strategy and what changes you need to implement.
So let’s learn how to audit an Instagram account, by understanding what it is, why it matters and how to do it right.
How to audit your Instagram content
1. What is an Instagram audit and why is it useful
An Instagram account audit is a complete review of your Instagram content and strategy. As a result of this analysis, you will make sure that every post you share has a purpose and contributes to your brand's objectives in a meaningful way.
This analysis will inform you whether you are moving in the right direction with your marketing strategy.
2. How to perform an Instagram audit
Now that we've explored what is an Instagram audit, we can take the next step and start learning how to do an Instagram audit for an account you manage.
So let's go over this Instagram audit checklist together and see how it's done:
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Set your goals and KPIs
When you first put up your brand’s Instagram profile, make sure the first things you establish after setting your account are your goals.
Sure, your Instagram profile should reflect your brand’s values and objectives and the first impression is extremely valuable.
That is why you have to make sure your logo, name, bio and links are all in line with your brand.
If your goal is to increase your follower count, generate leads or sales, you should consider making a list and then filling a spreadsheet with the steps you have to take to attain those goals.
Make sure that you set attainable and realistic expectations and that your timespan for this is long enough to do it right, without being under pressure.
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Review your profile information
In case you have had an Instagram account for your business for many years, but just now it has occurred to you that it’s time for an audit, you have to make sure everything is in order.
Start by evaluating the way your profile looks like and make the necessary adjustments to inspire followers, clients and future clients.
Even if your Instagram bio has a limit of 150 characters, you need to comprise there the essence of your brand. You also need to make sure all the info displayed is accurate, up to date and relevant for your industry.
Tip: Instagram recently introduced the option to add up to 5 links to your Instagram bio, so be sure to also take advantage of this feature.
With this new option, you can connect multiple brand-related resources and keep them in your bio permamently, for ease of access.
A review of these sections in your profile might be the best medicine for an Instagram page with a low engagement rate.
At the end of the day, your brand should have a unique, cohesive identity on Instagram. This is how you get recognized and remembered by followers.
If they get a sense of novelty perfectly combined with professionalism, then you are doing the right thing.
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Research your community and followers
We all know that making clients happy is part of the job, but make sure you do not lose your identity and purpose along the way.
Otherwise, you will be doing everything for the applause, instead of building a business that is truly meaningful for you.
Research what your followers’ interests are and maybe consider a social listening tool to find out what they are saying about your brand behind your back.
Their feedback will surely help you grow and perfect your work. A third-party analytics tool, like Socialinsider, could help you fill in the demographics section in your report.
By using an advanced tool, you can learn about your followers’ location, gender, age group, work environment and their interests. All this data can help you adapt your content and improve it.
You can change your posting hours depending on when your followers are most active and you can adjust your content depending on the latest trends in your niche.
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Remove fake followers
As part of your regular Instagram follower audit, you might discover fake followers.
This type of followers can become your brand’s Instagram page’s greatest enemies. They are bots or accounts specifically designed to boost follower count for brands. These accounts do not belong to active, engaged users.
If they have no followers and 0 to 10 posts, they are definitely fake accounts with no human being behind it.
Another trigger for you should be the fact that they do not have a profile picture or have numbers in their username.
After you spot these accounts, make sure you delete them from your following community and block them.
This way, you make sure they won’t create more similar accounts to follow you.
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Review your Instagram content mix
This step in your Instagram profile audit process is available only if you've had an Instagram account for a longer period of time.
Maybe you want to radically change the way people perceive you so you need a fresh start.
This means that you have to review your Instagram content. You can do that easily with a social media analytics tools like Socialinsider.
You can share many different content formats: Instagram Stories, carousels, Reels, Instagram Lives, or Guides.
In the end though, it's better to keep only content that you are proud of and which performs well.
If, for instance, as part of an Instagram audit, you discover that Reels are the content format that generates the highest amount of engagement, you might want to consider sharing more Reels.
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Consider your branding and voice
Your brand’s Instagram account should mirror your values and goals. Building your own voice should be a walk in the park if you show people you are a person who wants to tell their story.
It is always important to keep your human part in order to make people resonate with your brand.
No matter of how your road to success looks, telling your own, raw story will make people empathize.
And when you turn on the empathy switch in people, you attract more followers and potential customers by just keeping it natural.
Make sure you are consistent on all your social media platforms. The way you “look” on social media, as a brand, could be a make-or-break factor.
If you have a story and a purpose, this will be enough to build your own voice.
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Check your engagement levels
One of the easiest ways to check if your strategy is working, as part of an Instagram page audit, is to check your engagement levels. That way, you will begin to understand if your audience is responding to your content the way you want it to.
You can do this by taking a look at Instagram's native analytics, but for a full picture you should use a social media analytics tool like Socialinsider.
Make sure to check engagement in all its variations - total engagement, engagement rate, engagement by reach, post types by engagement - each one of these will give clues on how invested your followers are in the content you share.
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Examine your posting frequency
To examine your posting frequency, you could keep an eye on your competitors and see how often they post and what type of content they use.
By taking a look at demographics, you find out when your followers are most active. This way, you’ll know what are the best posting times to encourage them to engage.
When taking these factors into account, you manage to establish some posting hours and posting frequency to build a community around your brand and fuel brand recognition.
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Review your hashtag strategy
If you are using hashtags, make sure you choose the popular ones in your industry, those which are in line with your products and interests.
Hashtags also represent a great growth strategy, opening new doors and offering opportunities for those who don’t know how to propagate their content.
Use a mix of niche hashtags and branded hashtags to transform the name of your brand into a star.
If you are one of the users wondering whether to put your Instagram hashtags in the caption or in the first comment, you should know that either of these is ok.
Keep in mind that community-oriented hashtags, hashtags that are relevant to your industry can help you get noticed by your target audience.
And most importantly, as part of your regular Instagram account audit, keep tabs on your hashtag performance, to see which one perform best.
Check Instagram benchmarks
Whether you're using a tool like Socialinsider to check industry benchmarks or you're consulting a annual benchmarks report , you need check if your results are on par with the industry average - particularly when it comes to engagement rates.
Placing your Instagram audit report results into context will make your analysis more grounded and accurate, and you'll have a far better idea if you're on the right path or not.
3. Main benefits of an Instagram audit
It's good to analyze your strategies and periodically perform an Instagram profile audit because there are plenty of benefits.
By conducting an Instagram audit, you'll be able to see:
- what is the most liked, commented, and shared content on your Instagram account
- review your strategy - you might discover that your old strategy worked better than your new one
- see what Instagram posts no longer comply with your strategy, tone of voice, or brand values
4. 10 tools to perform an Instagram audit
Now that you’ve learned how to perform an Instagram audit for your brand, you should also know what tools could help you in the process.
Here we provided a list of top Instagram audit tools that can be crucial in your process of reviewing Instagram content.
1. Socialinsider
Socialinsider is a top-notch analytics tool that can be extremely useful in conducting an Instagram account audit. The tool is also adaptable when it comes to performing any kind of social media audit, pulling data from a massive database.
2. Brandwatch
Another useful Instagram audit tool is Brandwatch. This app offers you a lot of insights regarding best posting times. Also you will find a lot of guidance for the hashtags you should use according to your niche.
3. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is one of the best tools for conducting an Instagram audit. With this app, you are going to discover how to assess your Instagram performance depending on the specific timespan you set.
4. Phlanx
Phlanx is a tool that can really ease your marketing job. Besides helping you establish collaborations with influencers and assessing Instagram influencer audit, you can also audit your brand’s profile.
5. Emplifi
Emplifi is a marketing platform that offers you numerous tools to analyze your social media performance, including Instagram audit. The tool provides statistics about your Instagram account, helping you keep a close eye on your evolution.
6. Smartmetrics
Smartmetrics is an Instagram audit tool which can offer over 30 metrics for your brand’s account. So you get in-depth details about your content’s performance while your campaign unfolds.
7. Minter.io
With Minter.io , you get data about your brand’s growth, popular metrics like engagement and views, demographics and reach rate. Basically, you obtain all the needed data to conduct an Instagram audit.
8. Iconosquare
Iconosquare is another Instagram audit tool meant to help you gain insights during your marketing campaign. The app is also equipped with a unique function where they send you a review about your strong and weak points. Isn’t that fantastic?
9. HypeAuditor
HypeAuditor is suitable for both Instagram and YouTube audit, offering you in-depth information about your brand’s accounts. The data could be easily included in your report when developing your Instagram audit.
10. Quintly
Another useful analytics tool for your business is Quintly. The app offers you the chance to develop your audit based on the KPIs you set for your brand. It can assess more than 350 metrics to help you really get a grip of your Instagram performance.
Final Thoughts
With the help of an Instagram audit, you can easily decide what changes you need to adopt for your marketing campaign.
This type of thorough analysis, in which you closely look at the results of your posts, helps you better know your audience and learn more about how much you can expand.
By performing an Instagram audit, you will be able to get the broader picture about your brand, the quality of your work and how your products and services are perceived by your clients.
Hopefully this complete guide on how to audit an Instagram account will come in handy next time you want to take a good look at your data.
Frequently Asked Questions about Instagram Audit
1. What questions should I ask in an Instagram audit?
Some of the most important questions you should ask you during an Instagram audit are:
- Is my profile bio up to date with the latest business information and does it include all the key links to my website?
- Does my Instagram grid have a strong, on-brand visual identity?
- How many followers have I gained and what is my follower growth rate? Are there any of them fake?
- How engaging is my Instagram content? Which content format brings me the highest levels of engagement?
- How relevant is my content to my target audience?
- Is my hashtag strategy working? If not, how can I improve it?
- What are my goals for Instagram and how close am I to meeting them?
2. What is the Instagram audit report?
An Instagram audit report is just a document / spreadsheet / slide deck that includes all the data and findings of your Instagram audit.
