Free SEO resource
Social media audit template for SEO
Free social media audit template in XLSX with a content calendar, plus the profile checks that keep your brand described consistently across search and AI answers.
A social media audit template in Excel with a channel tab that calculates cost per enquiry per channel and returns a keep-or-close verdict, a four-week content calendar with a mix counter, and 22 audit checks you can tick off on this page. It starts with the question most social audits avoid, is this channel earning the hours it costs, and ends with the profile consistency checks that matter for search.
- Best for
- Anyone running several social channels who cannot say what any of them produced
- Includes
- Excel audit + content calendar + 22 tickable checks + PDF
- Time to use
- 2 hours across all channels
Free to download and use in your own client work. No email address required.
The question most social audits avoid: is this channel earning the hours it costs?
Five channels each receiving a fifth of the necessary attention is the most common social setup I see, and the honest answer is usually fewer channels rather than more posts.
The audit checklist
Is this channel earning its place? 4
Profile basics, per channel 5
Content 5
Cadence and process 4
Measurement 4
The keep-or-close calculation
The workbook’s first tab takes followers, net growth, posts, hours, sessions and enquiries per channel, and returns cost per enquiry and a verdict:
- Hours spent, no enquiries, almost no sessions → Close or pause
- Hours spent, no enquiries, real referred traffic → Reach only, justify it
- Any enquiries → Keep
“Reach only” is a legitimate verdict, not a failure. Some channels exist for recruitment, for proof during a sales process, or for customer service. But it has to be stated, because an unstated reason is indistinguishable from a habit.
Cost per hour means your cost, not your rate
Enter what an hour of your or your team’s time actually costs. The point of the total at the bottom is the comparison: if eight channels consume twenty hours a month between them and produce two enquiries, the answer isn’t a better posting schedule.
What to post
| Type | What it is | Rough share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proof | Work you have done, results, client words, things you have built | Around 30% | The type that converts, and the type most accounts post least. |
| Useful | Something a viewer can act on without contacting you | Around 50% | Earns the right to be followed. This is where a template or a checklist does well. |
| Promotional | An explicit offer, launch or availability post | Around 15% | Works because the other 85% exists. On its own it is ignored. |
| Human | The team, the process, the mistakes | Around 5% | Cheap to make and disproportionately good at starting conversations. |
The mix matters more than the frequency. Promotional content works because the other 85% exists, on its own it’s scrolled past, which is why accounts that post only offers conclude social doesn’t work.
The proof category is the one most accounts underuse. Work you have actually done converts better than anything else you can post, and it is the hardest thing for a competitor to copy.
The calendar
Four weeks, with channel and type as dropdowns and a counter at the bottom that tallies your actual mix against the target. That counter is the point. The mix is easy to agree and hard to hold, and it drifts towards promotional whenever there’s something to sell.
The SEO reason to audit profiles, not just posts
Social channels rarely rank for anything you care about, so the SEO argument for auditing them isn’t about the posts. It is about what the profiles say.
Search engines and AI assistants both read third-party pages to work out what a brand is, and a social profile is one of the easiest of those pages for them to reach. When five profiles describe the same company five different ways, a different one-line description, an old positioning, a dead link, a company name that does not match the site, that inconsistency is what gets read.
So check these while you have every profile open anyway. None of them are in the workbook; they take ten minutes and they are the part of a social audit with an SEO payoff:
- The name field matches your site’s brand name exactly, including punctuation
- The one-line bio says the same thing your homepage title says, in the same words
- The link points at a live, canonical URL, not an old campaign page or a dead redirect
- The category or industry field is right, where the platform has one
- Abandoned profiles you are keeping are either updated or closed, not left describing a business you no longer run
An abandoned profile with a two-year-old description is worse than no profile, because it’s still being read as a current statement about you.
For the full version of this, how entity descriptions are assembled and what actually gets cited, see the AI SEO optimization checklist.
Common mistakes
- Running five channels at a fifth of the attention each needs.
- Reporting impressions and follower count instead of referred sessions and enquiries.
- Cross-posting the same content identically everywhere.
- Neglecting a channel rather than closing it, an abandoned profile still costs you credibility.
- Untagged links, so the channel cannot be defended when budgets are reviewed.
- Counting follower growth gross, so unfollows are invisible.