You’ve been running the account for a year. Posts go out, but it feels stuck: reach goes up and down, DMs bring fewer leads than you’d like, and you can’t tell what to fix first — the visuals, the captions or the posting times. An agency will happily run an audit and send back a 40-slide deck, half of it screenshots of your own Insights.
Most problems can be found without an agency in one evening, as long as you check against a list instead of eyeballing it. Below are 20 checks in four blocks: profile, content, numbers and conversations. Each scores 0, 1 or 2, for a maximum of 40. At the end: how to read the total and turn it into a one-month plan. The checklist is written for Instagram, but 15 of the 20 checks work as-is for Telegram, Threads and Facebook.
Prep: 20 minutes and one spreadsheet
- Period: the last 90 days. Shorter is noise, longer is stale.
- Every brand account, including the forgotten ones. The Facebook Page someone created “just in case”, the TikTok with four videos from two years ago. For each: keep running it, freeze it with a pinned “we’ve moved here” post, or delete it.
- Stats. On Instagram: professional dashboard → Insights, last 90 days. If some of the numbers are a mystery, here’s every Insights metric explained.
- A sheet with four columns: check, score, note, fix. Scoring: 0 — missing or bad, 1 — partly there, 2 — fine.
- A second phone or a friend’s account to see your profile the way a stranger does.
The one rule: score what exists, not what you intended. “We were going to update the pinned posts” is a 0.
Block 1. Profile: 5 checks, 10 points
| Check | Score 2 if… |
|---|---|
| Name field | It has a keyword and a city: “Maya · Nail studio Brooklyn”, not just “Maya” |
| Bio | In 150 characters it says what you do, who it’s for and what a follower gets |
| Link and buttons | The link opens on mobile and lands on the right page; there’s a contact button |
| Pinned posts and Highlights | All three pins are current; Highlights cover prices, reviews and how to find you |
| Consistency | Same avatar, handle and bio across networks; no abandoned accounts |
The stranger test: hand your phone to someone who doesn’t know the business, show them the profile for five seconds and ask what you do and roughly what it costs. If they can’t answer the first question, “Bio” gets a 0, however nice it looks.
Block 2. Content: 5 checks, 10 points
| Check | Score 2 if… |
|---|---|
| Content pillars | You can name 3–5, and 80% of the last 90 days’ posts fit one of them |
| Consistency | No gaps longer than two weeks |
| First lines | In 7 of the last 10 posts the first line is a hook, not “Hey everyone!” |
| Formats | Reels, carousels and Stories are all in use, not only single photos |
| Selling balance | Direct selling is no more than one post in four or five |
The five-minute first-line test: copy the opening lines of your last ten posts into a note, one under the other. Read as a column, it’s obvious how many you’d tap “more” on yourself. A second quick test is the grid: if three posts in a row look identical — the same text-card template — someone arriving from a recommendation won’t see that you have anything different to offer.
If the account reposts other people’s Reels with watermarks, “Formats” is an automatic 0: Instagram demotes unoriginal content in recommendations, no matter how good the rest is.
Block 3. Numbers: 5 checks, 10 points
There’s no universal benchmark here: a 2% engagement rate means one thing for an account with 200,000 followers and another for a café with 1,500. So compare yourself with yourself — the last 90 days against the 90 before. Engagement rate is missing from this block on purpose: there are three ways to calculate it and they disagree. If you track it anyway, here’s how to count engagement rate honestly.
| Check | Where to find it |
|---|---|
| Average reach per post | Insights → Reach, compare periods |
| Non-follower share of Reels reach | Each Reel’s insights → Reach |
| Shares + saves per 1,000 reach | Each post’s insights; you do the math |
| Profile visits → follows | Insights → Profile visits and Follows |
| Top 5 vs bottom 5 posts | Sort posts by reach |
For the first four: 2 — up or flat, 1 — down by up to 20%, 0 — down by more, or you couldn’t find the number. The fifth: 2 if you can explain in one sentence what separates the top five from the bottom five (“the top ones are carousels with prices, the bottom ones are interior shots with no text”), 0 if you can’t.
Block 4. DMs, comments and leads: 5 checks, 10 points
| Check | Score 2 if… |
|---|---|
| DM response time | Within an hour during business hours |
| Real answers | ”How much is it?” gets a price or a range, not “sent you a DM” followed by silence |
| Comments | Questions answered within a day; criticism isn’t quietly deleted |
| Path to purchase | Two steps max from post to lead: post → DM, or post → bio link → form |
| Lead tracking | You know how many enquiries came from social in the last 90 days — from a sheet, CRM or promo code |
The mystery shopper: from another account, DM “Hi, how much is [your most popular service]?” at 11 a.m. on a weekday and time the reply. Then do it again on Saturday evening. For many businesses this is the most uncomfortable and most useful check in the whole audit: strong content that sends people to an inbox that answers a day later is running on empty.
How to tie posts to leads without expensive analytics is covered in social media metrics that convince a CFO.
Adding it up and making a plan
| Total | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 32–40 | The system works | Fine-tuning: 1–2 format experiments a month |
| 20–31 | One block is failing | Fix the lowest-scoring block, leave the rest alone for a month |
| 0–19 | No foundation | Start with the profile and DMs: without them, content doesn’t turn into leads |
Read the result by block, not just the total. 30 points with “DMs” at 2 out of 10 isn’t “almost good” — it’s a hole every lead drains through.
Then pick three fixes, no more. Good: “rewrite the bio, update the pins, one-hour DM reply rule”. Bad: “improve content”. After 30 days, recheck the items you fixed; run the full audit once a quarter over the same 90-day window so the comparison stays honest.
Bonus: run one competitor’s account through blocks 1 and 2 (you can’t see their numbers). It often shows what’s off with yours faster than your own stats do.
When an audit won’t help
- The account is under three months old. There’s nothing to compare against, and small numbers swing on a single lucky Reel. Just keep the rhythm.
- The problem isn’t social media. If your price is above market or buyers don’t like the product, the audit will say “all good” and leads still won’t come.
- The audit is the deliverable. A 40-point spreadsheet nobody turns into three concrete tasks is a wasted evening.
- You graded yourself too gently. All 2s and no sales? Ask a colleague to go through the checklist again with fresh eyes.
- Bought followers. While the audience is full of bots, block 3 numbers lie: clean up first, audit second.
A quarterly re-audit is easier when the trend data already sits in one place. In Repost21, account analytics for Instagram, YouTube and Threads show reach and followers by period, and the content calendar keeps two-week gaps from happening — that covers a couple of checklist items without extra willpower. Try it free.