What a social media audit costs in the UK

Key takeaways

Social media audit cost in the UK is indicatively £300–£1,500 for a professional audit, based on 4 to 15 hours of work. The price depends on the number of channels and whether paid campaigns and tracking are reviewed. Free audits are sales tools, which is fine if you read them that way.

• £300–£1,500 is the indicative cost of a professional social media audit.
• That reflects 4 to 15 hours, depending on channels and ad accounts.
• A useful audit ends with a short, ranked list of actions.
• A free audit is a sales conversation, not an independent review.

What is a social media audit?

A social media audit is a structured review of a business's social media accounts, content, audience, paid activity and tracking, measured against its goals. It shows what is working, what is wasting time and what to change first.

• Social media agency pricing in the UK
• Social media audit checklist for small businesses

How much does an audit cost?

At the £75–£100 an hour implied by typical UK retainers, a light audit of two channels taking about 4 hours costs around £300–£400. A full audit including ad accounts, tracking and competitors takes up to 15 hours, or about £1,100–£1,500. These are indicative figures, not a GBL price list.

• Two-channel profile and content audit: indicative £300–£600.
• Audit including paid campaigns: indicative £600–£1,000.
• Full audit with tracking and competitors: indicative £1,000–£1,500.

• Social media project pricing: one-off work costed

What should a paid audit cover?

A paid audit should cover six areas and finish with priorities. If it only reports follower counts and posting frequency, it is a snapshot, not an audit. The value is in linking activity to enquiries and saying what to stop.

• Profiles: accuracy, branding, links and contact routes.
• Content: what earned replies, clicks and enquiries.
• Audience: who follows and whether they can buy.
• Paid: spend, targeting and cost per enquiry.
• Tracking: whether enquiries can be traced to source.
• Access: who owns and controls each account.

• Set up UTM tracking for social media

Is a free audit worth having?

Yes, with care. A free audit from an agency is a sales tool, so it will find problems the agency can fix. It can still be useful as a second opinion. Ask for specifics, such as which posts drove enquiries, and discount anything that only says post more.

• Agencies that promise viral content: the red flags

When should you do the audit yourself?

Do it yourself when you have one or two channels and no paid campaigns. A checklist and two hours is enough. Pay for an audit when ad spend is significant, when you are about to change agency, or when nobody in the business can say whether social media produces enquiries.

• A monthly social media review you can do in 30 minutes

What makes an audit poor value?

An audit is poor value when it produces a long list with no order, or when nothing changes afterwards. Twenty recommendations of equal weight are harder to act on than three ranked ones. Ask for the top three actions and the expected effect of each.

What should you do with the findings?

Turn the findings into a 30-day plan. Fix access and tracking first, because they make everything else measurable. Then stop the activity with no return, and move that time to the formats that produced enquiries. Re-check the same numbers after 90 days to see what the changes did.

• Week 1: fix ownership, access and tracking.
• Week 2: update profiles, links and contact routes.
• Weeks 3 to 4: stop weak formats, repeat the strong ones.
• Day 90: re-measure against the audit.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see when auditing UK small business accounts: page ownership sits with a former employee, tracking is missing, and the best-performing posts are the ones showing real work. Fixing access and tracking first makes every later pound easier to judge.

• See client work
• Social Media Marketing for UK businesses

Audit buying checklist

Agree these before commissioning an audit.

• Which channels and ad accounts are in scope.
• The goal the audit measures against.
• A ranked list of actions as the output.
• A call to walk through the findings.
• Read-only access where possible.

Next step

Send us links to your profiles and tell us what you want social media to do. We will tell you what an audit should look at first.