How To Perform An Instagram Audit On Your Own Account

Last updated on 25 March 2024

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You need to do an Instagram audit every quarter

Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms. As such, it’s really important that you have a good Instagram audit every so often to ensure you’re keeping your information up to date and relevant.

If you’re a blogger or a business owner, there is some information that you need to have on your Instagram account so people know exactly who you are, who you help, what you do, and why you do it. Utilising all of Instagram’s features is going to the most beneficial way to make the most of what this social media platform has to offer you.

5 ways to perform an Instagram audit

Taking stock of what you have featured on Instagram is not only a great way for you to showcase your expertise, your business, your blog, but it’s a good way to make sure that your information is up-to-date and relevant for your followers (as I like to call them, your community).

Here’s how to audit your Instagram account. We’re going to look at:

Profile picture
Bio
Link
Highlights
Guides

Profile picture

If you’re a blogger or business owner, it’s often a reflex to have your logo or your colours as your profile picture on social media. And sometimes that’s okay: people are going to recognise your colours and your logo and your brand when they start seeing it across different platforms.

But here’s the rub: people don’t want to see your logo, no matter how stunning a design it is. People want to see people.

And Instagram is a visual platform. People are on Instagram for the images, the visual pieces of information that they can learn from. And because of that, they want to see faces.

Think about it. You’re more likely to get chatting to someone who you can visualise, right? You don’t want to be talking to a logo. You want to be talking to a person. With a face. A human.

Action: change your profile picture to your face. Use something like Canva to colour the background if you want it to stand out a little more.

Instagram Bio

If your profile picture is where you show people your face, your bio is where you show people how you can help, encourage, or inspire them.

Your bio is made up of:

Name
Category
Description

Make sure you’re not doubling up on information. If your handle has your name in it, you don’t need to have your name in your Name and your description. Once is enough, and Instagram gives you character limits, so you need to save as many characters as you can.

Name: Include your name (if it’s not in your handle) and what you are.
Eg: Anjali | Content Creator & Blog Coach
Category: If you have a business account (highly recommended), you can choose a category of business. There’s plenty to choose from. Mine is Blogger. This will show below your Name.
Description: Again, make sure you’re not doubling up on information. Visitors to my profile already know my name is Anjali, that I’m a content creator and a blog coach. They also know I’m a blogger. My description, therefore, should focus on how exactly I help people. Something like: I help women with their blogs by equipping them with the skills and resources they need to grow them with confidence.

Action: Review and rewrite your bio so it’s catchy but also information, being sure not to double up your information.

Link

You get one link for your Instagram bio, so make it a good one.

If you don’t want to lead people to just one page (e.g. your website or your blog) but you want them to be able to discover more of what you provide, offer, or write about, create your own Link in Bio page on your blog or website and link that up instead. This means you have multiple links listed within the single link you get on Instagram.

Action: Either choose a good link from your blog or website or create your own Link in Bio page.

Highlights

Your highlights are like your best-of collections. They need to contain the best of your stories but also the best of you.

When people are new to your account, one of the things they’ll do is take a look through your highlights to discover who you are, what you blog about, how you can help them, and even how they can work with you. If you don’t have your highlights up to date then you’re leading people on with false information.

While you’re there, do your highlights have eye-catching covers that match your brand or blog colours? The more consistency you have across the platforms, the easier it is for people to connect the dots and recognise you and your content.

Some ideas for highlights: About, Start Here, The Blog, Work With Me, Client Feedback, Mini Training/Tutorials, Resources etc.

Action: Check that the information you’ve shared previously in your highlights is up to date. If it’s not, create some new stories to add to them. Be sure you have good highlight covers.

Guides

In 2020, Instagram released a feature called Guides. Designed with shopping in mind, Guides allow you to collect together various posts which you can then label with a theme or topic. But it’s not just for collections of great shoes or dresses.

You can create Guides on any topic. For example, check out my Social Media Tips guide for posts on Instagram, Twitter, and more. Or my Pinterest Tips guide for all the posts I’ve shared that are about Pinterest.

People who are new to your account aren’t necessarily going to do a big scroll through all your posts to find out what you’ve shared in the past. But they might a) check out your highlights and b) see summaries of topics in your guides.

Action: Create a Guide or two and then let people know about it by sharing the guide to your Story.

💡 Update: Guides are no longer a thing in 2023.

With a little bit of care, thought-out wording and a bit of collection-creating, you’ll have a brilliantly audited Instagram account in no time. It will be up to date and useful for your community.

Is it time to do an Instagram audit on your account? What is one thing you could change up this week?