Confession…

I have absolutely watched 3 weeks of my life disappear into one piece of content. 

At least, that’s how it felt — between nailing down the subject matter expert (SME) interview, fielding six rounds of revisions, and popping into the Slack thread to save the post from sudden death by a higher-up.

Worst of all, when it finally went out… 

Crickets. 

If this sounds at all familiar, you’re in good company; small marketing teams are particularly vulnerable to this vicious cycle. And while it’s fair to blame internal misalignment and inefficient processes, there’s a deeper, more basic problem that must be solved first:  

When you’re in the habit of reporting your social media numbers instead of analyzing them, you don’t actually know why your content works or doesn’t, so you can’t effectively stop the downward spiral. Overhauling your reporting is the best long term solution, but you need a way to triage low-ROI content now.

Enter: The ‘quick and dirty’ social content audit. All you need is 1 hour and a Google Sheet.

But if you’re still tempted to save it for some magical day in the future when the team is “less busy,” here are the signs it can’t wait any longer…

1. You’re working way too hard for underwhelming results. The carousel that took 5 hours did fine, but the post you fired off on a coffee break did better — and you can’t fully explain why. 

2. It’s been months since you had an outlier post. It’s just employees and family hitting the like button. No comments. 

3. Brainstorming is harder than it used to be. Your subject matter is feeling stale and while you know you should be repurposing, you don’t know how to keep it feeling fresh. (Stay tuned for a how-to on repurposing soon.) 

4. You heard the algorithm changed and keep experimenting with tactics. But even a thorough breakdown can’t tell you exactly why your content stopped landing… so you’re basically taking shots in the dark. 

5. A big campaign is coming, and all eyes will be on your team. Your audience needs to get in the habit of engaging before that high-stakes content drops. 

6. Higher-ups have started questioning content decisions. Or worse — meddling. Their input is often off base, but without clear data to push back, you’re getting further off track trying out their ideas. 

7. Winter is coming. AKA budget season. It’s time to play defense… and “we posted 47 times last quarter” won’t cut it. 

It’s time for your team to take stock of what’s working, what’s not, and most importantly — why. (Hint: it’s not just about tactics and algorithm hacks.)

You could speed this up even more by feeding your data into AI, but it’s important to develop your own gut check. 

Because even if your AI is extremely well trained, it’ll likely lead you down an irrelevant rabbit hole, or completely miss what would be obvious to someone with true institutional knowledge of your brand and strong, well-informed instincts about your audience.

So while it’s tempting, my recommendation is that you try these steps manually first. Then run it through AI to find any additional blind spots.

Export the raw data from your priority social media platforms and dump it all into a Google Sheet. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it’s just there to help you visualize, sort, and filter. 

Start by sorting for posts with the highest views and engagement. Color-code them by highlighting the top performers for each metric. But don’t overlook the post that got low reach and unusually high saves — because if those who did see it found it valuable, that’s meaningful data. 

Consider the hours your team spent, the money invested into freelancers or UGC creators, and what no report could ever capture: the rounds of back and forth that splintered your focus, creating time confetti for two weeks straight. A 10 is a post that did all of the above, cost real money, and nearly got killed by a higher-up right before the finish line. 

This is a gut check, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Sometimes the ‘expensive’ post turns out to be worth it — but oooh man, it often is not. Let those high-effort, underperforming posts tell you what to stop making right away so you can recoup time, expenses, and sanity ASAP.  

And if it’s a higher-up’s pet project on the chopping block, you now have actual cover. Because “it underperformed” may not be very persuasive (plenty of posts underperform, and are still good for your brand) but “it ate $1K, pulled the team’s focus from other priorities, and performed in the bottom 20%” is pretty hard to argue with. 

Look at where the top performers and the low effort scores overlap, too. You might find more of that content than you’d expect. But to replicate it, you need to figure out why it worked in the first place… 

Resist the surface-level, ticky-tack explanations. Format is the first thing everyone reaches for — carousels did well, video tanked, this topic worked — but it’s almost never the full story. What you’re looking for is psychological insight about your audience. What about the angle or perspective drove them to connect with that piece — or totally ignore it? 

Then consider the algorithm. Is it selecting for saves, retention, thoughtful comments, keywords? While the audience is always more important, this plays a part. 

Jot down a few bullet points describing what you noticed. These become your guidelines for what to stop, start, and continue. When you know what works and what doesn’t, you can start optimizing for the highest return on your content investment.

Of course, the last thing you want to do is stop your team from taking risks. 

When trying out new ideas and formats, pouring effort into the occasional bomb is inevitable. And it can almost always be tweaked and repurposed into your next smash hit post. (More on this in a future newsletter.) 

After all, there’s nothing wrong with making an effort, as long as you learn from it. 

Here’s to doing more of what works,