Regular TikTok audits are the secret to working smarter on the fastest-growing platform on social. Just ask Alex Lewis, Senior Social Media Strategist at Abercrombie & Fitch Co.
Lewis leads organic TikTok content strategy for Hollister and Gilly Hicks, two retail brands that operate under the Abercrombie & Fitch Co. umbrella. In his role, he’s responsible for using data to bring their respective brand strategies to life on the platform. Just before the new year, he audited the brands’ TikTok presences so teams can deliver high-performing content more consistently.
“We want to help drive efficiencies for all the teams that support our TikTok presence,” says Lewis. “With that in mind, I knew a social media audit would help us gain a better understanding of our content’s performance and audience engagement over the past year.”
Lewis generously guided us through this work, so you can replicate his approach with your own brand. In this article, we’ll share his tips—including how to share your findings with your team.
What is a TikTok audit?
A TikTok audit is the process of reviewing your company’s TikTok account point-by-point. That includes your profile set up, content strategy, trends in engagement—everything that contributes to your performance on the platform.
This research contributes to a greater understanding of what’s working for your brand on TikTok. Your findings may also supply ideas for creative testing to optimize your brand’s TikTok presence.
The benefits of a TikTok account audit
Lewis learned a lot from auditing the Hollister and Gilly Hicks TikTok accounts. Some of those learnings have already translated into wins that have streamlined content production and boosted performance.
Here are just a few ways conducting a TikTok audit can drive similar benefits for your brand:
Refining your strategy
A TikTok audit offers an opportunity to dig deeper into your strategy, providing the context necessary to give your metrics more meaning.
Alex Lewis
Senior Social Media Strategist (TikTok), Abercrombie & Fitch Co.
These insights are more than just helpful—they serve as a roadmap to refining your approach on the platform. In Lewis’ case, his work highlighted the content worth prioritizing, allowing the social team to focus on quality over quantity. “We’re not just putting stuff on the calendar just to meet a publishing quota. We’re ensuring that the content we share has a strong chance of performing well for us.”
Improving collaboration
TikTok is a team effort. Whether you have a full creative team backing you or a handful of colleagues ready to appear on camera, creating content for the platform truly takes a village.
Content creation for the Hollister and Gilly Hicks accounts is a collaborative effort shared by cross-functional partners across the social, influencer, public relations and product teams—not to mention the stylists and creators that make the merchandise shine. Findings from the brands’ TikTok audit ensure optimal use of everyone’s time. It also provides a meaningful opportunity to acknowledge their contributions.
“It’s an exciting way to celebrate the team members that worked so hard to make these achievements possible,” says Lewis. “TikTok is such a joint effort, so it’s important to circulate praise beyond just the social team.”
Advocating for more resources
In 2023, Abercrombie restructured their social media team for a more platform-specific approach. Through his TikTok audit, Lewis found that a considerable amount of followers across the Hollister and Gilly Hicks accounts began following after shifting to this new structure.
“It’s been really interesting to see how our performance has changed since we started dedicating more resources to the channel,” says Lewis. “It’s fun to look back and see that all that work did play a significant role in our success.”
Findings from your audit can be used to make the case for more social media team resources, whether that be headcount, budget or software. Use the audit to showcase how added resources impacted performance, and how bandwidth limitations are holding you back.
How to conduct a TikTok account audit
The key to a great TikTok audit is going as in-depth as your bandwidth and limitations will allow. “You might not be able to go as deep as you’d like to go, but you can still set aside time to cover your brand’s priorities,” says Lewis.
Let your goals guide your audit and frame what “success” looks like. Here’s a process you can use to set the foundation for your approach:
1. Optimize your TikTok profile and branding
How frequently do you visit a TikTok profile after coming across an intriguing post on your For You Page? That first glance often determines whether users decide to hit the follow button.
Kick off your TikTok audit with a profile wellness check. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you review your setup:
- Branding: Create consistency by ensuring your profile picture and TikTok bio aligns with your brand standards and personality.
- CTAs: TikTok Business account owners can add a link to their bio, creating more opportunities to drive traffic to a relevant page of your website. You can also link Instagram and YouTube profiles to grow your following across the web.
- Pinned Posts: Pinning a post ensures it stays at the top of your profile so it’s front and center for any visitors. Ensure this real estate is used well by dedicating it to your top performing posts, or posts that showcase core brand elements.
- Playlists: TikTok Playlists allow businesses to categorize their public videos so that viewers can watch related content in a single scroll. If you haven’t already, set up playlists that group similar posts so users can easily find what they’re looking for.
2. Conduct a TikTok follower audit for engagement and authenticity
A TikTok audit isn’t just about what you publish, it’s also about who interacts with it. “We use social media tools to keep a close eye on what our audience is saying in comments and across platforms,” says Lewis. “That’s how we get a fuller picture of how people are interacting with our respective brands.”
Audit your following using native TikTok analytics or a tool like Sprout Social to:
- Examine your follower growth rate: Monitor how your account is growing month-over-month. If you’re seeing healthy, steady growth then you may want to consider making TikTok a bigger priority.
- Weed out fake TikTok followers: Bot accounts plague every social media platform, including TikTok. If you leave them unchecked, they can skew your engagement rate for the worse.
- Identify influencers engaging with your content: Look for the emerging and established creators lurking within your follower list. These are warm leads for future creator partnerships.
This effort can yield just as many findings as your content audit. It certainly did for Lewis. “One of the biggest lessons that we took away from our audit is to lean more heavily on our community of creators, whether they’re larger accounts, customers or store team accounts. They showcase our clothes in a really engaging way.”
3. Evaluate your publishing strategy with a TikTok content audit
The secret to collecting juicier insights with your TikTok content audit? Start quantitative, then go qualitative.
“I looked at our top fifty highest performing videos from 2023, based on views and engagements,” explains Lewis. “I also pulled our fifty lowest-performing videos. Then, I went post-by-post and listed the content format, the focus of the video and what kind of sound we used.”
Use a TikTok analytics tool to save yourself the time it would take to manually identify your highest and lowest-performing posts. Sprout Social’s TikTok Profiles Report can deliver a performance snapshot of all the content published within a given period, so you can jump right into analysis.
Once you have that information, you can look for performance trends based on the following criteria:
- Post format: Examine which content formats resonate most with your audience. Do carousels elicit a response? Or trending filters? Also, check to see if certain video lengths perform better than others.
- Content topics: Dig into what your audience likes to see from your brand. Is it promotional content? Memes? Content from influencers and creators? Figure out what works and what doesn’t.
- Audio use: Social’s traditionally been a visual medium, but TikTok brought audio into the mix. A TikTok audit isn’t complete until you look into how trending sounds influence content performance.
- Publishing cadence: Social media consistency is a simple practice that can drive major results, especially on a platform as fast-paced as TikTok. Once you’ve reviewed your posts individually, check to see how your publishing cadence impacts performance over time.
You’ll find takeaways you can apply to your content strategy going forward, even if you review less than one hundred posts. According to Lewis, it matters more that you review an even mix of high and low-performing content.
“Don’t just keep it to the wins,” advises Lewis. “Take a look at what underperformed, too. What patterns do you see? Are there outliers in that content? What can you learn from it all?”
4. Analyze competitor strategies and positioning
A quick competitive analysis allows you to evaluate your performance in comparison to other brands and relevant accounts on TikTok.
Lewis’ teammates stepped in to help him with the competitor portion of his TikTok audit. “It gave us a better sense of the overall content landscape on the platform.”
To add the same layer to your audit, choose three to five competitors and do a brief analysis of their presence on TikTok. How many followers and likes do they have? How often and what do they publish? There’s a lot you can learn from a quick profile review.
5. Synthesize your findings and share with your team
Your brand’s performance on TikTok can inform more than just your social strategy, but only if you share your findings across your team.
After completing your audit, present your insights in a format that is easily understandable to a broad audience. Highlight key findings, share links to top-performing posts and identify opportunities for future testing. This can take a lot of shapes, depending on your preference. If you love a good deck, this social media presentation template will help streamline the creation process.
With that in mind, remember the work isn’t done once you hit send or finish presenting. To truly get the information to stick, you need to reiterate your insights when the appropriate moment strikes. “There are a lot of ways you can go about socializing your findings,” says Lewis. “A lot of times, it’s just sharing anecdotes during meetings with cross-functional partners and leadership.”
Conduct a TikTok audit that levels up your strategy
The social media landscape moves fast. It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day content creation and publishing calendars. However, truly effective strategies are made when marketers take a moment to pause and evaluate their content.
Setting aside some time to audit your TikTok strategy will set you up for greater success in the future. While you’re at it, make space to review your strategies across platforms. It may sound like a lot of work, but this handy social media audit template breaks it down into manageable steps. Download it today, so you can work smarter tomorrow.
