Instagram Audit
An education brand with around 5,000 followers was posting and getting nothing back — 6.6 likes per post on average, and 24 of the last 25 posts had zero comments. I pulled 8 months of live data, benchmarked it against the sector, and turned the diagnosis into an operator playbook with a 30-day roadmap.
An active account engaging at one-tenth the sector floor — with no clear answer why.
An evidence-based audit isolating 4 root causes plus a playbook the team could run Monday.
The account was technically active — posts going up, content getting made, brand assets in place. But the numbers told a different story. Engagement rate sat at 0.14%, against a 1–3% sector floor for education accounts of that size. Average likes per post landed at 6.6, where 45–137 would be expected for a 4–5K-follower edu account. Twenty-four of the most recent twenty-five posts had zero comments.
The team didn't need someone to tell them engagement was low — they could see that. They needed someone to tell them why, with evidence, and what to do Monday.
I pulled 8 months of post-level data live from the account — no estimates, no extrapolation. Each post got tagged by format, hook style, hashtag mix, posting day, and time-since-last-post. Numbers got scored against education-sector benchmarks rather than generic Instagram averages.
The pattern surfaced fast. Three multi-week silences (8 weeks, 9 weeks, 5 weeks) inside the 8-month window. Each silence reset the algorithm's read on the account. Posts during consistent stretches averaged 9.3 likes; posts following silences averaged 2.7. Same brand, same content quality, three times the engagement — the difference was cadence.
I isolated four independently fixable root causes: posting inconsistency, wrong format mix, hooks written for the brand instead of the scroller, and hashtag misalignment. Each got its own evidence section, its own fix, and its own owner.
The deliverable wasn't a strategy document — it was an operator playbook. Cadence rules. Hook templates. A 30-day roadmap with checkpoints. Something the person actually running the account could open and execute.