Auditing 30 days of posts before you touch anything

Before you write a single new caption, pull up the last 30 days of posts on whatever accounts you've inherited or started. Most people skip this and start posting immediately, which means they repeat whatever wasn't working.

What to actually pull

·Every post's date, platform, format (photo, video, carousel, text) and caption length

·Reach, saves/likes, and comments for each — write them in a spreadsheet, don't just scroll and remember

·Which 3 posts did best and which 3 did worst, by saves or comments, not just likes

Example: if a bakery's last 30 days show 12 posts, and the top 3 are all videos of the baker actually mixing dough or pulling something out of the oven, while the bottom 3 are stock-photo-style flat lays of finished pastries, that's your answer for what to do more of. You don't need a strategy deck to see that.

The gap to look for

Look for days or weeks with nothing posted. A gap tells you more than a post does — it usually means whoever was posting got busy, ran out of ideas, or didn't have a plan. Note the gaps because your cadence plan (lesson 4) needs to survive the busy weeks, not just the easy ones.

Write a one-paragraph summary before moving on: what format worked, what didn't, how consistent the posting was, and one guess at why. That paragraph is your actual starting brief — more useful than any competitor research at this stage.