A social media audit is a comparison, so the hard part is having something honest to compare against
An audit is only useful against real numbers. Percentiles from 2,066 analysed reels, plus one real account audited against them. Read 17 September 2026.
What the numbers say
The views per follower row is the one to audit yourself against, and it is unforgiving at both ends. The median reel across 435 accounts gets 0.52 views for every follower, so a typical reel is seen by about half the following behind it. A quarter of all reels do not clear 0.18. The top tenth clears 10.15. The hook score row barely moves at all: 9.0 at the lower quarter, the median and the upper quarter alike, because 71 percent of every reel we have scored got exactly 9.
Two things follow. First, audit on reach relative to your own audience rather than on raw views, or you are measuring account size instead of work. Second, treat our hook score as a coarse filter in the middle of the range and a sharp one at the edges: a 7 or a 10 tells you something, a 9 mostly tells you that you are in the crowd with 71 percent of everything else.
Sample of 2,066, measured on 2026-09-17. Scrptly production database, queried 2026-09-17. Instagram Reels only, deduplicated by shortcode, one query run.
The measurement
Percentiles across 2,066 deduplicated reels from 435 accounts, all from one query run. Views per follower is each reel divided by its own account following, which is what lets a small account and a large one sit in the same table. Hook and retention are the scores Scrptly assigns. Read a row by finding your own figure between two columns.
| Measure | Bottom 10 percent | Lower quarter | Median | Upper quarter | Top 10 percent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Views per follower | 0.08 | 0.18 | 0.52 | 2.13 | 10.15 |
| Reel length in seconds | 9.7 | 22.2 | 48.1 | 77.2 | 107.5 |
| Retention score out of 100 | 72.0 | 78.0 | 82.0 | 82.0 | 88.0 |
| Hook score out of 10 | 8.0 | 9.0 | 9.0 | 9.0 | 9.0 |
What that looks like end to end
Input: The handle shanablakley run through Scrptly as a creator analysis, read 2026-09-17. 184,045 followers, 5 reels analysed.
The audit returns four content pillars, all of them narrow: Parent Pain Point Solution, Memory Preservation, Process Fascination and Transformation Reveal. It names a repeatable formula: identify a parent pain point, show a striking visual solution, use text-only hooks that create instant identification, keep the process footage fast and achievable, reveal in outdoor natural light, and close with a low-friction comment prompt. Measured against the benchmark above the account sits in the top tenth on reach: a median of 5,436,249 views against 184,045 followers, which is 29.54 views per follower where the top tenth begins at 10.15. Median length 8.5 seconds, against a corpus median of 48.1. Mean retention 84.2, against a median of 82. The most useful line in the whole audit is the cadence note: this account does not vary its topic, it re-runs one winning concept with different hooks and reveals, and every reel uses trending audio with no voiceover, which is what makes them quick to produce.
Score returned: 9. 9.0 is the mean hook score across the five reels analysed, which is exactly the corpus median and the score 71 percent of all reels get. The account sits in the top tenth on reach while scoring dead average on hooks, which is the clearest single illustration of the point above.
What to do next
- Work out views per follower for each of your last twenty reels, then take the median of those. Compare it to the first row above. That one number is the audit, and everything else is explanation.
- Then check your length against the second row. The worked example runs a median of 8.5 seconds against a corpus median of 48.1, which is a deliberate choice rather than an accident, and it is in the top tenth for reach.
- Look at what your best reels have in common rather than what they are about. The worked example beats the benchmark while scoring average on hooks, because it re-runs one concept instead of chasing topics. Two analyses are free if you want the pillars, formula and cadence written out for an account.