Creating a social media report that is just an export from a tool or screenshots from the native platform is a disservice to your client, your team, and yourself. If you don’t know where to start when building a social media report, we have a few tips to help take your reporting efforts from a waste of server space to invaluable.

Have A Measurement Plan

A report without a measurement plan is just numbers and charts without meaning. It’s important to know WHAT you’re measuring, WHY you are measuring it, and HOW it ladders up to business and marketing objectives. Before you even start creating social media content, you should build out a social media strategy that outlines KPIs (key performance indicators). KPIs are the numbers that analysts use to assess how well the implemented strategy is performing.

In the world of social media analytics, there is a seemingly endless variety of metrics. It is the role of an analyst to distill the measurements that are tied closest to the marketing objectives outlined in the strategy. For example, if your primary objective is conversions, the number of impressions your content generated is not going to be a KPI.

A good measurement plan sets the entire team up for success. The creative team can create content designed to drive those specific results, the media team knows what objective to optimize ads for, and the analyst will be able to assess how well the campaign performed to the primary objective.  

Once you have the answers to those questions locked in, the next step is figuring out how to present the answers based on WHO your report is designed for.

Know Your Audience

A CEO is likely not going to want the details of every Instagram post you published. They’ll want to know, holistically, how social media marketing efforts are impacting brand and marketing objectives. Is social media marketing pushing the needle for the brand? If not, what is being done to change that? A marketing manager might benefit from more “in the weeds” reporting that focuses on those day-to-day tactical decisions and analysis.

Analysts serve as data translators. We take the information, assess what that information means, and most importantly, communicate that information in a way that the audience understands. Data without a translator are just numbers on a slide.

A great social media report considers who will be receiving the report and how it will be used. Build your report with your audience in mind so that the performance of your social media marketing efforts is reported on with the appropriate level of detail, context, and appropriate terminology.

A best practice in building any report is to have a high-level performance slide that condenses all of the key insights onto one page that, if it were the only slide someone was to read from the report, they could take away the most important pieces of information and have a sense of what to do with it, which leads to the final tip for making a great social media report.

Make Sure Your Report Is Actionable

If you’ve mastered creating a measurement plan and you’ve established the audience your social media report is intended for, this last tip should be easy. Collecting the data is just a small step in the process of social media analytics; figuring what the data means and what to do with it is where the bulk of the analysis comes in:

What are the trends that are emerging across content types? Across platforms? Seasonally? Did a post receive an above-average number of shares? If so, what could it be about the piece of content that inspired that result. Can you form a hypothesis to test in future content calendars that will help home in on the cause and determine whether it can be replicated or tactically applied to future content?

When reporting, it’s important to underline what the information you are presenting means and what the next steps are. Every number and chart that you place in a report needs to serve a purpose. If the information you’re presenting doesn’t contain context of what happened and why, the conclusion in the report will be: “so what?”

Pairing a summary of key learnings from the report with next steps and recommendations – what will be done with that information going forward – will help your team with strategic and tactical direction while also further building trust with your client.

Final Thoughts

Your social media marketing reports shouldn’t be an afterthought. A great report starts with the social media strategy, knows its target audience, and provides key learnings and actionable next steps that inform future social media strategies and tactics designed to deliver business results. If you’re worried that the reporting you are currently receiving is an afterthought, we’re here to help take your reporting to the next level.