- By Camila Ante
A smart, simple, and easy-to-understand social media report is key to proving the value of your social marketing plan. It's a concrete, data-driven way to demonstrate what you've accomplished.
A good report can help guide your actions as you incorporate the lessons learned from your campaigns and other activities.
This is what your social media report should include
A social media report can be anything from a simple spreadsheet with a list of numbers, to an elegant slide show full of data and analysis. It all depends on the purpose of your report.
When deciding what to include in yours, ask yourself the following questions:
- What is your target audience?
- Are you reporting on ongoing results or on a specific campaign?
- What information is most relevant in this context?
- Your answers will guide how you structure the document.
Here is a basic outline to get you started. Think of it as the foundation of our template for creating a social media report that you can download for free below. Mix and match the sections to create a custom tool that works for your target audience and needs.
Introduction
Start your social media report with a quick summary of your desired success goals, strategies, tactics, and metrics. This provides a bit of context so that your readers understand what to expect from the report.
Success summary
Then include an overview of the campaign's performance (or your monthly or weekly performance, if it's a general report). This is just a quick overview of the most important results.
For example, you might want to list high-level data such as total new followers, total interactions, or total website traffic. You will go into details in the next section.
Data tracking
This section is all about numbers.
To provide a little more context, it is a good idea to include previous results. If you want to report on a campaign, find a similar previous campaign so you can compare what you accomplished. If you're creating a weekly or monthly report, keep track of your results and compare them to previous weeks or months so you can start to see emerging trends.
The specific data you want to include in your social media report depends on the related goals and metrics you are tracking, but here are some of the most common numbers you could include for each social network:
Number of publications
- Net Gains or Losses from Followers
- Number of likes
- Scope of publications
- Number of comments
- Number of shared content
- Number of visits to the page or profile
- Number of clicks on links to posts
- Number of clicks on your bio link
- Number of views in Stories
- Number of video views
- Top Performing Posts
- In addition, you may want to include the following general information:
Number of leads generated
- Number of conversions
- Total revenue generated
- Total spent (on social ads)
- Social participation (share of voice)
- Total revenue generated
- Total spend (on social ads)
- Social sentiment
- Sure, you can include more facts and figures if they are relevant to the objectives of your campaign.
Other relevant results
Sometimes the numbers fail to encompass all the results of a campaign. Maybe you got in touch with a key influencer. Or maybe a client made a compelling testimonial that you could use in one of your marketing campaigns in the future.
Include a section in your social media report to share examples of all the forms of success that are relevant to your goals.
Analysis
This is where you go a step beyond simply sharing your hard data to analyze what this information really means.
For example, instead of just sharing your engagement numbers, you may want to analyze the number of engagement per post or per follower. Also, instead of reporting the number of clicks you directed to your website, you can analyze how much of this traffic comes from social media campaigns.
Again, be sure to provide context by comparing your results with previous campaigns, or with what you know about your competitors' campaigns.
If you can, try to analyze your data to determine why you got certain results. The facts are interesting, of course, but the reasons behind that data is what is really going to help you adjust your strategy and set meaningful goals for your social networks.
Conclution
End your report with a summary of what you learned and how these lessons will help guide your strategy in the future.
Tips for creating a social media report
Keep it simple
Your report should look presentable and it should be easy to follow. You don't need to go overboard with a square format or unnecessary details. Let your data tell the story.
Focus on predetermined social goals
Social networks can help generate perception of your brand, sales, leads, interactions ... the list goes on. Make sure to focus on the KPIs and metrics that matter most to your business. Don't focus on sharing additional stats unless you notice a significant increase or something more important worth mentioning.
Know your audience
As we mentioned earlier, it is important to tailor your report based on who will read it. Is this report for your boss, your marketing team, or vice presidents?
You may have to do multiple reports to suit the needs of different audiences.
Focus on what is important to each audience, rather than forcing everyone to dig through the information to find what is relevant to their jobs.
If you're writing a report for your team, you can dig into the details of the campaign. What worked well and what was not so good? Capture all of this in your social media report, as this makes your report valuable to help you avoid mistakes and repeat successes next time.
If you have to report to people with higher positions within the hierarchy of your company, then your report should be more concise. Find out what is important to your bosses and focus on those figures and facts.
In some cases, you may want to create social media reports for your own reference. In this case, you probably don't need an introduction or conclusion.
Stick to the relevant data and include enough context so that this information is available at all times and easy to understand for future analysis.
Template to create a social media report
If you prefer to create your own social media report and your goal is to focus on the numbers more than anything else, you can do so using programs like Excel or Google Docs. For reports that include more analysis, use a spreadsheet to gather your data. Then present them in a document or slide show.
Or, use a social media reporting tool like Hootsuite Analytics to create custom reports with tables and graphs, then export them as a spreadsheet, PDF, or Power Point.
