Being a social media manager goes far beyond just creating killer content. As a social media manager, the expectation is that you create reports on social media accounts.
However, the numbers you provide on reports have to mean something. Otherwise, they're just numbers.
The worst thing you can do social media reporting-wise is provide a report filled with a bunch of numbers that, when you really look at them, have absolutely no meaning and are simply garbled and confusing.
So, if you're looking for the best way to create a killer social media report in 2024 that makes sense to those who read it, this guide is for you.
Here's what we'll cover:
- What are social media reports?
- Why are social media reports important?
- 9 steps to creating a strong social media report
- How do you curate your social media report to your goals?
- How can Sendible make social media reporting easy?
Let's dive right in!
What are social media reports?
Before we discuss social media reports, let's first understand what they are.
Social media reports are analyses and summaries of data collected from social media platforms.
They provide insights into how your content is performing, audience engagement, trends, and overall social media activity. These reports help stakeholders understand their social media strategies' effectiveness, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions. Reports typically include metrics we'll cover below, such as shares, comments, follower growth, reach, and impressions.
Why are social media reports important?
Without a social media report, you cannot know how well campaigns and strategies performed.
Social media reports are essential because they provide valuable insights to drive strategic decisions and improve overall performance.
The reports will help you analyse key metrics like engagement, reach, and follower growth, among others. Additionally, these reports offer insights into your audience's preferences and behaviours, which can help you tailor content to meet their needs and interests better.
By analysing data over time, you can spot trends and patterns that inform future strategies and keep you ahead of the curve. If you invest resources like time and money into a campaign, you'll need to know if it's performing well.
A strong report will allow you to evaluate the Return On Investment of your social media activities, which will help you justify spending and allocate resources effectively.
Detailed reports provide a firm base for making decisions about content strategy, posting schedules, and platform choices. Plus, they offer insights into how your performance stacks up against competitors, identifying strengths and areas for improvement.
Good social media reports help you set realistic goals and track progress to achieving them, ensuring your social media efforts are aligned with broader business objectives. Regularly reviewing social media reports can refine your strategy, enhance engagement, and help you achieve better results.
Source: HelloFresh
9 steps to creating a strong social media report
Before we get too far into these important steps, it's important to know that reportable data on social media accounts are ever-evolving. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are always switching things up.
So, what was applicable in 2023 may not be that applicable in 2024. And what is applicable right now, may not be applicable in 2025.
Keep an eye out for this guide for the most up-to-date information on what's relevant in the social media field today.
Now that we have that disclaimer out of the way, let's go straight into our steps to building an awesome report.
#1 Identify your social media goals
We won't go too in-depth here because we already have a thorough article on setting social media goals for you to use as a resource. The important part is that you tailor your report according to the goal of your social media campaign.
For example, if your goal was to create an awareness campaign, you'd want to focus on reach and engagement, not link clicks.
However, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you should look at those link clicks and the cost per click.
Every report should be tailored to your goals, so be sure to have those goals defined and laid out before you create a report.
Source: Cadbury UK
#2 Determine what metrics you should measure
Every platform has different metrics, and, again, metrics can be changed at any time, so be sure to check back here for updates.
Currently, however, here are some of the top key metrics you can track by platform.
Check out our full article on 21 Facebook metrics you can track in 2024 with definitions. It's an awesome resource we created just for you!
- Page views
- Organic reach
- Page impressions
- Page likes and followers
- Video views
- Clicks
- Click through rate
- Cost per click
- Engagement
- Audience demographic
We also created an article chock full of information you need to know about Instagram metrics. Be sure to check that one out, too!
- Reach
- Impressions
- Click through rate
- Sales
- Engagement Rate
- Best time to post
- Growth
- Traffic
- Saves
- Watch time
Check out our 2024 Guide to LinkedIn Analytics for the full scoop on what these mean.
- Engagement rate
- Impressions
- Profile visits
- Video views
- Demographics
- Conversion tracking
Now that you know what some of the metrics out there are, you can track them and see how they align with your goals.
Depending on your goal, the metrics you show in your social media report can be different.
#3 Decide how often you'll report
Part of creating a social media report is also establishing a cadence for when you will report statistics. This cadence may also be dependent on what investors and stakeholders are expecting. If money is invested, then they will want to see their Return On Investment.
Here's some food for thought regarding money out there floating to social media…
- More than 28% of all online advertising in 2023 went to social media.
- Total ad spend on social media is projected to reach almost 220 billion (yes, billion) in 2024.
- Marketing budgets generally account for 13.7% of general budgets.
With those stats in mind, think about your overall budget and who you are reporting to. Are the funds high enough that you believe more eyes will be on the reports to monitor trends? If so, consider providing a weekly report instead of a monthly report.
If funds are more focused on an overall campaign, consider a report that covers the period of time when the campaign ran.
If you still have ads that are live when you pull the report, just be sure to note which ads are still current. The numbers will match the lower metrics since the ad wasn't fully fulfilled.
Once again, there is no cookie-cutter response to creating a report; it simply depends on your goals and needs.
#4 Create a branded template
If you're going to report social media metrics, don't just throw numbers into a spreadsheet and expect everyone to interpret them.
No, seriously, don't.
Chances are people will have no idea what they're looking at or will misinterpret what the numbers mean. For example, they may look at link clicks instead of reach when the goal was to spread awareness.
Take the time to create a branded template curated to the needs of what you should be reporting. Make sure it is visually appealing, include graphs if you can, call out top-performing posts, and curate anything else that would make it easy for your customer to read.
We promise you that a custom report will help you show the numbers and allow good campaigns and strategies to shine.
#5 Start pulling the data
So here comes the not-so-nice part of creating a report: pulling all the data on each platform.
Pulling the data is pretty much a manual process where you set a date range ( a week, a month, a quarter, etc.) and then start gathering the numbers associated with what you need to report.
You'll need someone to put all the data, so for a manual process, probably a spreadsheet of some sort. Once you pull the numbers, then you can work on creating drafts and getting the data into a report.
Be sure to pay attention to the numbers when you pull them. When doing the process manually, it can be easy to make a mistake. You will probably want to pull all the data, then circle back a few hours later and look at them again to double and triple-check the numbers.
If you're looking for an easier method to the madness that is not prone to human error, you should consider adopting Sendible's reports hub, which will pull the report for you, create a branded template, and allow you to show live data.
We'll get into all the details later on, but this is the easiest, most straightforward strategy to creating top-notch social media reports without all the legwork of a manual report. We are in 2024, after all. Automating processes will help boost your business and make things easier for you overall.
#6 Craft the data into a report
If you're going with the manual method, now is the time to gather and add all those metrics to a branded template. This is the step that will probably take the longest since you will be manually switching back and forth between pages and spreadsheets.
Even if it seems like a slow process, take your time to ensure all the metrics you are reporting are correct. Then, lay out the information so that the document flows easily and the metrics you compiled really flow into the branded report template you created.
#7 Proofread everything – over and over again
Nothing screams bad data like having an error in a report. Once someone finds a mistake, whether minor or large, they will begin to question the validity of everything else in the report.
And why not? For all they know, it could all be wrong.
That's why it's key for you to take your time to double- and triple-check the data you are pulling into the report. Take your time, take it slow, reread everything and analyse those numbers.
Once you're positive that there are no mistakes, you are ready for the next steps.
#8 Review the social media report with your customer
This is a step that new social media managers might skim over because they assume that everyone knows what the data means. Regardless of whether someone is new or not, you should take the time to schedule a quick call or meet and greet to go over the report with them.
Once you get into a regular cadence, you may not have to meet every time. However, it's nice to offer them the opportunity so you can review the social media report and answer any questions they might have. This is also very helpful in minimising unnecessary emails back and forth when a simple chat could easily clarify any questions they might have.
#9 Review and adapt accordingly
Nothing is perfect on the first go. Honestly, it can take some time for you to garner a full understanding of what is really important for each campaign, its goals, and each individual customer.
Be willing to update your report and remove irrelevant data. There is such a thing as too much data, so not every metric is important to feature on every social media post.
With time, you’ll perfect the skill of creating a report that is perfect for the goals and strategies that were defined.
Source: Pepsi
How do you curate your social media report to your goals?
As we mentioned before, the social media report that you curate needs to be aligned with your strategy and goals. Not all data is the same regarding what you need to include in a social media report.
Let's take a look at what that would look like in action.
Your goal is to spread awareness.
Say your goal is to simply spread awareness to a service or a story behind an event.
If your goal is to spread awareness, then here are some metrics that you should be tracking in your social media report:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Reactions
- Engagement
- Cost per result
- Video views
- Overall budget
You could, of course, include more if you deem it necessary, but pulling those data will help you see how your campaign performed.
Your goal is to increase applications to a specific program.
Say your customer launched a new program, but participation has been pretty lacklustre.
If you want to increase applications to a local program, your social media strategy and, subsequently, the report will probably look totally different than the example above.
Here's what you might include:
- Link clicks
- Reach
- Impressions
- Cost per click
- Applications received
- Website traffic
- Overall budget
See how those data look different? It's because your goals were totally different. Always consider your goal when you are creating a social media report.
By keeping that at the top of your mind, you can ensure the metrics you are curating are the best ones for your goals.
How can Sendible make social media reporting easy?
So far, we've walked you through the steps of creating a manual report. If you absolutely wanted to (hopefully, you don't), you could stop reading here and make a strong manual report.
But…
That's a lot of work.
And super prone to human error.
And did we mention a lot of double- and triple-checking transposed numbers?
That's why we want to show you how you can use our report builder to curate custom reports with your branding and according to your social media goals.
We have different levels of reporting, from the creator package that creates a standard report to the more robust white labelling packages that allow you to curate and automate reports.
Here's a quick snippet of what our different plans offer:'
Our analytics and reporting can:
- Get you best-in-class social media analytics with a great number of modules to explore, designed to show value.
- Build presentation-ready reports tailored for each client with our drag-and-drop report builder.
- Quickly generate in-depth reports for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.
- Help you gain insight into every brand's combined audience and post engagements across all channels with the Engagement Report.
As you can see, our analytics and reporting feature can help you create top-notch reports that are not prone to human error. This can help you keep your social media reporting game a step ahead of everyone else's.
Wrapping it up
Good data are data that mean something. Especially when it comes to social media metrics that you are reporting. So, make sure you give your customers the absolute best and most relevant data you can to give them a picture of how their social media accounts are performing.
By creating an awesome social media report curated to your client's social media goals and strategies, you can foster long working relationships with happy customers who value the work you do for their social media accounts.
Want to take your social media reports to the next level? Sign up and explore our analytics and reporting feature for free for 14 days!
