How To Create A Social Media Report – 2024 Beginner’s Guide

Creating insightful social media report is crucial for every marketer. It determines the impact of social media activities and the results of the investment in social media ads. However, it is also important to create a simple, easy-to-understand social media report that even non-marketing people can understand. 

Another benefit of creating a social media report is it helps marketers analyze their past mistakes and acts as a reference while creating social media ad campaigns in the future. 

Defining the variables of your social media report

This report could be either full of raw numbers or a slide presentation packed with graphs and analysis. It all depends on who will analyze the report (the owner who has no or less marketing knowledge or manager who is great in marketing) and the purpose of your report. 

Ask several questions such as:

• Who is your social media report for?

Brands24 suggests that the key to selecting the right metrics is knowing who is going to review the report. For example, if you work in a digital marketing agency, your clients are more likely to ask for a detailed report about the progress. In that case, you need to include the overall business revenue generated from social media. However, if your social media manager is going to review your report, s/he can dig deeper into your objectives such as CTR or CPC.

• The timeframe of your social media report

In order to accurately reflect the impact of your social media strategy, the timeframe you select for your report should be broad enough. For example, it can be a quarter, six months, or two quarters. 

• The most relevant information in the campaign (for example, conversion rate, click-through rates, website visit, etc.)

You need to be clear about the objectives of your report. For example, the conversion rate per ad campaign, a ratio of click-through rate and total money spent on ad campaigns. 

There’s plenty of online services that can help you analyze various aspects of a social media campaign. 

Choose the right metrics when creating your social media report

As mentioned above, you need to include metrics depending on who is going to review the report. However, it is crucial to include the metrics that accurately reflect the success of your marketing campaigns (based on your social media marketing objectives). 

For example, if you’re focusing on increasing brand awareness through your social media campaign, focus on metrics such as: 

• Reach: the total number of audiences who viewed your ad
• Engagement: how well your audience responded to your content. You can also include a report on engagement in relation to reaching to get a better picture of your success rate. 
• Social media mentions: what people are saying about your brand on social media. Percentage of positive and negative reviews and the total number of mentions
• Brand lift: The overall impact of your ad campaign.  
• Sentiment: The process of analyzing online pieces of writing to determine the emotional tone they carry, which you could check with the help of a service like this.

Whereas, if the primary aim of your ad campaign is to increase conversion rate, focus on metrics such as:

• Click-through rate: The total number of users who arrived at a designated landing page by clicking on your ads
• Cost-per-click: The amount you paid for each click
• Cost-per-action: The amount you paid for the completion of your marketing objectives (for example, ebook downloads, form signups, etc.)
• Social Media ROI: The total revenue generated from the investment in your social media activities

Set realistic future targets

It is important to set expectations for future campaigns. If you’re creating a campaign similar to a past campaign, compare what you’ve achieved and set new expectations based on that. This will also help you analyze ongoing social media trends. Some of the common metrics that you should be tracking depending on your business goa include:

• Number of posts
• Net followers gain or loss
• Number of likes
• Post reach
• Number of comments
• Number of shares
• Number of page/profile views
• Number of clicks on post links
• Number of clicks on the link in your bio
• Number of story views
• Number of video views
• Number of leads generated
• Number of conversions
• Total revenue generated
• Total spent (on social ads)
• Social share of voice
• Social sentiment

You could also include more data depending on the relevancy of your social media campaign objective. 

Conclusion

Though creating a report might seem challenging, it can be made easy if the proper approach is followed. Make sure you include the right data based on who will be analyzing your report. Follow the above-mentioned steps to create a comprehensive report and present it to your higher management or clients in the best possible way.