Social media is among the strongest channels I’ve utilized in my advertising and marketing profession. In truth, it’s one of many channels with the highest ROI this yr.
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I’ve discovered that making a social media report template is a superb place to begin when deciding on what you need to embody in your social media technique.
Profitable social media advertising and marketing isn’t a senseless process. Nevertheless, it takes cautious planning and strategizing to have interaction your viewers.
Figuring out what to submit, how typically to submit, how a lot to put money into paid social, and what metrics you ought to be measuring are all key components of a profitable social media technique. Fortunately, all of those components could be tracked in a social media report, so you understand in case you’re on the correct path.
Learn additional for extra data on social media metrics to incorporate in your report, and use HubSpot’s Free Social Media Reporting Template to get began.
Desk of Contents
What’s a social media report?
A social media report is a method for entrepreneurs to investigate and extract information primarily based on how numerous social media platforms are performing.
This may embody measuring metrics reminiscent of followers, profitable clickthrough charges, likes, submit shares, purchases, and extra.
There are two varieties of social media advertising and marketing: natural and paid.
Natural social media is free (past worker time) and consists of creating posts, movies, content material, and different engagement efforts.
Paid social media is paid promoting via social media channels and may appear like promoted content material, influencer advertising and marketing, and different social media efforts that value cash and should be budgeted for.
What are the various kinds of social media studies?
1. Efficiency Report
The sort of reporting is fairly easy. Take every of your social media platforms (Instagram, Fb, LinkedIn, and so on.) and, utilizing the free social media report template, fill out the primary web page that studies on every owned channel.
You’ll need to know your viewers for every channel, what number of posts you made, how they carried out (engagement), and what this seems like as a proportion of your complete viewers.
2. Earned Media
The sort of report (discovered on the second web page of the free template) seems at your attain and impressions.
Every platform could have completely different audiences and metrics to comply with relating to your engagement. The sort of report can provide you a greater concept of what your attain presently is and how one can enhance it.
3. Key Initiatives and Targets
It’s not sufficient to simply blindly submit on completely different platforms.
It is advisable to have a transparent concept of the completely different social media campaigns you need to accomplish on a month-to-month foundation and what engagement you need to attain for a marketing campaign to be thought-about profitable.
Use HubSpot’s Free Social Media Reporting Template pages 5-26 to fill out:
- Your month-to-month objective for a given social media platform
- Your technique for that platform and key initiatives
- That platform’s alternatives
- Any wins from that platform (ex, most appreciated submit, most commented submit)
Why use a social media report?
A social media report is one of the best ways to distill the key metrics your social media staff is monitoring on a every day, weekly, month-to-month, quarterly, and/or annual foundation.
Since social media encompasses a lot, gathering and reporting on the info and channels that you have decided are most necessary for what you are promoting offers a lens of focus to your social media advertising and marketing staff and delivers a needed high-level overview for management.
Social media would not simply have an effect on advertising and marketing. Prospects ask questions, clients write evaluations, and thought leaders comply with you for firm information.
As a result of social media coincides with almost each facet of your group, gathering and distributing the state of your social media channels is a transfer that reveals transparency and encourages cross-company alignment.
You too can use a social media report back to report on campaign-level analytics. In case your social media account is serving as a cog in a bigger firm initiative, this report reveals to what extent social media contributed to the venture’s success.
Keep in mind, not each social media platform performs the identical. Right here’s a graph that reveals how entrepreneurs are utilizing platforms and their potential return on funding (ROI).
HubSpot’s free social media report template has pre-made slides so that you can report on your entire predominant social media metrics.
Obtain the template at present and easily plug in your personal metrics to customise a social media report to your group.
Featured Useful resource: Free Social Media Report Template
Social Media Metrics to Report On
Your corporation doubtless values some metrics over others in terms of social media reporting.
Seemingly, these metrics additionally range between your channels — since LinkedIn doesn‘t allow you to retweet, and Twitter doesn’t allow you to click on a cry-face button.
Earlier than you begin reporting in your social media channels’ efficiency, learn via this listing of choices for social media metrics so you possibly can decide which of them you must embody in your report.
1. Viewers Dimension and Progress
This metric tells you the way massive your attain is and the way rapidly that attain is rising. That is sometimes seen because the core social media metric, because it reveals how massive of an viewers you possibly can leverage along with your posts and content material.
2. Cadence of Posts
A quite self-explanatory instance, this metric represents what number of instances you posted in a given time interval.
This metric is often in contrast alongside different metrics — reminiscent of engagement charges — that will help you decide the correct cadence to your viewers.
This metric also needs to be channel-specific as a result of it is smart to post more frequently on some channels than others.
3. Publish Engagement
Publish engagement measures how your followers and followers are reacting to your posts with likes, feedback, and shares. A wholesome submit engagement suggests you may have a loyal viewers — and that your content material is reaching them.
You too can monitor engagement as a proportion of your viewers to find out engagement fee.
4. Mentions
One metric you may have much less management over is mentions. You may monitor mentions from clients, prospects, and even information shops to gauge the notion of what you are promoting and model on-line.
5. Clickthrough Fee
When a submit hyperlinks to a web page in your web site, you possibly can measure how many individuals and what number of your viewers clicked via to the web page.
A robust clickthrough fee reveals you are sharing web site pages that your viewers finds related.
6. Conversions & New Contacts
Conversions come into play in case you‘re utilizing social media to generate leads, subscribers, and even clients.
If you wish to attribute contacts to your social media staff’s efforts, be sure to‘re utilizing correct monitoring and setting cheap targets, because it’s uncommon in some industries to go straight from social media to changing into a buyer.
7. ROI
Straight tracing ROI (return on funding) to social media efforts could be tough. Nevertheless, in case you decide it is price reporting on this metric, be sure to have correct expectations set and attribution fashions established.
8. CPM / CPC
This metric is crucial for monitoring the efficiency of your social media adverts. For those who’re solely reporting on natural social metrics, you possibly can ignore this one.
9. Competitor Metrics
To supply a benchmark, take into account analyzing the aforementioned metrics to your opponents.
Clearly, these metrics can range drastically primarily based on publicity, paid funds, and the scale of the corporate, but it surely’s nonetheless worthwhile to make the comparability.
Free Social Media Report Template
Creating your personal social media report from scratch could be tough.
For those who want a straightforward technique to begin monitoring necessary social media metrics, obtain the free Social Media Report Template and get began.
You may customise the template to suit the precise social media targets and platforms that you’re participating in.
Social Media Report Examples
Let’s check out how completely different firms report their social metrics of their social media report.
Coca-Cola
Keyhole did a wonderful job gathering various kinds of reporting that Coca-Cola might embody in its social media studies in this blog. Listed here are some instance footage of various kinds of social media reporting:
This picture seems at how every Coca-Cola submit carried out over a set period of time. I like this sort of reporting as a result of in case you’re taking a look at engagement by submit, you will get a greater understanding of what varieties of posts carry out the perfect.
Don’t neglect that the time of day you submit even impacts how posts carry out.
This report seems at Coca-Cola’s follower development over a set period of time (on this case, a yr). It additionally breaks down submit sorts and their respective engagement.
The sort of evaluation is nice for understanding which submit sorts carry out the perfect and may obtain essentially the most funding out of your advertising and marketing efforts.
Walmart
One other big firm, Walmart, carefully watches its social media site visitors. Take this report picture from 2023:
This report seems at various kinds of social media site visitors primarily based on platform. You may clearly see that YouTube is their high social media performer, with Reddit and Fb solely attaining half of YouTube’s engagement.
I like this sort of report as a result of it places into perspective what your share of site visitors is for any given platform. If I’m going to put money into paid social media, I’ll put money into the platform that’s performing the perfect organically to get extra bang for my buck.
HubSpot
HubSpot’s marketing dashboard consists of reporting instruments to take a look at every social media channel over time. Take a look at this report:
I like that this reporting software makes it straightforward to see completely different social media metrics all collectively over completely different platforms and set intervals of time.
You may see how every sort of report follows an identical curve, supplying you with perception into which months you grew essentially the most and which platforms carried out the perfect.
How one can Make a Social Media Report
Step 1: Select your presentation methodology
For consistency and readability, be sure to’re utilizing a social media report presentation, spreadsheet, or memo template.
This fashion, every time you replace your metrics, you may merely want to repeat over your latest metrics onto that template quite than reinventing the wheel each time.
We advise utilizing a PowerPoint or Google Slide Deck template as a result of you possibly can share it along with your staff by way of e mail, use it for an in-person assembly or presentation, or each.
Want a template to get began? Try this one.
Step 2: Decide the metrics you may be reporting on
As we have established, completely different firms and completely different social media groups worth completely different social media metrics.
It is your job to decide on the metrics that matter most to your staff and your group.
Utilizing the listing from the part above, slim down the important metrics you imagine are price presenting to your staff at massive.
Keep in mind, you possibly can change which metrics you report on for every of your group’s social media platforms.
In case your social media report is campaign-specific, attain out to the venture stakeholders to see in the event that they’re hoping to see reporting on any sure metrics within the social media report.
Professional tip: To your first few ongoing social media reporting shows, ask your friends which metrics they’d wish to see or which of them they want clarification on.
Making these adjustments sooner quite than later helps you retain your staff knowledgeable and engaged.
Step 3: Collect your information
As soon as you understand what you‘re reporting on and the way you’re reporting it, it is time to begin gathering information.
Once you‘re first establishing your social media studies, create bookmarks to your information sources. Make a folder for the analytics web page for every social media channel you’re analyzing and/or your social media reporting software for an all-encompassing view.
For those who‘re monitoring click-throughs to your web site, be sure to’re analyzing from a single grasp location, reminiscent of your monitoring URL builder or your site visitors monitoring software like HubSpot or Google Analytics.
Step 4: Add in some visuals
A chart of numbers on a slide deck is, properly, fairly boring.
Whereas a numerical chart is necessary for sharing as a lot information as doable in an organized method, utilizing visuals is a greater technique to convey the expansion and success metrics of your social media efficiency.
Attempt incorporating one or the entire following into your social media studies:
- Linear graphs to indicate followers over time.
- Pie charts to indicate clicks to completely different pages of your web site (weblog pages vs. case research, for instance).
- Bar graphs to indicate the variety of engagements on every platform.
These examples are extra eye-catching than numbers on a slide and additional illustrate what you need your staff to stroll away with. If information visualization is new to you, take a look at our Guide on Data Visualization for Marketers.
Step 5: Consider your story
A working social media report ought to at all times remind folks about the place you got here from and the place you propose on going.
That stated, be sure your studies make reference to how your numbers have modified for the reason that final time frame you offered, along with why numbers have modified.
Did follower development as a p.c improve drop final month?
Possibly that is as a result of one in all your posts from the month earlier than went viral and resulted in unprecedented development that was unattainable to match. Make that clear and add context to the numbers.
Moreover, every report ought to include clear motion gadgets about how you propose to repeatedly enhance your social media efficiency. Social media is continually evolving, so your method and technique for it ought to, too.
Leverage Your Social Media Report
All through my years as a marketer, I’ve discovered that nothing works higher than a fantastically filled-out/designed social media report, proven to executives to leverage an even bigger funds and buy-in.
Executives need to know what advertising and marketing efforts are working and the place they need to make investments extra time and cash, and a social media report is one of the best ways to display your exhausting work.
Your first report gained’t be good, however everybody has to begin someplace. The extra information you enter into your studies, the extra compelling they’ll turn into.
Now that you understand how to construct, design, and share your social media report, obtain your social media report template and spotlight your social media efficiency.
Editor’s word: This submit was initially printed in June 2020 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.
