How to create a social media report?

Marta
November 18, 2020 ・ 12 min read

Social media reports should be an essential part of your social media marketing strategy. Preparing a social media report and presenting it to your supervisor will help you highlight the results of your work.

Social networks offer a lot of benefits that can directly affect the bottom line of your business. Building a robust social media presence can help you increase brand awareness, provide better customer service, generate new sales leads, easily get new followers, and boost your engagement rate. And that’s only the beginning!

When it comes to social media, the sky is the limit!

Social media platforms can provide a lot of useful insights to other departments. The followers of your brand will leave many useful tips that will improve the work of your product development or customer service department.

Social media is a huge database of consumers’ needs and wants that could help you get ahead of your competitors. Social media report will help you provide your customers with the service they expect. To do that, you need to analyse the social media data.

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A well-structured social media report gives you the opportunity to discover social media insights and correctly assess your social media performance.

So, let’s figure out what a great social media report should include!

  • What should you include in your social media report?
  • Social media reporting tools
  • How to write a social media report?
  • Why do you need a social media report?
  • Social media reporting tips
  • Social media report in a nutshell
  • What should you include in your social media report?

    To produce an insightful social media report, monitor your social media performance, and get the right data to the right people you need to establish the right reporting framework.

    Of course, every report will consists of different analytics data, depending on your social posts, networks, or the business goals of your campaign.

    No matter whether you are reporting monthly results or creating a new social strategy, there is a social media report template you can use.

    Introduction

    What are the goals of your social media report? Why are you analysing all the data? Answer all the basic questions in the report introduction. Your audience will know what to expect from the content of the report — how did you gather and analysed the data and what metrics are you reporting on.

    Success metrics

    Make sure your audience knows right away the results of your campaign’s performance. People are interested in seeing hard numbers and those metrics will give them a context of what to expect in the rest of the paper.

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    Data

    When it comes to social media analytics, data is the most important part of all reports that you write. The sort of data you will analyse depends on the goal — you will need to take into account which metrics are important for your business. You will have to analyse a different set of data if you’re working on your strategy and another if you want to improve your Instagram or Facebook performance.

    Analytics

    In the analytics part, you present the insights you have gathered. If you want to have a positive impact on your digital marketing strategy, bare numbers won’t suffice. Analytics part of reports will tell you what the numbers mean.

    For example, you can examine which social network is the most popular one and focus your content production on this channel. Analysing post engagements will help you pinpoint the content your followers want to interact with. Many people will find this part the most interesting one, so make sure you put the most insightful information in this part.

    Read also: How to Measure Social Media Campaigns?

    Social media reporting tools

    Almost every social media channel provide some sort of free social media reports, for example, Instagram Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Google Analytics.

    Although the metrics might be enough for a beginner social media manager, if you want to show the long-term impact of social media on your business bottom line, a free app won’t suffice.

    For a more thorough knowledge, you will need a tool that offers more in-depth metrics, for example, the volume of mentions, hashtag’s reach or sentiment analysis.

    Media monitoring tool will track and analyse the metrics you need for your social media report. But that’s not all. The data collected by brand monitoring tools will help you put social data in a broader context. Your company does not operate in a void. To assess the results and see whether you’ve reached your goals, you need to monitor all publicly available mentions.

    That’s why using a brand monitoring tool with a strong social analytics component is the best option to monitor your performance.

    The data presented here are based on results from Brand24, a brand monitoring tool.

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    Start with creating a project. In the project creation wizard, add the keywords you would like to monitor, such as the name of your company, the name of a specific product or a branded hashtag.

    Brand24 will start to gather all the mentions with your predefined keywords from the all major social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Twitch.

    Because you’re most interested in social media reporting, the vital pieces of information are in the Summary and Analysis tab. Let’s take a deeper look and discover what gems hide inside!

    The Summary tab gives you precise information about the changes in various metrics and KPIs such as:

    • total number of results;
    • social media reach;
    • interactions and engagement rate;
    • sentiment analysis.

    You can define the period you’re interested in yourself.

    Moreover, Brand24 offers a wide range of filters you can apply to your project. That way, you will analyse exactly the content you need.

    print screen showing data you need to create a social media report, for example, the total number of interactions or social media reach

    Create your social media report

    You will find information about the most popular mentions, the most influential profiles, and the most active locations.

    The Analysis tab provides more detailed information about the sources of social media interactions. Thanks to filters, you will be able to assess the number of likes, mentions, comments, and shares from particular social media platforms.

    print screen showing details of social media activity, for example social media reach and other metrics you need to create a social media report

    Create your social media report

    You will also be able to see the most influential social media authors and their share of voice. The share of voice is a number that indicates what part of a conversation was created by a specific author.

    print screen showing the most active sites, pieces of data you need to create a social media report

    Create free social media report! Discover our template!

    All the mentions will be categorised according to the social media platform. That way, you can easily identify the platform where your followers and potential customers are the most active. You’ll find the filter menu in the upper right corner.

    At the end comes the cherry on the top of your social media report — a customisable PDF report! You can use to generate a report template that you can distribute across your company and share your insights with wider audience.

    The reports are highly customisable, so you can prepare a separate report to every stakeholder interested in the results.

    Every team will get the most important metrics and insights and will be able to start acting on those insights right away.

    Discover social media report template! Start a 14-day free trial, no credit card required!

    How to write a social media report?

    Before you start reporting, thing about what your paper for a while. Like with every piece of content, your audience expects to see the value of your work. Whether it’s one of your monthly reports or Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram statement, you should try to contain the most important information.

    To do that, try to think about these aspects:

    Identify stakeholders

    Who is going to read the report? Senior management, marketing and sales department, customer support or everyone in the company? Different teams require different metrics. Some of the teams prefer a more detailed analysis, while senior management would probably like to read something short and to the point.

    Ask the right questions

    The more specific questions you ask, the better the insights you get. That’s why it’s so important to define your queries right at the beginning of social media report.

    I was taught the SMART technique during my Bachelor studies, and I’ve been using it ever since. An example of a SMART question is:

    Did our Twitter marketing campaign drive engagement rates by 15%?

    Let’s analyse!

    • Specific – the question clearly defines the channel (Twitter) and the metric to measure (conversion rate);
    • Measurable – with little help from Brand24 you can measure conversion rate;
    • Achievable – with a social media strategy in place you can increase your social media engagement rates and boost brand awareness;
    • Relevant – the goal will help to increase your customer base, so it’s extremely relevant;
    • Time-bound – social media marketing campaigns are usually time-bound. I’ll elaborate on this in the next point.

    Research questions

    An example of a research question would be:

    What do men in their 30s look for in a sports brand?

    You probably wonder how to gather information about this topic. The question is pretty broad and requires a lot of work to answer.

    There are a lot of answers to the problem, but one of them is social media monitoring.

    Once again, set up a project in Brand24, but this time include keywords that focus on sports brands and healthcare. You can monitor phrases such as the names of sports disciplines, athletes brands, or sports venues.

    Take a look in Mentions tab. The tool collected all the mentions with your predefined keywords. When you browse the results, you might identify some commonalities among users interactions.

    Establish a timeframe

    The time frame will depend on the type of report you’re preparing.

    A weekly, monthly or quarterly report will cover, well… one week, one month or one quarter, that’s self-explanatory.

    Then there’s a social media report that covers the duration of a whole marketing campaign. Remember to include benchmarks from before the campaign started, so you can clearly see the results.

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    The broadest social media report is the research report. You can freely determine the timeframes here. It’s a good idea to have a broad time range, for example, a whole year. That way no event, for example, Christmas or Black Friday, skews the data.

    You may also consider a daily report. It will help you react fast to any emerging social media crisis. An issue can become a crisis in a blink of an eye. Brand24 will collect all the mentions in real-time and deliver them to your smartphone (with our mobile app) mailbox or a dedicated Slack channel.

    Why do you need a social media report?

    A social media report will help with demonstrating the results of your latest social media marketing campaign to your boss.

    Even if senior management understands the importance of social networks, they don’t have to be savvy when it comes to grasping all different social media metrics. It’s your job to present them with a value that comes from social media activities.

    Social media reporting will help you present the right set of data. Social media reporting will help you present the data in an easy to understand way, so that all the social data are easily accessible.

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    A social media report is also a helpful tool for every social media manager, sales department, and even IT folks. A social media analytics report will:

    • determine the ROI of social media campaigns;
    • determine the growth or decline of social channels;
    • identify successes and failures, so you know what to improve, tweak or delete;
    • present a general sentiment around a brand;
    • help identify the most valued new features to develop according to your audience
    • measure brand awareness over time
    • assess the general social media strategy
    • identify the content that sparks the highest levels of engagement

    That’s a lot data to process! Thankfully, you can automate some parts of reporting and get the data that will describe the performance of your social strategy.

    Social media reporting tips

    After you gather all the intel, it’s time to write down a report.

    Social media marketing is all about telling a story. The same principle holds for your social media report. You’re still telling a story, you’re just using graphs and charts to make it more compelling.

    Specify methodology and background

    That sounds incredibly scientifical and boring but it’s a vital part of your social media report.

    The background section will determine which metrics your report is trying to measure, why you are focusing on this specific campaign or period, and include campaign details.

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    The methodology will include the language, timeframe, social media platform or any other relevant detail.

    Be direct

    A Russian playwriter, Anton Chekhov, famously said:

    If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don’t put it there.

    In your social media report, the pistol should fire right away. Your boss and coworkers don’t have time to skim through a 70-page report, that’s why it’s important to grab their attention right in the beginning.

    Put your key findings right after methodology, so even if your reader reads two pages of your report they immediately get the most valuable insights.

    Display the data

    I’m a visual person so I enjoy having graphs and charts in my reports. It just makes life so much easier. You should still explain the charts and diagrams.

    Context is important. Your boss might see a few negative comments and panic. In reality, the negative mentions might just be a small percentage of the conversation.

    Personalize the report

    A social media monitoring tool will give access to quotes and profiles of social media accounts. Take a look at the Quotes tab. You will find quotes from the most influential authors, together with the names of the social media channels they come from and profile pictures.

    A Quotes tab from Brand24 displaying different quotes from social media users that can be used to personalize social media report

    Create a social media report

    Social media report in a nutshell

    There are probably plenty of websites on the internet that will tell you precisely which metrics to include in your social media analytics and reports. The key, though, for an insightful social media report is personalisation.

    Follower count, reach, engagement rate are not universal metrics and might not provide you the insights you need. Instead of basing your reporting on a social media report template, it’s better to create a customised solution that contains key metrics you need.

    The truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every business deals with a different set of goals and obstacles, that’s why you should start working on your social report by setting up business goals. Once you know what you want to achieve, look for social media metrics your marketing team should track regularly.

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    The good news is, there are some common social media metrics and frameworks you can incorporate into your social media reporting.

    There are different types of social media reports. Choose the reporting method that is useful for your brand at the given moment. It might depend on the type of campaign you are running.

    1. A regular social media report. It will contain the primary social media KPI, for example, engagement metrics, follower growth or social media reach. It will demonstrate the progress your marketing team is doing while reaching your social media goals. This can be a monthly report that can be created using a social media report template;
    2. A report after completing a particular social media campaign. It will help determine the success of a product launch, event, or marketing campaign. The impact of marketing campaigns are correlated with a company’s growth;
    3. A piece of research. You take a more in-depth look at all conversations around a specific brand, product or event. Research social media report aims to uncover insights about a particular topic.