Social media channels are an essential part of digital marketing strategies. Measuring your social media performance and proving campaign results in a social media listening report can be painful. You need to know the metrics that matter, and the KPIs to use. What you should be presenting to your team, your clients, and management.
Even if you’re already doing weekly or monthly reporting, those detailed spreadsheets won’t please the boss. They want to see a high-level overview.
This social media reporting guide will explain why analyzing and reporting social results is crucial. Follow the seven steps to create your social media reports, and learn:
We’ve suggested several social media reports to present. Take your pick based on your audience, business goals, and what you want to prove.
Here's an example social media report template - you can download all three simulated Talkwalker social media reporting templates now.
Example dashboard for Coca-Cola, showing the share of product attributes, results over time, reach vs engagement. ‘Ingredients’ has the largest share of mentions, over ‘packaging’ and ‘flavor’. Talkwalker Social Listening
What do you reply when asked, “What’s the ROI of your recent social media campaign?”
“Incredible… we got 1500 more followers, 45 shares, 22k likes…”
Nice engagement, but how did it help your bottom line?
It can be hard to translate social media metrics into something understood across the board. Not everyone has your insights into the many marketing channels you use. You need to be able to explain all that your team is doing and the goals you’re hitting, to justify your budget. A visual, comprehensive social media report - social media audit - will explain all.
The secret of successful social media reporting is comparison. Compare how your channels performed before vs how they perform now. This Q3 compared with the last Q3. And, how you position your social marketing campaigns against your competitors
Don’t ever, ever assume that senior management understands social media, or what your job involves. It’s up to you to educate them. To prove your team’s value. To prove your value.
First up... the definition of a social media report. A social media report uses data, stats, and metrics to prove the value of your social media strategy. Done well, the best social media report will steer you in the right direction for future social media campaigns. You'll also learn what isn't resonating with your followers, and be able to pause or stop campaigns.
Simulated social media report for Coca-Cola, showing Community Impact page. Social community growth by channel, with explanatory notes. Talkwalker Social Listening
Your report will explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Your targets and the results you’ve achieved. It’ll justify your budget.
First, your report should include an overview of your social media strategy. A summary that'll help readers understand what your social media report will cover.
It will explain your intended goals for your social activities and how they link to your business strategy.
At the end of your report, answer the following questions. This will demonstrate what you’ve learned and how you’ll improve your social media strategy.
A successful social media strategy fully understands how and why your content performs the way it does. The big wins and the disappointing fails.
Now you need to drill down and provide comprehensive, measurable goals. Follow SMART goals, so you can track and report your results easily and accurately.
The number of goals depends on your social strategy, team size, organization size of your organization, etc
SMART goals - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely.
As you become more proficient at tracking and analyzing, you can add more goals.
Time to choose the data you'll use to measure and confirm your goals. Remember, SMART goals need measurable metrics.
For instance... you're looking to increase your leads by 30% in Q2. There's your success metric - show how many leads you generated.
While each team will have its own set of metrics depending on their goals, data to include for measuring your social strategy are...
Include all the metrics you need to prove your results and demonstrate social media strategy success.
Now you need to find results for each of your social media channels.
Owned channel performance - results per channel for social media reporting. Talkwalker Social Listening
The data you include will depend on your goals and metrics. For instance, for each social channel, you could include...
You must offer a comparison, i.e., compare Q2 results this year, with Q2 results from last year. If you're reporting on a specific social campaign, try to compare it with a similar one from the past.
When performing weekly or monthly reporting, always compare to the previous weeks and months, to identify trends.
Next, analyze. Highlight what was successful, and what didn't work.
Start with the numbers - focus on leads and revenue. Then concentrate on other wins such as,
Understand how you got the results, so you can improve your social strategy, and determine future social media goals. Were there parts of your strategy that didn't work? Find out why they failed, and how to turn those into a win.
Include a summary of all your wins, failures, and learning points. Plus, how these results will guide your future social media strategy.
Tracking your social media campaigns - owned and paid - will help you find what’s working and what isn’t. Budgets are tight, so you can’t afford to waste money on things that aren’t working.
Comparing your social media channels identifies which channels your audience favors. And which are bringing the most success with least effort. Identifying what content works and engages helps you replicate successes, and cut failures.
Track and analyze your competitors to compare your market impact, and find new opportunities to expand your community. Seeing the bigger picture helps prove your business decisions are effective.
Talkwalker simulated report - track and analyze your competitors, to compare market impact. Talkwalker Social Listening
Creating an automated report is all in the preparation - who, what, why, how...
Who are you creating your report for?
You need to choose your audience so you only share what’s relevant to each stakeholder. Don’t force your audience to hunt for the information they need.
The social media report you create for your team will be entirely different from the one you share with C-level.
Senior management won’t always have the time or inclination to read a heap of pages. Keep it short and simple.
It’s important to focus your social media analytics reporting. What are you hoping to achieve from your social media reports? What are you trying to prove, to justify?
Concentrate on the social media KPIs that matter to your business strategy and your target audience. While you have to be detailed, don’t bury yourself under data.
You can break social media reporting into three categories...
Regardless of which report you’re writing, you should identify the questions you want to answer. As with your goals, ensure your questions are SMART...
A report following a specific marketing campaign might ask - how much of your target group drove engagement?
A research report might ask - what do people want in their 40s from a clothing brand?
You don’t need to report on everything.
The more you include, the greater your reporting task will be. What you choose to measure depends on your needs and which social networks you use. These can include X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. . Try to avoid custom metrics that’ll need manual calculation, unless vital.
Measure metrics that you’ll learn from, and that will inform your decision-making...
You need to track a lot of social media data. When it comes to reporting results, be shrewd with what you share. Not everything you’re monitoring is relevant to management.
Be consistent - report the same metrics in the same way, each time. Include percentage changes and benchmarks to make it easier for your audience to understand the results.
Clarify your priorities and goals before you start looking for the best tool. Ask questions...
Social media channels are evolving. You need a tool that will keep up with these changes.
A single tool is best, rather than multiple, or a different one for each channel. You’ll save time, money, and stress.
Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and campaign-related. It makes sense to report some metrics more often than others. What does management want?
If you’re creating a campaign-related report, set benchmarks before you start. You’ll then be able to track improvements.
You can do a monthly report on published content. Include the number of sessions, page views, new users, goal completions, bounce rate, leads, and downloads.
If you’re targeting keywords, include page rankings for before and after the publication date.
With this information, you’ll see spikes and patterns, to better understand what’s working with your audience. For example, seasonal patterns during holidays, Christmas, Black Friday, etc.
Once you have all the information, you need build your social media report. It's time to work on your presentation.
Remember, not everyone you're talking to will have your insights. They may not understand all the data you present. Make it an easy read.
Use graphs, charts, virality maps, Conversation Clusters, word clouds, social posts, and Influencer Networks. Whatever it takes to create social media reports that are easy to understand. Human brains understand images and are more likely to retain the information they’re illustrating. Include a short description of what they’re seeing, along with takeaways and analysis highlights.
Here are our tips for making your social data easier to grasp...
How you present - the look of the report - depends on your audience, the depth of your reporting, and which tools you're currently using.
If you can present everything clearly on a single slide... go for it.
For comprehensive results, a consumer intelligence platform can collect data, and automate results into an easy-to-understand report.
Use a mix of data visuals to support and explain your results in your social media report. Talkwalker Social Listening
You should be ready to...
The goal of your social media report is to optimize your social media activities and benefit your bottom line.
Let's take a look at the various reports and periods that you could cover...
Choose those that will give you and management all the data you need.
Used by the social media team to track daily changes. Can find spikes and troughs to enable fast response. What caused this? What action should you take?
Managing your channels means monitoring - in real time - your brand, product, and competitor posts. Address any issues immediately.
An issue can become a crisis in the blink of an eye!
Questions to ask...
Performance benchmarking shows how your business compares to your competitors and industry.
Marketing campaigns - when successful - have a significant impact on company growth. Are you measuring this impact? It’s time you proved the value of your team and your campaigns.
A punctual campaign - a time-bound initiative - has a single/targeted message and drives one business goal. You’ll want to report on the ROI of each punctual campaign. Track audience engagement, and analyze the opportunities that resulted from your campaign. Depending on the structure of your campaign, measure these metrics:
You need to track paid ads for performance and frequency, while keeping the budget on track. Optimize goals and allocate money based on what’s working and what isn’t.
Each social media platform has built-in tools to measure performance. For easier reporting, a single consumer intelligence platform will prove more efficient.
Metrics to improve future campaigns...
Monthly reporting is for performance comparison over time. Watch for spikes and slumps. Is that spike a trend or a one-off incident? Determine this before tweaking your social media plan on an exception, rather than the norm.
You should include the following...
This is for management, so be ready with the answers to any questions. More data, more questions...
Your quarterly strategy review will help you maximize the performance of your marketing efforts. The goal is to assess how fit for purpose your strategy is, while learning from the previous quarter. This in turn, will influence planning for the next quarter.
Your quarterly review should cover...
When a brand faces a potential crisis, a fast assessment and reaction is crucial. Reporting on your online performance is only valuable if you’re honest, and face up to the truth. Establish a PR crisis management plan. It will significantly reduce the chances of damage to your brand reputation.
During PR crisis management - listen, identify, review, respond.
Who are people talking about most, you or your competitors? What’s your brand’s share of voice - SOV - in your industry? A spike in SOV isn’t always a good thing if a crisis caused the increase.
Understand how your brand is positioned in the market with a share of voice report. And uncover new opportunities for growth.
Compare results from all your social channels. Each channel is different, and might not be a fit for your brand. Try out some alternative strategies. If it doesn’t improve, concentrate on the channels that work for you.
Simulated brand health report - Talkwalker Social Listening
How effective is your brand in achieving your business goals? Tracking reputation, awareness, engagement, and positioning will give you an overview of your strengths and weaknesses.
Report the stats, and ask questions. An increase in your share of voice sounds great, but is it due to a potential crisis? Gathering all your results and analysis into a single report will give you the complete picture of your brand health.
Now you understand why accurate reporting is so important.
And an industry-leading social media reporting platform can make it easier than ever. Here are some key factors to consider when choosing a tool.
The reporting function of Talkwalker Social Listening tools does all this and much more. To learn how it can make reporting a breeze, click below.