Creating a social media report can be excruciatingly tedious if you don’t know what to measure.
Collecting and reporting data has two main benefits:
- It’s easier to grow an engaged community when you know what your followers like (and don’t like).
- Showing positive progress proves your value to the client.
Creating a solid social media report can be a bit frustrating if you don’t identify what metrics your client finds valuable up front.
Without understanding their KPIs and goals, you could spend a few hours carefully putting together a report they don’t understand. Or don’t care about. Yes, I’m speaking from experience.
It only took one wasted afternoon early in my career to realize that every client will desire different information. Defining what to measure with your client up front makes your time spent gathering data highly effective.
Perhaps more importantly, an easy-to-digest social media report chock full of positive metrics your client WANTS to see certainly increases the likelihood that they’ll want to keep you on the payroll.
While every report will vary, here are a few metrics I’ve noticed EVERY client wants, along with their definitions:
Followers:
This refers to how many people are in your community – specifically who is following the business.
Posts:
This is the number posts sent out by the business within the time period being measured.
Post Engagement:
This is the number of clicks, likes, shares and/or comments accumulated on all posts (see above) within the time period being measured.
Page Views:
This is the number of times the business’s Facebook Page was directly viewed by Facebook Users.
Overall Reach:
This refers to how many people were “reached” by the business’s content/how many users saw content shared by your business.
Clicks to Website:
This is the number of people who clicked over to the business’s website directly from the social media page.
CTR:
Click-Through-Rate is the percentage of users who clicked on a post as compared to how many users saw that post.
CPE:
Cost-Per-Engagement shows how much each click, like, share, etc. cost over the span of the ad campaign. It is a measurement for advertised content only.
These terms can be modified by platform. For example. “Posts” would be “Tweets” if you’re reporting on Twitter.
My last tip for creating a valuable social media report is to deliver it in a very simple way that makes skimming the numbers simple and quick.
Your clients may read it cover to cover, but most likely they are looking for month over month growth and a few key strategy notes.
I hope this helps streamline your time spent creating and gathering social media metrics. For more tips on all things social, connect with me @bellestrategies!
Belle Strategies is a boutique Social Media Marketing company based in South Florida and South Carolina. Our team mixes innovative strategies with attention to detail for an online presence that produces tangible results. For assistance growing your brand on social media, contact us!
With nearly two decades in the industry, Belle Strategies’ owner, Rachel Creveling, is a seasoned business consultant who crafts comprehensive frameworks that integrate operations, marketing, sales and HR to position her clients for optimal success. She excels at incorporating trending tech ethically and studied Strategies for Accountable AI at Wharton.