How to Create a Social Media Report [Free Template]

Social media is among the strongest channels I’ve utilized in my advertising profession. Actually, it’s one of many channels with the highest ROI this yr.

I’ve discovered that making a social media report template is a good place to begin when deciding on what you wish to embody in your social media technique.

Profitable social media advertising isn’t a senseless process. Nevertheless, it takes cautious planning and strategizing to have interaction your viewers.

Realizing what to publish, how typically to publish, how a lot to put money into paid social, and what metrics you need to be measuring are all key components of a profitable social media technique. Fortunately, all of those parts could be tracked in a social media report, so you already know in case you’re on the best 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.

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Desk of Contents

What’s a social media report?

A social media report is a means for entrepreneurs to investigate and extract information based mostly on how varied social media platforms are performing.

This would possibly embody measuring metrics corresponding to followers, profitable clickthrough charges, likes, publish shares, purchases, and extra.

There are two forms of social media advertising: 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 by social media channels and would possibly appear like promoted content material, influencer advertising, and different social media efforts that value cash and should be budgeted for.

What are the several types of social media experiences?

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 experiences on every owned channel.

You’ll wish to know your viewers for every channel, what number of posts you made, how they carried out (engagement), and what this appears to be like like as a proportion of your whole viewers.

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2. Earned Media

The sort of report (discovered on the second web page of the free template) appears to be like at your attain and impressions.

Every platform can have totally different audiences and metrics to comply with concerning your engagement. The sort of report can provide you a greater thought of what your attain at the moment is and how you can enhance it.

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3. Key Initiatives and Objectives

It’s not sufficient to only blindly publish on totally different platforms.

You might want to have a transparent thought of the totally different social media campaigns you wish to accomplish on a month-to-month foundation and what engagement you wish 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 preferred publish, most commented publish)

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Why use a social media report?

A social media report is one of the simplest ways to distill the key metrics your social media crew is monitoring on a day by day, weekly, month-to-month, quarterly, and/or annual foundation.

Since social media encompasses a lot, gathering and reporting on the information and channels that you’ve got decided are most necessary for your small business gives a lens of focus on your social media advertising crew and delivers a mandatory high-level overview for management.

Social media would not simply have an effect on advertising. Prospects ask questions, clients write critiques, and thought leaders comply with you for firm information.

As a result of social media coincides with practically each side 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 can too 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).

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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 on your group.

Featured Useful resource: Free Social Media Report Template

Social Media Metrics to Report On

What you are promoting doubtless values some metrics over others in terms of social media reporting.

Probably, these metrics additionally differ 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 by this checklist of choices for social media metrics so you’ll be able to decide which of them you need to embody in your report.

1. Viewers Dimension and Progress

This metric tells you ways massive your attain is and the way shortly that attain is rising. That is usually seen because the core social media metric, because it reveals how massive of an viewers you’ll be able to leverage along with your posts and content material.

2. Cadence of Posts

A moderately self-explanatory instance, this metric represents what number of occasions you posted in a given time interval.

This metric is normally in contrast alongside different metrics — corresponding to engagement charges — that will help you decide the best cadence on your viewers.

This metric must also be channel-specific as a result of it is sensible to post more frequently on some channels than others.

3. Put up Engagement

Put up engagement measures how your followers and followers are reacting to your posts with likes, feedback, and shares. A wholesome publish engagement suggests you’ve got a loyal viewers — and that your content material is reaching them.

You can too observe engagement as a proportion of your viewers to find out engagement fee.

4. Mentions

One metric you’ve got much less management over is mentions. You may observe mentions from clients, prospects, and even information shops to gauge the notion of your small business and model on-line.

5. Clickthrough Charge

When a publish hyperlinks to a web page in your web site, you’ll be able to measure how many individuals and what number of your viewers clicked by 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 crew’s efforts, be sure you‘re utilizing correct monitoring and setting affordable objectives, because it’s uncommon in some industries to go straight from social media to turning into a buyer.

7. ROI

Instantly tracing ROI (return on funding) to social media efforts could be tough. Nevertheless, in case you decide it is value reporting on this metric, be sure you have correct expectations set and attribution fashions established.

8. CPM / CPC

This metric is crucial for monitoring the efficiency of your social media adverts. In the event you’re solely reporting on natural social metrics, you’ll be able to ignore this one.

9. Competitor Metrics

To offer a benchmark, contemplate analyzing the aforementioned metrics on your rivals.

Clearly, these metrics can differ drastically based mostly on publicity, paid funds, and the dimensions of the corporate, however it’s nonetheless worthwhile to make the comparability.

Free Social Media Report Template

Creating your personal social media report from scratch could be tough.

In the event you want a straightforward strategy 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 objectives and platforms that you’re partaking in.

Social Media Report Examples

Let’s check out how totally different firms report their social metrics of their social media report.

Coca-Cola

Keyhole did a superb job gathering several types of reporting that Coca-Cola might embody in its social media experiences in this blog. Listed below are some instance photos of several types of social media reporting:

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This picture appears to be like at how every Coca-Cola publish carried out over a set period of time. I like such a reporting as a result of in case you’re taking a look at engagement by publish, you will get a greater understanding of what forms of posts carry out the very best.

Don’t overlook that the time of day you publish even impacts how posts carry out.

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This report appears to be like at Coca-Cola’s follower progress over a set period of time (on this case, a yr). It additionally breaks down publish sorts and their respective engagement.

The sort of evaluation is nice for understanding which publish sorts carry out the very best and will obtain essentially the most funding out of your advertising efforts.

Walmart

One other big firm, Walmart, intently watches its social media site visitors. Take this report picture from 2023:

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This report appears to be like at several types of social media site visitors based mostly on platform. You may clearly see that YouTube is their high social media performer, with Reddit and Fb solely reaching half of YouTube’s engagement.

I like such a 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 very best organically to get extra bang for my buck.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s marketing dashboard consists of reporting instruments to have a look at every social media channel over time. Take a look at this report:

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I like that this reporting instrument makes it straightforward to see totally different social media metrics all collectively over totally different platforms and set intervals of time.

You may see how every sort of report follows an analogous curve, providing you with perception into which months you grew essentially the most and which platforms carried out the very best.

The way to Make a Social Media Report

Step 1: Select your presentation technique

For consistency and readability, be sure you’re utilizing a social media report presentation, spreadsheet, or memo template.

This fashion, every time you replace your metrics, you will merely want to repeat over your latest metrics onto that template moderately than reinventing the wheel each time.

We advise utilizing a PowerPoint or Google Slide Deck template as a result of you’ll be able to share it along with your crew 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 will be reporting on

As we have established, totally different firms and totally different social media groups worth totally different social media metrics.

It is your job to decide on the metrics that matter most to your crew and your group.

Utilizing the checklist from the part above, slender down the important metrics you consider are value presenting to your crew at massive.

Keep in mind, you’ll be able to 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: In your first few ongoing social media reporting displays, ask your friends which metrics they’d prefer to see or which of them they want clarification on.

Making these modifications sooner moderately than later helps you retain your crew knowledgeable and engaged.

Step 3: Collect your information

As soon as you already know what you‘re reporting on and the way you’re reporting it, it is time to begin accumulating information.

Whenever you‘re first establishing your social media experiences, create bookmarks on 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.

In the event you‘re monitoring click-throughs to your web site, be sure you’re analyzing from a single grasp location, corresponding to your monitoring URL builder or your site visitors monitoring instrument like HubSpot or Google Analytics.

Step 4: Add in some visuals

A chart of numbers on a slide deck is, nicely, fairly boring.

Whereas a numerical chart is necessary for sharing as a lot information as attainable in an organized means, utilizing visuals is a greater strategy to convey the expansion and success metrics of your social media efficiency.

Attempt incorporating one or the entire following into your social media experiences:

• Linear graphs to point out followers over time.
• Pie charts to point out clicks to totally different pages of your web site (weblog pages vs. case research, for instance).
• Bar graphs to point out 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 crew to stroll away with. If information visualization is new to you, try our Guide on Data Visualization for Marketers.

Step 5: Consider your story

A operating social media report ought to all the time remind individuals about the place you got here from and the place you intend on going.

That stated, be certain that your experiences make reference to how your numbers have modified for the reason that final time period you offered, along with why numbers have modified.

Did follower progress as a % enhance drop final month?

Perhaps that is as a result of one in all your posts from the month earlier than went viral and resulted in unprecedented progress that was not possible to match. Make that clear and add context to the numbers.

Moreover, every report ought to include clear motion objects about how you intend to constantly enhance your social media efficiency. Social media is consistently 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 a much bigger funds and buy-in.

Executives wish to know what advertising efforts are working and the place they need to make investments extra time and money, and a social media report is one of the simplest ways to show your exhausting work.

Your first report gained’t be excellent, however everybody has to begin someplace. The extra information you enter into your experiences, the extra compelling they’ll grow to be.

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 publish was initially printed in June 2020 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.