Reporting on your social media activity couldn’t be easier, faster, and more automated. The wealth of data and insights is constantly developing, but there are still some basic areas that are crucial for social media managers and agencies to remember.

 

1. FOLLOWER NUMBERS

Followers or fans are the core metric to know exactly how many people you’re talking to and are invested in your brand story.

When reporting, make this fundamental metric as important as it is by highlighting the growth or decline over important time periods, for example, month by month or following a campaign.

It shows where a brand is at, and assuming you haven’t been creating fake followers, how much love the brand is getting.

 

2. CONVERSIONS

Another key aspect and outcome from good social media marketing, the conversions (for example, clicks and visits) that your content creates are key metrics to include and make prominent in your reporting.

When it comes to bottom lines, there are none more ‘bottom’ than conversions. Your social media work has to be designed carefully so that it encourages audiences to take action. The action part means that your social media work has been successful. So, identify when and what action has been taken as it shows that you are providing value for money. And it doesn’t matter if you’re an agency or an employee. You need to show value for money.

 

3. ENGAGEMENT

It isn’t effective social media management if it doesn’t have engagement. Engagement is a metric that breaks down into lots of smaller metrics.

As the social media strategy you’re working on grows and becomes more sophisticated, marketers will find that reporting has to hone in on certain posts, or post campaigns. The real beauty of good social media marketing is found when creative posting results in more engagement.

If you’re able to create reports that give details on individual posts and their engagement rates, you’re presenting reports that show how the work results in great outcomes.

4. VOLUME

This is an interesting metric and is also one of those aspects of reporting that simply isn’t understood by some marketers.

It is important to remember, the volume of posts has a huge part to play in good social media marketing. And it, therefore, has a huge role in reporting.

Volume is important for measurement. If you’re struggling to get traction with social, take a look at how many posts you are creating. Then, simply play with the number of posts. The best teams know that you can gain a lot from knowing how many posts it takes to gain the outcomes you need. Reporting on volume means that you can undertake experiments and testing. So it’s vital that you know how important volume is to outcomes, and that you’re able to prove this understanding in the reporting.

5. BEST PERFORMING

Linked to volume, you need to be able to show that you are fully aware of the best kind of posts.

You may be in the enviable position of being able to post just about anything and still gain massive results. Most brands aren’t. Your videos may perform better than your posts without any media for example, or a competition you’re running maybe the best set of posts ever.

The data that shows the best posts you have allows you to refine your strategy over time. Knowing that four good videos a month carry the whole show means that you have an idea of how to grow the social media marketing further.

Just be sure to report on the best-performing posts so that it all makes sense to the people that matter.