Social Media Reporting is now easier than ever.
The wealth of data and insights you can provide in your reporting makes for useful and proactive information.
There are still areas in reporting that some social media managers and agencies are not reporting on though. And we think these areas are as crucial now as they have ever been.
1. Follower Numbers
Followers or fans are the core metric. While it’s arguable that these can be ‘vanity’ metrics, you are not really talking about reporting unless you know exactly how many people are involved in your brand story.
When reporting, make this fundamental metric as important as it is. Be on top of the process and include growth or decline over key time periods. We’re presuming your time periods are useful windows, and that the people you’re reporting to know how important those time periods are. If it’s a month by month report, you need to be able to show exactly what the growth or decline in followers or fans was.
It shows where a brand is at, and assuming you haven’t been creating fake followers, how much love the brand is getting.
2. Clicks And Visits
Another key aspect and outcome from good social media marketing, the conversions that your content creates are key metrics to include. However, we’re saying that they aren’t just key metrics, they’re also metrics that you have to 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 people click on or take any other kind of action, and make sure that you have that information fully documented. 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. It needs to be focused overall, obviously, on the engagement, the brand is receiving over time. That’s your first, main job when it comes to engagement.
However, as the social media strategy 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.
We could talk until the cows come home about how many posts you need to create every day or every hour. That will get us nowhere. However, the volume of posts does have 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 text posts (we’re kind of guessing they will be honest), or your competition series may be 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 darn 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 who are paying for the whole thing.
So I Include All That?
Yes, and the rest. But the key components above are vital. They show that you’re in control of strategy and that you know how to report on the stuff that makes money and builds a brand. Ensure that the above features are always in your reports, and that you’re reporting on them in detail. It really will enable better outcomes.