{"id":76445,"date":"2018-10-09T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/?p=76445"},"modified":"2018-10-09T08:56:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T07:56:42","slug":"4-ways-effective-social-media-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/social-media-marketing\/social-media-analytics\/4-ways-effective-social-media-reporting\/","title":{"rendered":"4 ways to do effective social media reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media strategy and planning essentials - \u00a0Recommended dashboards and tools for creating social media marketing reports for different\u00a0reporting periods<\/h2>\n

This is part 8 of my Smart Insights 12 part social media series. In the last part we looked at resource planning for social media; in this blog, I discuss what data you should capture and report to measure the impact of your social media marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n

To frame the conversation, I\u2019ll cover four different type of report:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Daily dashboard<\/li>\n
  2. Weekly KPI report<\/li>\n
  3. Monthly roll-up report<\/li>\n
  4. Quarterly strategy review<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Reporting scope and goals<\/h3>\n

    It\u2019s important to understand the context, and limitations, for reporting. The data you have access to depends upon your business resources and scale of social activity. For example, many small businesses don\u2019t have subscriptions to social media monitoring tools like Audiense and Buzzsumo, so won\u2019t be able to include data from these in their regular reports. Focus on what data you have available; you can extend later by adding tools or customising analytics.<\/p>\n

    What you need to report on should be aligned with your social media strategy goals and objectives (see part 2 in this series \u2013 \u201cHow to create a social media strategy and plan\u201d<\/a>). For example, if a goal is to increase customer retention by using social media marketing to bring people back to your website, then ensure you have a metric based upon returning visitors.<\/p>\n

    You also need to differentiate between value metrics (data points that can be used to take action e.g. analysing retweet data can help identify content topics and formats that drive social sharing and brand reach<\/em>) vs. vanity metrics (data points that indicate engagement but have limited wider impact e.g. likes on Twitter may indicate popularity but increasing likes doesn\u2019t increase content reach like RTs do*<\/em>).<\/p>\n

    *caveat<\/strong> \u2013 if the only people who RT your content have limited followers and\/or are bot spam\u00a0profiles, then it\u2019s no longer a value metric! Context is everything<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Top tip:<\/strong>
    \nLearn what analytics reports each social network offers. For example, Twitter has a useful \u2018Top mention\u2019 for each month, showing the most popular tweet including your twitter handle. You can also drill into engagement metrics for individual tweets, to analyse what type of tweet gets the highest engagement rate or total number of engagements.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \"Twitter \"Twitter<\/p>\n

    Daily dashboard<\/h3>\n

    This is for the social media team, not management, and the aim is to monitor daily fluctuations in activity to be able to spot a change quickly and react. In social media terms, a day is a very long time, so if you see a sudden spike in brand mentions or engagement rate, you need to find out why, fast.<\/p>\n

    This dovetails with proactive social channel management, ensuring that someone is regularly checking anything posted on the brand\u2019s social networks, as well as brand and product mentions. You don\u2019t want to wait until the next morning to find out if you had a problem the previous day!<\/p>\n

    I tend to use each social network\u2019s own analytics reports for daily monitoring, or an aggregated view like Hootsuite, from which you can access data on multiple networks (though you\u2019ll need a Pro or Enterprise license to unlock any meaningful data).<\/p>\n

    Below is an example of the questions I look to answer on Twitter for daily activity:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Has there been a spiked increase or decrease in followers?<\/li>\n
    2. Have I had a big increase or decrease in engagement levels with my content?<\/li>\n
    3. Have I gained any new \u2018epic\u2019 influencers (people with large, engaged follower bases and major influence on other people)?<\/li>\n
    4. Has there been any acceleration in activity for #hashtags I\u2019m following?<\/li>\n
    5. Have any of my key competitors had a noticeable shift in key metrics like follower count?<\/li>\n
    6. Has there been a shift in brand sentiment e.g. from positive to more negative?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Detailed sentiment analysis requires subscription to a specialist tool like Meltwater<\/a> or Trackur<\/a>, though you can do \u2018rough\u2019 analysis using free tools like Google Alerts<\/a> and Social Mention<\/a>, albeit with a more limited toolkit.<\/p>\n

      \"Social<\/p>\n

      I use free tools like Twittercounter<\/a> to keep an eye out for follower spikes. The free versions give you limited but useful data to get a handle on trends. For example, the screenshot below shows follower growth over one month\u00a0for Smart Insights, an easy visual way to spot spikes.<\/p>\n

      \"Twittercounter<\/p>\n

      If any of the above questions are a \u2018Yes\u2019, I\u2019d analyse the data further to find a logical reason and take action if required. For example, if I suddenly gained hundreds of followers but discovered these were fake\/low quality profiles, then I\u2019d ignore the spike as it\u2019s a false reading but I might look into things like my hashtag usage to see if a specific hashtag is attracting bot spam.<\/p>\n

      Weekly KPI report<\/h3>\n

      Typically I\u2019d set this up in a web analytics tool like Google Analytics and create a custom dashboard, though some people prefer to use custom dashboard tools like Dash.this<\/a>, which offers periodic, rolling and campaign reports.<\/p>\n

      Below is a simple periodic report from the Dash.this blog showing key metrics for each network and comparison with the previous period:<\/p>\n

      \"Analytics<\/a>Another useful report aggregation tool for social media is Klipfolio, which lets you connect all your social channels and then create custom reports and dashboard to give you a customised data view. Below is an example report Klipfolio<\/a> has created to showcase the flexibility:\"Klipfolio<\/p>\n

      Your weekly KPI report should contain data for each KPI that is aligned with your social media goals. It should be distributed to key stakeholders including the senior social media decision maker. It\u2019s useful to align graphs and charts with 4 different dimensions:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Acquisition e.g. new visitors<\/em><\/li>\n
      2. Engagement e.g. time on page \/ visit depth<\/em><\/li>\n
      3. Conversion e.g. goal completion<\/em><\/li>\n
      4. Retention e.g. # return customers<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        You should also include a comparison of key metrics with the prior week and the corresponding week from the previous year.<\/p>\n

        Anna Lewis<\/a> has kindly created a shared dashboard<\/a> link on Dashboard Junkie.<\/p>\n

        \"GA<\/p>\n

        Monthly roll-up report<\/h3>\n

        Monthly reports enable an objective performance comparison over a longer period of time for management teams. They show whether upward\/downward spikes flagged in weekly reports are trends or isolated incidents. They also help you contextualise external factors that have short-term impact (e.g. unexpected celebrity endorsement of your product), to avoid changing your social media plan based on exceptions rather than the norm.<\/p>\n

        A monthly report should include:<\/p>\n