How to Create Social Media Reports Your Clients Will Love

No matter what your goals are for marketing, if having social media posts channels is a part of those goals, then making a social media report for your client is important.

You or your client may know a little about social media and how to keep track of analytics.

The problem comes when you need to create a compelling report that shows the progress of a client’s campaign.

It seems like it would be simple to make a report, right?

After all, almost every social media platform tries to make it easy for everyone by having a page dedicated to tracking your social media data. But simply pulling screenshots of every piece of data and putting it on a blank sheet of paper will not cut it.

So, how do you make a social media report that impresses your clients? Keep reading to find out.

What Is a Social Media Report?

Social media reports are documents in which there are current and accurate data, tracking the progression of one or more social media accounts. A social media report can be as comprehensive or bare bones as you want to make it. It can have charts and studies on it, or it can be just as simple as having paragraphs with headings and subheadings for each page.

There is no limitation on how you can make our reports for your clients.

Just know that if you were to make a simple report document, your clients may not take too kindly to it. Social media reports often have specific numbers and other professional terms that a client will probably not know about, so putting a little more effort into your reports will make your clients appreciate the explanations that go with them.

Why Is It Important?

The big question is, why is a social media report important? There are a variety of reasons why a report is great to have for any company. Plenty of businesses have social media marketing as a part of their marketing strategy, and the money they put into it should show itself with greater sales and engagement.

But if your client is just posting and posting, they may not know if they have a great ROI or not. This results in wasting their money and time.

This is where you come in. With your social media reports, you can tell them how their efforts are doing, and if it’s not going the way they plan, the social media reports will highlight opportunities in which they can change their approach.

Who Needs a Report?

The first step in creating an effective social media report is knowing who your audience is and what they expect from you. There could be a few people that you need to report to, whether that’s the whole marketing team or lead. A lot of time, even the CEO or founder may be the one that wants to know the social media report. Here are some others that may want the reports:

• PR

• Senior Management

• Demand Generation Manager

• Senior Management

Get the information on who you will present the reports to and tailor it to their needs and knowledge. You may have to present the information in a way that they will understand.

For example, the CEO will probably know less about social media terms and figures than the marketing manager. But you will have to figure this out to build an effective social media report.

How Many Times Do You Need to Make a Report?

With knowing how often your client will need a social media report, there are a few different time frames in which social media managers will make one. These are the common ones which you can go by:

• Weekly reports

• Monthly reports

• Quarterly reports

• Annual reports

• Fixed period reports

Every client will be different. Some will want one a year, and some will want one after a fixed period - for example, after a social media campaign.

Not only that, but some won’t even think about wanting a social media report at all. If that’s the case, it can be up to you how many times you present a new document.

Even if your client doesn’t ask for one, you can let them know of the importance and see when the best times would be to give a report.

You can also just send one to them on their desk or through email. That way, they can just look through it when they can and see how their social media marketing is doing. It’s up to you or your client. But either way, make sure that your reports are being read, so you don’t have to waste your time creating them.

Know the Goals of Your Client

Now that you can say who needs the reports and when you will present them, you should know what to put in the reports to make the client love them.

This answer all depends on the goals for your clients. One example is a client that wanted to do a campaign for a new product. Their goals may be to get people to click on their website and preorder or buy the product.

Another client will probably want to get more people to engage with their social media posts and blog page on a website. Then one of their goals would probably be to get more reach and followers.

Knowing the specific goals of your client will help you know exactly what to focus on in the reports. Here are some common statistics that you can add to your reports.

What to Include in a Social Media Report?

The number of metrics that you can add to your social media reports is almost endless. You can have a report that's as short as a page or one that’s almost ten pages or even more!

The choice is up to you, but here are some of the most common analytics that's mentioned in social media reports that you can include. Even if your clients aren’t sure what they want to know from a report, you can be there with some of the most important metrics to show their progression.

1. Number of Posts

The most common metric is the value of posts that your client’s business has posted. With every social network site, your client probably has a schedule of how much they post to the profile. This is very important if you want more people to be reached by the content, because the more you post, the more your audience will know the business’ activity on the site.

Thus, they will be more inclined to follow the profile. So, knowing just how active the social media posting is will be a key factor in getting more eyes on your client.

2. Reach and Resonance

Another key factor with reports is the potential reach your client’s social media has with its audience. This data is very important. This is how your client knows how much their content is being seen by new people. You’ll want to include any metrics on how the content is reaching people, for example, if it’s coming from organic or paid views.

This will let your clients know if their paid ads are just as good, better, or worse than their regular posts.

3. Top Posts

There’s no such thing as a complete social media report without one of the most important key parts - top post. Knowing exactly which posts are doing the best and how good are they doing is something almost every social media user thinks about. And it’s no different for businesses. Without these metrics, there's no way to know which posts resonated the most with your audience. By seeing this chart, you can show your client what type of posts work and what doesn’t.

4. Engagement

Many businesses use social media to get their audience to engage with their content, which will encourage them to click into their website or online store, which increases sales. That’s why including this metric in your social media reports will be a great help to them.

Engagement includes everything from likes, comments, clicks, retweets, shares, and anything that allows the user to show their interest in interest in the post. Try showing a comparison of current and past engagement if you're working on a social media campaign to see how the campaign posts to see if the campaign is successful.

How to Report It to Your Client

As you can see, creating a social media report is not as easy as it looks. But while there’s a lot that goes into what you should include in the report, there’s also the aspect of how you should present it to your client.

Plopping down the document on their desk won’t be of much use if they don’t understand what they’re looking at. So, here are a few pointers for presenting a social media report that gives value to your client’s business.

Overview Page

Always make sure that you have an overview page. This page is when you gather and summarize the metrics all on one page. By doing it this way, your client will be able to quickly get the gist of the report and see how their social media marketing is currently doing. The overview page should only be for the most important parts of each metric, so make sure that you effectively summarize each one in a sentence or two.

Look for Key Takeaways

But hold on. We’re not yet done with what type of pages to include yet for your client. The next or final page should be your final takeaways and conclusions of the findings.

Earlier in the post, I said that a social media report is there for showing your client if they are reaching their marketing goals on social media. But the metrics that you included in the first pages of the report should not be where the only sections.

Now put it all together and tell your client what works, what doesn’t work, and what strategies they should go for in the future. Your client will love that you took another step and found opportunities for them to be more successful in social media.

Create a Visually Interesting Report

Everyone knows that reports of any kind are not the most exciting things to read. While more people would rather sit down and read a good novel, social media reports are the more pressing matter for a marketing team and business. So, to make it a little less monotonous, try creating a visually appealing report. That means use graphs, tables, or other graphics with color. You can even add infographics and stock photos if you have time.

Another tip is to incorporate the business colors into the report. Doing these extra things will show your client that the report is truly about their brand and that you care about their goals. And if you have a client that doesn’t think they need a social media report, the visuals may encourage them to look through it, since it won’t seem too intimidating to understand.

Remember, your goal is to make a report that is helpful, but also easy to understand.

What to Do If Metrics Go Down

In a perfect social media marketing world, every business’ metrics will go higher and higher. But unfortunately, that is not always the case. Sometimes, you’ll face falling analytics.

You shouldn’t worry. This is bound to happen, and unless the metrics are falling like a boulder thrown in the ocean, you and your client shouldn’t stress out too much. So, what do you do if you see a falling trend in the report?

Simply give find a solution and come up with a different strategy for their social media. After all, that’s what a social media report is for - to find what works and fix what doesn’t work.

Create Great Social Media Reports

Social media reports are a significant part of your client’s marketing strategy and without them, they would be blind to how well or bad that strategy is going. There are many ways in which you can help them decide if their efforts are going the way they want through your reports.

With so many metrics to include in your reports, it’s always a good idea to talk to your client and the people you’ll give the reports to see their goals. This will help you decide which KPIs you should let them know about. Always remember to create a report that your client can understand and provide either solutions or opportunities in which you can improve their metrics.

If your client needs a push in the right direction of creating a successful social media strategy, Social Media Calendar can help with the planning and creating process of many social media channels.