If brands have learned anything in 2020, it’s that social media is critical to survive, thrive, and grow—and a social media report is crucial to the process. Sometimes, especially when social is new to a business, it can be tricky to get traction on creative campaigns and financial support from top decision-makers. That’s when creating a social media report can become your greatest asset. With the right content, structure, and data, you can explore everything from channel value and ROI, to strategy and project planning with key stakeholders who make everything happen.

1. Everything You Need to Know About Creating a
Social Media Report

2. If brands have learned anything in 2020, it’s that social media is critical to
survive, thrive, and grow—and a social media report is crucial to the process.
Sometimes, especially when social is new to a business, it can be tricky to get
traction on creative campaigns and financial support from top
decision-makers. That’s when creating a social media report can become
your greatest asset. With the right content, structure, and data, you can
explore everything from channel value and ROI, to strategy and project
planning with key stakeholders who make everything happen.

3. The Five Ws of Social
Reporting
At the start of any social reporting initiative, whether you’re
a social marketing professional or managing a larger
department that’s recently added social into the fold, it’s
important to guide your social media report with—you
guessed it—the infamous five Ws. Ask yourself:
1. Who is the audience for this report?
2. What are my social media goals?
3. When (and how often) do I want to report?
4. Where should I source my data from?
5. Why is this information important to my business?
@laurennally09

4. Step One: Determine Your Audience
Like any good marketing campaign, your social media report
needs to be targeted at a specific audience. First consider
who will be reading the report or who you’re presenting it to.
This should inform the data you include, the style and
structure of your document, and the cadence of your social
reporting schedule.
For example:
● If you’re sharing the report with your creative team,
you’ll likely want to include stats about campaigns,
get granular on individual post performance, and
share actionable insights on a frequent basis.
● If you’re reporting to senior management, you should
focus on high-level data points and how they relate
to the company’s bottom line.

5. Step Two: Consider Your Goals
Not every marketer uses social media in the same way.
Product-based businesses are almost exclusively tapping
into selling potential while those focused on services tend to
prioritize awareness. This could mean honing in on stats for
engagement, web traffic, and click-through rate to
emphasize value for sales, or organic reach, effectiveness,
and growth rate to prove the power of your following.
Depending on your social reporting cadence, you might
want to zone in on the goals for individual campaigns and
channels, or speak to how the results of every social
channel aligns with and supports your brand goals overall.

6. Step Three: Set Your Cadence
How often you create a social media report depends on
your position and the outcome of steps one and two.
As a general best practice, social media professionals
should share reports within the team on a weekly or
monthly basis to understand how their efforts are paying off
and adjust the strategy accordingly.
At the senior level, once per quarter or even once per year
should suffice. It can also be beneficial to report on the
progress of individual campaigns, particularly if an aspect of
a campaign is different to your usual content or schedule.

7. Step Four: Source Your Data
Every social channel has its own version of native analytics,
including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and
TikTok, and you can find all the data you need within each
of these apps.
Alternatively, there are several social media analytics tools
that can save you time and aggregate the important
information for you.
Dash Hudson’s Instagram and Pinterest Insights give you a
complete snapshot of your stats with an easy-to-download
CSV (a social marketer’s best friend) or PDF. You can filter,
sort, and dig deep into the numbers for a perfectly
organized, accurate report.

8. Step Five: Action Items
Once you’ve gathered the data, you’ll have a better picture
of what direction to take your strategy in and should outline
this in your social media report accordingly. Be as thorough
as possible so your audience has proper expectations set for
what will occur between now and your next report. What
successes are you going to build on and what are you going
to change to better meet your goals? Include
recommendations, dates, and timelines whenever possible.
This is really what your reporting efforts are all about:
● Providing evidence to those who need it that the
work you’re doing is important, effective, and
valuable (and that you’re willing to scrap or build on
the areas that aren’t quite working yet).

9. How to Nail the Overview
Every social media report should start with an overview. It
might be tempting to save the best bits of information for
last—in some cases, it works to your advantage to create a
narrative arc and build up to a big “ta-da” moment that
wows the room. In this case, don’t bury your lede.
Provide all the high-level data upfront and follow with a
breakdown of the details for those who need it. Here’s
where you can show how much your KPIs have increased or
declined since your last report, whether that’s month over
month, quarter over quarter, or year over year.
@laurennally09

10. How to Nail the Overview
For channels like Instagram and Facebook this should
include:
● Total number of posts
● Total number of likes
● Total number of comments
● Average engagement rate
● Average post and story impressions
● Organic reach
● Net new followers
● Profile views
● Email, phone call, and website clicks
@laurennally09

11. How to Nail the Overview
For channels like Instagram and Facebook this should
include:
● Total number of posts, likes, and comments
● Average engagement rate
● Average post and story impressions
● Organic reach
● Net new followers
● Profile views
● Email, phone call, and website clicks
On channels with slightly different metrics like Twitter,
Pinterest, and TikTok, you’ll also want to include Pins,
retweets, duets, etc—whatever the channel equivalent is of
a “like” or important interaction with your content.
@laurennally09

12. Analysis and Insights
The analysis section is your time to shine. Highlight your
top-performing posts, single out trends in captions or
images, showcase campaigns that resonated, and detail
how your fans responded to content.
It’s also a great time to benchmark your current numbers
against not only your historic performance, but industry
averages set by the world’s most important brands. Show
your audience how you stack up to the competition and how
you plan to set yourself apart.
You’ll want to capture as much relevant data as you can
here, including 👉
@laurennally09

13. Data to include:
● Follower growth trends
● Breakdown of followers by demographic (age, region,
gender)
● Post performance including engagement,
effectiveness, impressions, reach, and saves
● Top posts by KPI
● Performance of UGC including organic reach, number
of posts, photo tags, and @mentions
● Story performance and cadence including number of
cards, replies, impressions, and exit rate
● LikeShop performance including page views, number
of clicks, and click-through rate
● Influencer relationships including number of posts,
followers gained, and earned media value
@laurennally09

14. An Artful Conclusion
When you’re finished your analysis, summarize the most
important takeaways—especially those that pertain to your
action items.
You have all this data, but what does it actually mean?
Demonstrate your understanding of the results, including
what you learned, why you feel the final outcome occurred
(whether or not it was positive or negative), and what you
need from your audience from budget increases to project
deliverables.
Oh, and make it look good. Nobody wants to spend 30
minutes looking at numerals. Social media is a visual
platform, which means your final social media report should
have polished tables, graphs, and examples from your feed.

15. Social Reporting Made Simple
Remember those weekly and monthly reports we
mentioned earlier? Dash Hudson can automatically
generate these for you in a beautiful PDF presentation.
● Sleek visuals? Check.
● Accurate data? Check.
● Expertly organized? You’ve got yourself a hat trick.
We do all the number crunching, you get all the credit.
Happy social reporting!
@laurennally09

16. Keep On Reading
Read more about Dash Hudson by visiting our
blog for the full story.
blog.dashhudson.com

17. What is Dash Hudson?

18. Visual Marketing Software for
the World’s Most Important Brands
Built for the discerning. Create, measure, predict, and publish photos
and videos. See trends, analyze, and enhance performance across
organic and paid marketing channels.

19. Hear From the Best in the Biz
“It’s crazy to think of life before Dash Hudson. From the
moment we were pitched the platform and taken into the
world of DH we were blown away.”
Taylor Branson,
Associate Manager, Social Media
“We’ve seen all of your competitors’ products, and
we’ve never seen anything that can do this, and is so
beautiful and functional.”
Anna Tran,
Brand Director
“Dash Hudson is the best platform we’ve ever used. It’s
user-friendly, incredibly insightful, always innovating, and the
customer service from the team has been so helpful.
Truthfully, there is no comparison.”
Madeline Davis,
Social Media Manager
“Dash Hudson helps us understand our customer
better, and aids us in delivering the content that our
customer wants, at the right time.”
Kelsey Simmons,
Senior Business Intelligence Analyst

20. Want to Know More?
Drop us a line at dashhudson.com/demo to learn more
about Dash Hudson and why it’s used by the world’s
smartest brands.