Social media analytics and reporting

You will focus on the fourth core pillar of social media marketing: analytics and reporting. You’ll explore the importance of social media analytics and describe different analytics segments. Next, you’ll learn about popular analytics tools and understand how to use the data gathered to make decisions and improvements. Then, you’ll examine the importance of social media reports and practice creating one.

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Dedication to study

• Videos: 31 min

• Leitura: 1 h 40 min

• Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

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Learning Objectives

• Define social media analytics and describe its importance.
• Identify metrics to track using social media analytics.
• Describe popular analytics tools and their benefits.
• Understand how to use the data gathered from social media analytics as a decision-making and improvement tool.
• Learn what to include in a social media report.
• Introduce common social media reporting software and describe how it is used.
• Learn best practices for presenting a social media report.

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Content

1. Social media analytics
2. Social media marketing reporting
3. Review: Social media analytics and reporting

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1. Social media analytics

Welcome to week 4

Video. Duration: 1 minute

Let’s say you’ve implemented a bunch of social listening strategies, and you’ve gained some valuable insights about your customers, potential customers, and competitors. Tracking and analyzing data collected from your social media platforms can provide even more insights into your campaigns’ performance, which you can use to adapt your social media strategy to make your campaign more successful.

For example, you might realize that a particular post is generating a lot of engagement, so you decide to create similar posts like it. Once you’ve collected the data, you can report on it and the strategic decisions that you’ve made based on your analysis to team members, stakeholders, and clients.

That brings us to the fourth pillar of social media marketing: analytics and reporting. In a later course, we’ll explore how to use analytics for all of your marketing channels. In this section, you’ll learn what social media analytics involves and why it is so beneficial for your marketing campaigns. We’ll discuss common metrics to track in your social media campaigns and how different platforms define their metrics differently.

You’ll explore some popular social media analytics tools and learn how to use them. You’ll also learn how to conduct social media testing. We’ll also talk about how to analyze the data you’ve collected to inform your decision-making and overall marketing strategy.

Finally, we’ll discuss how to share your analysis and findings through social media reports. We’ll discuss what information social media reports should include and how to present it. You’ll also be introduced to some tools and templates that can help you create social media reports.

Meet me in the next video to get started.

Understand social media analytics

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Social media analytics can be a powerful tool to guide your current and future campaigns in the right direction. Just like social listening, you’ll use analytics to help you make better decisions, solve problems, improve performance, and understand your audience.

With social listening, the information you gather is qualitative. Qualitative data describes qualities or characteristics. It is data gathered through observation, such as listening to the language people use when talking about your business. Analytics, on the other hand, looks at quantitative data. Quantitative data is information that can be counted or compared on a numeric scale. It’s data you can measure numerically, such as a number of clicks on a platform in a certain time period.

Analytics will be a crucial component of all of your marketing efforts. Imagine you developed and launched a social media campaign for your company’s latest product. To find out how your audience is receiving your campaign, you might want to learn some specifics. What percentage of your followers interacted with your post? How many people watched your videos? Social media analytics can help you answer these questions.

Social media analytics is the process of tracking, collecting, and analyzing data from social media platforms to improve an organization’s strategic business decisions. Let’s discuss the different ways in which social media analytics can support your campaigns.

To begin with, social media analytics can help you better understand your audience. Using analytics, you can learn which types of content result in the best audience engagement. And, analyzing audience engagement with posts shows you when your audience is most active online. This can help you determine the best time to post on different platforms.

You can also draw insights from data to inform your platform choices. As we’ve discussed, your content may perform better on some platforms than on others. Using analytics, you can measure your engagement, traffic, and sales on different platforms. You can then use this information to decide which platforms to publish on and how to prioritize your time on different platforms. You can focus more of your time on the platforms that are giving you the best performance.

Through analytics, you can learn what content drives the best results. For example, you can monitor whether images, videos, or links do better on particular platforms or which types of images perform best. Some platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, have analytics tools that show you what type of content receives the highest level of engagement.

Analytics can help you learn from your competitors too. Twitter, for instance, allows you to analyze all public conversations on the platform. Analyzing your competitors’ data allows you to evaluate what they do well and what mistakes they make. This can inform how you adapt and improve your own content and strategy.

Social media analytics also allows you to measure your social media ROI— return on investment— for your clients. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, for example, you might use analytics tools to measure how many followers you’ve gained on different platforms in a given time period. Presenting this data to your stakeholders helps prove the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.

The insights you gain from analytics can help you improve your social media strategy. Analytics helps you understand what is working well in your social media strategy and what is not as effective. This allows you to better focus your time, efforts, and budget.

For example, you can use analytics to compile demographic information about your target audience on social media. This can help you refine your marketing tactics for that audience.

A number of social media platforms have analytics tools that enable you to collect and evaluate data from their site. There are also many social media analytics tools available to help you track performance across multiple platforms and create reports. Examples include Google Analytics, Sprout Social, Hootsuite Analytics, and Buffer Analyze. We’ll talk more about tools like these later in this lesson.

Social media analytics helps you better understand your brand, your audience, and your competitors. By analyzing the data, you can refine your social media strategies to help achieve your goals and objectives. Coming up, we’ll discuss common social media metrics to track.

Metrics to track with social media analytics

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

From potential reach to applause rate, there are dozens of social media metrics you could track to help you measure progress towards your campaign goals. This video will explore some of the most common social media metrics, how they fit into the social media marketing funnel, and why it’s helpful to track them.

To review, a metric is a quantifiable measurement that is used to track and assess a business objective. Your social media goal will determine which metrics you focus on and work to optimize. As we discussed earlier in this course, you’ll set goals when you develop your social media strategy. You’ll select these goals based on the goals of the larger marketing campaign you’re working on, which is often determined by the goals of your business.

Each goal of your social media marketing campaign will be geared at guiding people through the stages of the social media marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. Consequently, each goal will have related metrics that will help you measure progress towards that goal.

Let’s discuss some common metrics related to goals in each of the stages of the marketing funnel.

To review, the first stage of the marketing funnel is awareness, which is when your goal is to capture your audience’s attention. At this stage, you’ll track metrics related to brand awareness. When you measure brand awareness, you analyze the attention your brand receives across all of your social media platforms during a reporting period, such as a week, month, or quarter.

Metrics related to brand awareness include the number of shares, mentions, links to your content, and impressions your brand has received in a given time period. An impression is when a piece of content is displayed to your target audience. Another common awareness-related metric is potential reach, which measures how many people have potentially seen a post since you published it. For example, if a person Retweets a post on Twitter, then you can assume that potentially a certain percentage of their followers will also see the post. These metrics help you assess your progress towards expanding your social media audience.

Once your potential customers are aware of your brand, they enter into the next stage in the marketing funnel: consideration. This is when your customers are thinking about doing business with you. At this point, you can start to measure engagement metrics like applause rate, which is the number of approval actions such as likes, mentions, Retweets, or favorites that a post receives relative to your total number of followers. A high applause rate shows that your audience finds that piece of content valuable. It indicates a level of interest in your brand, which could lead to making a purchase. Additionally, knowing what kind of content your audience engages with can help you decide what content to create next.

Once potential customers have decided to make a purchase, they’ll enter the conversion stage. At this point, you can measure things like referrals, which indicate how someone was guided to your website. You can track how many people were referred to your website from all your social media platforms and measure the referrals you receive on specific platforms.

You can also measure conversions, which refer to the completion of an activity that contributes to the success of a business. These activities can include anything from clicking on a link to buying something. Social conversions are actions a person takes on your website because of having seen your social media campaigns recently.

After someone becomes a customer, your goal is to build their loyalty. In this stage of the funnel, you might measure things like the number of customer testimonials you receive. A customer testimonial is any customer review, assessment, comment, endorsement, or interview relating to your brand. When people are enthusiastic about your brand, they are more likely to share their positive feelings with others. Customer testimonials on social media can help build trust and credibility in your brand while boosting your brand’s social media presence.

You can also measure customer loyalty with a specific metric called a Net Promoter Score. A Net Promoter Score, or NPS, helps predict future customer engagement by asking customers: How likely is it that you would recommend our product to a friend? Customers respond on a scale of 1 to 10. Depending on the number they choose, they are considered either unhappy customers, satisfied but unenthusiastic customers, or loyal enthusiasts. Reviewing NPS can help you measure customer satisfaction and predict potential future sales.

Metrics are important because they show whether your social media strategy is successful over time. By studying different metrics from each stage of the marketing funnel, you can better understand your brand’s social media performance. As you adjust your social media strategy, you can track additional metrics that are relevant to your business.

Popular social media analytics tools

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Just as there are tools to conduct social listening, there are tools for analytics. Social media analytics tools allow brands to identify trends and gain actionable insights to optimize overall performance. With so much consumer data being posted on social media daily, social media analytics tools have become a critical component in audience analysis, competitive research, and product research. Gathering data and insights can help companies inform and make business decisions for their brand. In this reading, you will learn about a few industry-trusted tools for social media analysis.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a cross-channel social media analytics tool, which means you can compare performance across all your social media channels. You can view how your company’s social media accounts are measuring up against one another, and determine which you should put more energy and budget into, and which platforms you are finding success on.

Sprout Social also allows you to compile data into reports, so keeping team members up-to-date on your progress is a seamless process.

Google Analytics

You may have heard about Google Analytics at this point in the course, and that’s because it has so many purposes. Google Analytics is not solely a social media analytics tool, but when integrated into social media analytics, it can be used for things like tracking how much traffic your website receives from social media.

Important Note: If you are denied access to the demo account when you sign in, open the link in an Incognito window and sign in again. To open an Incognito window in Chrome, click the More icon (three vertical dots) and select New Incognito window.

Keyhole

As you post across social media channels, you may decide using hashtags is an important part of your strategy. If that’s the case, a tool like Keyhole is useful because it provides real-time performance reporting on any hashtags relevant to your campaign.

TapInfluence

TapInfluence offers unique features that specifically help brands track influencer marketing campaigns. With TapInfluence -Now called Izea, you can track engagement, reach, and return on investment for each individual influencer. You can view each influencer’s typical reach and engagement to help you decide if you want to reach out to them to create a partnership.

Key takeaways

There are numerous tools out there that will help you optimize your social media marketing strategy. As you do more research into the various social media tools, keep in mind what your business goals and priorities are so you can make sure you are using the right tools for your brand.

Social testing

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Social testing is an experimental process that shows how social media content is performing among target audiences. In this reading, you will learn about the different types of social testing and how each can help a brand’s social presence.

Intro to social testing

Social testing is important because like any type of marketing analytics, it provides data-driven insights about a brand’s social media performance and audience preferences. Social media marketers use social testing to determine which content is effective, which types of posts the audience engages with most, and how to allocate budget towards effective types of posts.

There are several types of social testing. Which type(s) you use depends on your brand’s business goals. Once those goals are outlined, you will be able to determine which type(s) of social testing will help you uncover the information you need to be most effective. Some of the most common types of social testing include A/B testing and multivariate testing.

A/B testing

A/B testing compares two versions of a post with a single differing variable. For example, to test how to increase website traffic, you might run two paid social media ads that send the user to your homepage. The ads can be exactly alike, except for one changed variable. Maybe one ad includes a headline with a popular song reference in it, while the other one doesn’t. If your audience clicks on the version with the popular song reference in it more often than the other version, you may feel more confident using pop culture references in the future.

Multivariate testing

Multivariate testing compares two or more versions of a post with several differing variables. For example, to find out how different variations of an ad you created perform against each other, you might create four different versions. Version one would include an image with a caption. Version two would include a GIF instead of an image and a different caption. Version three would include different copy and a different color scheme, and on the fourth version, you might change the color scheme and also include the GIF you used in the second variation.

Social testing results

A very important part of social testing is the results you get after you’ve completed testing. Correctly evaluating results and drawing conclusions based on statistical data is important for future social media campaigns and strategies. To get adequate results, consider running tests several times. You may want to run your tests for a week, month, or longer, and observe what your audience liked and didn’t like. The more tests you run, the more certain you can be of your results.

It’s also important to make sure you are thoughtful about selecting which variables to alter, so you have results to learn from–this will help you optimize your strategy.

Key takeaways

Social testing is an essential part of social media marketing, because simply put: you only know what you know. If you haven’t tested what your audience likes, you may never know what that is. Make sure to identify a specific goal before you begin testing. And, do not be afraid to try new things!

Use social media data to drive marketing strategy

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

At the beginning of this course, you learned to develop a social media marketing strategy before you start planning and publishing posts. Based on insights you discover through analytics, you might also need to adapt your social media strategy during your campaigns.

In this video, we’ll discuss how data analysis can inform your social strategy. Once you’ve identified metrics, chosen a tool to track them, and collected the data, you need to determine what the data means and which strategic decisions you’ll make in response to it.

Let’s discuss some different ways data might affect your decisions and strategy. To begin, data analysis can help you improve your social media content. Measuring engagement data shows you what content resonates with your audience and what doesn’t. You can also assess how things like post length, visuals, hashtags, and tone affect engagement. You might decide to adjust your content strategy based on those findings. For example, if the data shows that posts containing infographics are getting higher engagement, you can plan to publish more infographics in the future.

Similarly, you can track competitors’ engagement data to identify their success factors, including which of their content performs best, which platforms their content is shared on most, and which influencers are most effective at promoting their content. Based on that information, you can adjust your own strategy.

Furthermore, tracking data like the shares or Retweets of different content can help you spot emerging trends across social media. For example, augmented reality—a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image onto a user’s view of the real world—is an emerging trend on social media that’s very interactive, and therefore, highly effective for engagement. Analyzing this data can give you insight into what content, products, and advertising are creating the most interest online. This can help you create real-time marketing content that’s relevant to what people are most interested in at any given time. If you find that a large percentage of your audience is sharing posts about a particular news story, for instance, then you might create content related to that story.

Analytics can also help you determine the best platforms for your brand. When you track different metrics on each of your platforms, you can get a better understanding of how your content performs on those platforms. Then you can target the platforms on which your content performs best. For example, if some of your posts are performing much better on Facebook than on Instagram, then you could continue to publish similar content on Facebook while adjusting your content strategy for Instagram.

And finally, analytics enables you to customize content for your customers. By gathering data about specific customers based on their personas, you can provide customers with customized content. For instance, you might create targeted content for a local audience that references local issues, interests, locations, or weather. Customized content has been shown to drive engagement and conversions. This is because customers appreciate brands that seem authentic and trustworthy, and personalized content can provide that impression.

Social media marketing and analytics go hand in hand. As a digital marketer, you’ll use analytics to learn more about your customers and find out how they feel about your brand and your competitors’ brands. You can then make data-informed decisions that can improve your content and marketing strategy. Later in this section, we’ll discuss how to present the data you have gathered to others in the social media report.

Jon - How data and social media analytics informs decision-making and strategy

Video. Duration: 2 minutes

Hi, I’m Jon. I work on social media for the hardware business at Google. Google hardware includes our Pixel smartphone business and our Nest Smart Home business. We run social media channels for the set of different product lines—talking about the latest innovation in smartphone or smart home technology. The job for social media within Google’s hardware business is to manage the strategy—how we relate to our customers and potential fans on social media.

Data is certainly helpful in all of social media marketing. You want to make sure that what you’re doing is worthwhile. I would think of social media analytics in two different ways: There’s one, reporting, and the second would be social listening.

On the reporting side, is it getting good engagement? Are we getting likes? Are we getting comments? Are we getting shares or other types of engagements? It’s very important for any social media professional to know my post has resonated.

On the social listening side, is there an interesting opportunity where we can jump in? Before engaging in a campaign or a new project, we take a look at social media conversation—just to see what’s out there. We want to make sure that as a brand or as a company, we’re going to be additive to a conversation. We don’t want to repeat what other folks are sharing out there.

Common sense and having a gut feeling is essential in social media marketing. You need to understand what your brand stands for—generally understand your audience. At the end of the day, if we see a post take off or create a conversation, it means that it was meaningful in some way. That we weren’t just adding noise. That we were reaching people to talk about something that they actually cared about and are interested in participating in.

And so, if you’re looking to start out, the most important thing you can do is actually use social media. Social media is open to all. It’s one of the most beautiful things about it. If you are advocating for a business or want to be trained up in a business, go and create an account, go and use that account. The greatest thing about social media is that you can post. You can also just pay attention. You can read it. You can see how different audiences engage. And so, if you’re looking to start out, the most important thing you can do is actually use social media.

Activity: Analyze social media performance

Practice Quiz. Duration: 30 min. Grade: 100%

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will analyze data from two different Tweets related to the same topic. You will determine which Tweet performed better, assess why you think it performed better, and decide how to adjust your strategy based on your analysis.

Social media analytics can help you learn more about your social media audience and find out how they feel about your brand and the content you publish. You can then make data-informed decisions that can improve your content and marketing strategy.

Be sure to complete this activity before moving on. The next course item will provide you with a completed exemplar to compare to your own work. You will not be able to access the exemplar until you have completed this activity.

Scenario

Review the scenario below. Then complete the step-by-step instructions.

You work for an agency hired to do the marketing for Great Grounds, a small, regional chain of coffee shops based in the Northeast United States. Great Grounds sells their coffee in their shops, on their website, and in grocery stores. You recently published two Great Grounds Tweets related to daylight saving time, when people set their clocks forward an hour. The goal of the Tweets was to increase engagement, and you’ve exported data from the platform to analyze if the Tweets achieved this goal. You will review the data to determine which Tweet performed better, analyze why it was more successful, and make a recommendation about how to approach similar Tweets in the future based on your analysis.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the template

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to template: Social media data analysis

Step 2: Access supporting materials

The following supporting materials will help you complete this activity. Keep them open as you proceed to the next steps.

To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to supporting materials: Great Grounds Twitter data

Step 3: Compare the Tweets’ data

Compare the data collected from the two daylight saving time-related Tweets in the spreadsheet. Look at metrics like impressions (how many times the content was displayed) and engagements (how many times users interacted with the content).

Based on your comparison of these metrics and the campaign goal stated in the scenario, which Tweet do you think performed better? What in the data indicates this?

Add notes on your comparisons and evaluation to Row 1 of the data analysis table.

Step 4: Compare the Tweets’ content and details Compare the Tweets’ content and other details. Notice the differences between the Tweets with regards to:

• Assets (e.g., images, videos)

• Text

• Hashtags

• Time of day posted

Add notes on your comparisons to Row 2 of the data analysis table.

Step 5: Analyze the differences in the Tweets’ performance

Review the comparisons you made between the Tweets in Rows 1 and 2 of the data analysis table. Consider why one Tweet had many more impressions while the other had a lot more engagement. What factors may have contributed to this difference? Why do you think one Tweet had more engagement than the other?

Explain your reasoning in Row 3 of the data analysis table.

Step 6: Explain how your analysis will inform your strategy

Think about what you learned from your analysis of the two Tweets. Describe how this analysis might impact your social media strategy in the future. How might you optimize future content based on your analysis? Will you make any other strategic decisions in response to your findings?

Explain your thinking in Row 4 of the data analysis table.

Pro Tip: Save your work

Finally, be sure to save the work you did to complete this activity. This can help you work through your thought processes and demonstrate your experience to potential employers.

What to Include in Your Response

Be sure to address the following points in your completed data analysis table:

• Comparison of the Tweets’ data

• Comparison of the Tweets’ content and details

• Analysis of the differences in the Tweets’ performance

• Description of how your analysis will inform your social media strategy

Activity Exemplar: Analyze social media performance

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Social media data analysis table

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed data analysis table. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Your social media data analysis table should include:

• Row 1: A comparison of the data from both Tweets and an indication of which Tweet performed better, based on the campaign goal.

• Row 2: A comparison of the Tweets’ content and other details, such as the differences in their assets, text, hashtags, and the time the Tweets were published.

• Row 3: An analysis of why one Tweet received more engagement than the other and what factors may have contributed to this difference.

• Row 4: An explanation of how this analysis will inform your marketing and content strategy moving forward.

Test your knowledge: Social media analytics

Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

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2. Social media marketing reporting

Understand social media reports

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

Imagine you’re working on a social media campaign. You’ve used analytics to measure your progress towards your goals at every stage of the marketing funnel, and you’ve analyzed the data you’ve gathered to make informed decisions about your social media strategy moving forward. Now it’s time to share those learnings and decisions through a social media report.

A social media report is a document that presents and tracks relevant data about your social media activities. Social media reports allow marketers to visualize and present their social media data in an easy to understand way. They help justify their strategy and the decisions they’ve made based on the data to colleagues or clients, as well as provide them with valuable insights.

Depending on your role, the size of your company, and what resources are available, you might be adding to a report someone else creates, making one yourself, or just reading over a report for insights. Additionally, a social media report can be anything from a quick email with a few key data points, a snapshot of a particular post-performance on a given platform, a spreadsheet with detailed data from all of your social platforms, or a slideshow with key findings and analysis.

Regardless of your contribution to the report or how the data is presented, it’s important to understand what components are generally included. To begin with, there are some things marketers need to consider when crafting a report.

Social media reports need to be tailored to their audience, for example, marketing team members, stakeholders, and clients who have different needs and different information they want to know. Reports might include more or less detailed data on a specific item depending on who the audience will be. For example, a report created from the marketing team might include detailed data about a particular social media campaign, while one created for managers might focus more on campaign highlights.

Also, a report should include the data most relevant to the audience and to the company’s social media KPI. A KPI (key performance indicator) is a measurement used to gauge how successful an organization is in its efforts to reach a business or marketing goal. Social media KPIs are used to assess whether a social media marketing strategy is effective. They are determined by campaign goals such as awareness or engagement. A useful social media report will focus on the KPIs and metrics that are most relevant to the business.

Reports’ frequency also varies and can be customized depending on what data will be reported and how the insights will be used. Most social media platforms allow data to be pulled from the analytics tools based on specific data ranges or reporting periods. For example, social media reports could be produced weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

Now that you understand what marketers need to consider when putting together a social media report, let’s discuss some specific elements that might go into one.

Let’s say a report focuses on a campaign’s performance on Instagram in a particular week, and the main goal of the campaign was engagement. The report would include relevant campaign information for that week, such as the date range and the number of posts, followers gained or lost, likes, comments, shares, link clicks, and video views. Many social media reports also include charts or graphs. Visualizing data with charts can help an audience understand the information in the report. These charts can be created using analytics tools such as Google Analytics or HubSpot, or reporting tools on individual platforms.

An effective social media report also provides context that helps the audience understand the report and connect to the story the data is telling. Reports should indicate how the data relates to particular KPIs. For example, our reports might include a comparison of data in the current reporting period to the previous data. For example, a report can compare the number of likes in the current reporting period to the number in the same reporting period last month, and highlight any growth. This allows the audience to spot trends, note progress, and identify issues.

That brings us to analysis. This is the part of the report that explains what the data actually means. For instance, analyzing the number of engagements per post could help identify the types of content that resonates best with a target audience. This section should include an evaluation and explanation of why the campaign may have gotten the results they did. The reasons behind the data can help marketers determine and justify to their audience how best to adjust their strategy.

Social media reports help marketers convey key information about their strategy, activities, and progress towards their goals to others. Understanding what goes into a social media report helps prepare you to contribute to them and read them for insights that can improve your social media strategy. Coming up, we’ll discuss how to present a social media report to stakeholders.

Social media reports

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Reporting a social media campaign’s progress and/or results is an important part of social media marketing. When you properly report your results, your team members and stakeholders will have an understanding of the value that your campaign added to the brand. In this reading, you will learn about the different types of social media reports.

Types of reports

To ensure all stakeholders get the information they need from your report, there are three types of reports any social media marketer should be knowledgeable about. The best way to provide comprehensive data on every aspect of the campaign is to present each type of report to necessary stakeholders. So, how do you know when to use each type of report? Keep reading for more information on operational, insight, and informative reporting.

Operational reports

Operational reports give team members real-time updates and information on metrics like audience growth rates, impressions, click-through rates, and more. These reports provide social media marketers with the data they need to track a campaign’s success—and fast—so they can adjust their strategy when necessary.

Insight reports

Insight reports offer more than just raw data to your team members and stakeholders—they provide storylines that help explain your campaign. The purpose of insight reporting is to search for meaning in the data and to communicate that meaning at a high-level to stakeholders. These reports answer questions like: why are your click-through rates high? Which social media platforms generate the most leads? Does your audience prefer video-based content or image-based content, and what does that mean for your budget? What trends do you see in the data and why?

Informative reports

Informative reports are mostly used to provide company leadership with a broader understanding of campaign performance. Larger metrics like return on investment (ROI), and other key performance indicators (KPIs) are presented in informative reports because they show the value of campaigns at a high-level. These reports should be very clear and concise, as company leaders may not have a lot of time to analyze insights.

Google Data Studio

If you aren’t sure where to start when it comes to reports, there are tools out there to help you. Google Data Studio helps you leverage data to tell stories by using visualization tools like charts and tables, sharing your insights with team members, and speeding up the report-creating process. It also offers collaborative features so that your team can work together to create reports.

Once you’re in Google Data Studio, all you have to do is search for the different types of reports. To learn more about using templates for reporting, click here.

Resources:

• Google Data Studio Templates

Activity: Report on social media performance

Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will write an email to report on the performance of a social media campaign. Social media reports help you present and visualize social media data to others. They can help you justify your strategy and the decisions you’ve made based on the data to stakeholders and provide them with valuable insights.

Be sure to complete this activity before moving on. The next course item will provide you with a completed exemplar to compare to your own work. You will not be able to access the exemplar until you have completed this activity.

Scenario

Review the scenario below. Then complete the step-by-step instructions.

You work for an agency hired to do the marketing for Great Grounds, a small, regional chain of coffee shops. You recently published two Tweets related to daylight savings time, when people set their clocks forward an hour. The goal of this campaign was to increase engagement, and you analyzed data from the platform to determine if the Tweets achieved this goal. In this activity, you will write an email to senior stakeholders to report on your analysis. You will describe the campaign and its goal, explain your analysis of the data, create and insert a chart to visualize the data, and indicate any changes to your strategy based on your analysis.

To help you craft your email, review the following:

• Raw data: Great Grounds Twitter data

• Campaign KPIs: Retweets, replies, likes, user profile clicks, hashtag clicks, detail expands

• Key findings based on analysis of the data:

  • Tweet 1 had almost twice as many impressions as Tweet 2, but Tweet 2 received almost six times as many engagements. Because increasing engagement was the goal of the campaigns, Tweet 2 performed better overall.

  • Tweet 1 was posted at 8:03 in the morning, so many more people saw it. Because fewer people were in their feeds at 1:59 a.m. when Tweet 2 was posted, that Tweet got fewer impressions. However, because Tweet 2 included a funny image and text and relevant hashtags, it got more engagements than Tweet 1, which did not include an image, hashtags, or engaging text.

  • The data indicates that the audience responded better to content containing funny images and text, as well as relevant hashtags.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the template

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to template: Social media report email

Step 2: Access supporting materials

The following supporting materials will help you complete this activity. Keep them open as you proceed to the next steps.

To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to supporting materials: Great Grounds Twitter data

Step 3: Write a clear subject line

Add a clear and succinct subject line that summarizes the purpose of your report. Precede the summary with “Update” or “Report” so that your readers know what to expect. Setting this word in all capital letters or in brackets can help call attention to your email in a stakeholder’s crowded inbox. Follow with a few words describing what data the report will highlight.

Step 4: Add an introduction and describe the campaign goal

Start with a brief, sincere greeting to add a personal touch to the beginning of the email. Since your audience is senior stakeholders, be sure to keep your greeting short and professional.

Then, introduce what your report is about. Describe the data you will be discussing and the goal of the campaign.

Step 5: Summarize your key findings

Briefly describe your analysis of the data. As you write, keep your audience in mind. Include only the most relevant and essential information and explain how it relates to your campaign goal and KPIs. Also, since your stakeholders may not be familiar with marketing terminology, make sure the language you include will still be clear to someone who does not have a marketing background. Use a bulleted list to help organize the information.

Step 6: Create and insert a chart

Since the goal of the campaign was audience engagement, the most relevant data to illustrate is related to engagement. Follow these steps to create a chart to visualize the relevant data in Google Sheets:

• Open the Great Grounds Twitter data spreadsheet and select “Use Template.”

• Select columns A (Tweet number) and G–L (engagement-related metrics) in the spreadsheet.

• From the menu, select “Insert” and then select “Chart.”

• In the chart editor, go to “Setup.” In the Bar section, select “Stacked bar chart”

• Click on “Y-axis” and select “Tweet number.”

• In the chart editor, go to “Customize,” select “Chart & axis title,” and select “Chart title.” Then give the chart a title that describes the data it illustrates.

Once you’ve created your chart, select the chart by clicking on it. Then, click on the Edit drop down menu on the top left. Click Copy. Once the chart is copied, go to your email template doc. Highlight “[Chart illustrating relevant data]” and paste the chart into the email template.

Step 7: Explain any suggested strategy changes

Describe how your analysis of the data will inform your strategy moving forward. Indicate any changes you plan to make to future content based on what you’ve learned and why you feel those changes are warranted.

Step 8: Add a closing

End the email with a simple closing that indicates you are available for further discussion if the stakeholders have any questions or concerns.

Pro Tip: Save your work

Finally, be sure to save the work you did to complete this activity. This can help you work through your thought processes and demonstrate your experience to potential employers.

What to Include in Your Response

Be sure to include the following elements in your completed report:

• Greeting

• Introduction and campaign goal

• Summary of key findings

• Chart illustrating key findings

• Explanation of strategic decisions

• Conclusion

Activity Exemplar: Report on social media performance

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Social media report email

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed social media report. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Review each section of the email report:

• The subject line contains a description of the purpose of the report preceded by “Update,” “Report,” or similar.

• The greeting is brief and sincere.

• The introduction describes the data you will be discussing and the goal of the campaign.

• The summary of key findings includes the most relevant, essential information organized in a bulleted list.

• The chart illustrates the relevant data and contains a descriptive title.

• The explanation of your decisions describes how your analysis of the data will inform your strategy moving forward.

• The closing indicates you are available for further discussion if stakeholders have questions.

Present a social media report

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Reporting a social media campaign’s progress and results is a fundamental aspect of effective social media marketing. A well-crafted report not only demonstrates the value added by your campaign but also provides valuable insights for your team members and stakeholders. To meet the diverse information needs of your audience, it’s essential to understand the three types of social media reports: operational reports, insight reports, and informative reports.

Operational reports serve as real-time updates for your team members. These reports provide essential metrics such as audience growth rates, impressions, click-through rates, and more. They play a crucial role in tracking the success of your campaign. By offering quick access to data, operational reports empower social media marketers to make timely adjustments to their strategies. Visual elements like line graphs, bar graphs, numbers, and charts are often featured in operational reports to clearly illustrate the campaign’s metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Insight reports go beyond presenting raw data; they provide narratives that offer an in-depth understanding of your campaign. These reports aim to extract meaning from the data and communicate it at a higher level to your stakeholders. Insight reports answer critical questions, such as why certain metrics, like click-through rates, are exceptionally high. They may delve into the performance of different social media platforms in lead generation or explore audience preferences for content types (e.g., video-based vs. image-based) and the implications for budget allocation. By identifying trends within the data, insight reports contribute to the strategic decision-making process.

Informative reports primarily cater to company leadership by offering a broader perspective on campaign performance. These reports feature larger-scale metrics like return on investment (ROI) and other key performance indicators (KPIs) to illustrate the overall value of the campaigns. Because company leaders often have limited time to analyze in-depth insights, informative reports aim for clarity and conciseness. They provide a high-level summary of the campaign’s impact and ROI, helping executives make informed decisions.

If you’re uncertain about where to begin with creating these reports, you can leverage tools like Google Data Studio. This platform simplifies the process of transforming data into compelling narratives by providing visualization tools like charts and tables. It allows you to share your insights with team members, streamlining the report creation process. Collaborative features within Google Data Studio enable your team to work together seamlessly, ensuring that your reports effectively convey the story of your social media campaigns.

In Google Data Studio, you can readily access templates that align with the three types of reports: operational, insight, and informative. These templates facilitate the report creation process and offer a structured framework for presenting your campaign data effectively.

In summary, social media reporting plays a vital role in quantifying the success of your campaigns and communicating their impact to different stakeholders. Understanding the nuances of operational, insight, and informative reports empowers social media marketers to craft reports that are tailored to their audience’s specific needs and interests. Leveraging tools like Google Data Studio further streamlines the reporting process, making it easier to create compelling narratives from your campaign data.

Test your knowledge: Social media marketing reports and presentations

Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

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3. Review: Social media analytics and reporting

Wrap-up

Video. Duration: 2 minutes

In this section, we delved into the realm of social media analytics, which involves the process of identifying, collecting, and analyzing data from your social media platforms to make informed and strategic decisions. This analytical process offers numerous advantages, including understanding your audience and competitors, identifying effective content on specific platforms, and refining your overall strategy.

To harness the power of social media analytics, you have access to a variety of tools designed to gather relevant data. However, the effectiveness of these tools depends on your ability to select the right metrics to track. These metrics should be directly aligned with the specific goals of your social media campaign.

As your customers and potential customers move through the different stages of the marketing funnel, you’ll need to track various metrics to assess their progress. During the awareness stage, you’ll focus on metrics like impressions and potential reach. In the consideration stage, engagement metrics such as applause rate become crucial. The conversion stage necessitates tracking metrics like referrals and conversions. Lastly, in the loyalty stage, you’ll monitor customer loyalty metrics, such as Net Promoter Scores.

Once you’ve collected the desired data, you can leverage it to make strategic decisions. For instance, you can identify what types of content perform exceptionally well on particular platforms and adjust your content strategy accordingly. Additionally, you can create content that aligns with emerging trends discovered through your research.

Sharing your findings with colleagues and clients is essential and is typically done through a social media report. The data included in your report should be closely tied to your specific audience and your social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Your report will comprise a detailed presentation of the collected data, often accompanied by visual aids like charts and graphs. Furthermore, it should provide a comprehensive analysis of the data’s implications.

To present your report effectively, consider the emotional connection with your audience, allocate time to address their questions, and ensure you are well-prepared for the presentation.

Analytics is an indispensable component of all your digital marketing endeavors. It empowers you to gauge the success of your marketing efforts, pinpoint areas where you might be falling short of your goals, and ultimately refine your strategies. The next part of this course will equip you with the knowledge and skills to enhance your marketing campaigns through paid social media efforts.

Glossary terms from module 4

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Terms and definitions from Course 3, Module 3

• Open Link to access Glossary module 4

Module 4 challenge

Due, Nov 19, 11:59 PM WET. Quiz. 10 questions. Grade: 97.50%

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END! - Week 4 - Course 3