- Let’s post more product promotion posts on LinkedIn with tons of hashtags to help drive sales and visibility
- But boss, from our social media marketing analytics, these posts don’t do well. We should instead post more educational stuff that adds value and gets people interested in our brand. These social media efforts actually resulted in a couple of sales.
- Hm, do we have data to support this?
- Well, according to these key metrics …
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If this situation sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
We’re here to help track social media metrics to inform your content strategy, support your marketing campaigns and present your KPIs professionally using social media analytics tools like DashThis.
More than half the world uses social media. Maintaining a presence on social media is one way to get your brand in front of an engaged audience looking for education, entertainment, and inspiration.
What people look for on different social media platforms and tips for how brands should show up on various social media platforms. Source: GWI Global Social Media Trends Report 2023
Social media becomes essential when aiming to reach millennials and Gen Z. Research from GWI shows 47% of this target group primarily use social media to research their purchases and discover new brands. Tracking social media engagement metrics like shares, comments, and reach while monitoring the emotional sentiment on your social media content helps us know what content contributes to your goals and what isn’t.
New social media apps pop up all the time.
In July 2023 alone:
It's tempting for marketers to jump on the bandwagon of new apps with every new social platform and social media algorithm change.
But remember, you don’t have to be on every social media platform to be successful.
Evaluate your target audience demographics and if they’re active on a new platform first. Look at how many social media accounts you can manage at once, then decide whether investing time and energy in showing up on a social media platform is worth it.
Social media data is a valuable source of information for business strategy. Source: Sprout Social, The State of Social Media 2023
Social media isn’t limited to marketing. It’s also a valuable channel for customer care, competitor analysis, PR, and brand awareness and plays a crucial role in driving company strategy and customer satisfaction.
Hence, executives and clients will scrutinize your social media campaign proposals and results even closer now.
Getting clear on how your brand is performing on social media, identifying metrics to track, and presenting metrics in an easily understandable way is even more critical now if you want to get buy-in and confidence in the social media strategies you deliver to your clients.
Which social media KPIs should you monitor?
Here’s a list to get you started.
Note: Some of these marketing metrics will need data from Google Analytics 4 to populate. If you’re new to GA4, check out our GA4 reporting guide and GA4 migration walkthrough
Once you’ve got the data, here’s how to turn this data into actionable insights for your clients.
Before interpreting your data, have a plan in mind. Why are you on this social media channel?
Consider how growing a social media presence on this channel contributes to your business’s goals. Having defined plans helps focus your efforts and how you put together your social media reports.
Some social media goals and example KPIs:
Read more:
100+ KPI examples if you need more ideas.
How to write a SMART business goal
While you can manually export data from each social media platform for reporting, the time taken exporting and formatting data for reporting adds up fast.
Let’s say your client is active on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and you take 10 minutes to export and format the raw data from each platform.
That’s 30 minutes spent on manual work per client.
So if you manage five accounts, that’s 2.5 hours of manual work. And this is before analysis too.
You see where this is going.
Skip the late nights in the office and stressful afternoons. Here’s how to use reporting tools like DashThis and save you hours per day on manual reporting.
Once done, create your social media dashboard and give it a name in DashThis
Our templates automatically suggest suitable integrations. All you need to do is to connect your social media accounts, and we’ll populate the report based on your data.
Save the report when you’re done to reuse it for future reports
When interpreting data, pay attention to information that does not fit the pattern.
For example, let’s say you’re reporting on the number of engaged users on Facebook and spot a significant dip between months. Here’s an opportunity for further analysis. Remember to provide a recommendation for the next steps as well.
Data: We spotted an 80% dip in engaged users between March and April
Analysis: Our boosted post campaign, which had significant engagement, ended last month. That funny meme giving a humorous spin on recent industry news did exceptionally well.
Recommendation: Make trend jacking a bigger part of our social media strategy by investing in social listening and staying up to date on trends
Tip: Use DashThis’s in-built notes and comments feature to include this analysis in your social media report for your client.
Track your social media metrics with your own data!
Take advantage of DashThis’s 40+ integrations, including integrations with popular social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, and more, to quickly get all your social media performance data into one report.
Social media managers handle lots of data, and our fully customizable report gives you a starting point to create a report to show social media ROI (return on investment) and get support for your work.
Features of the social media metric report template:
Today, social media platforms are essential to a company's branding, outreach, lead generation, and sales efforts.
Measuring the right metrics and presenting them in an easy-to-follow report makes it easier to position your social media campaigns as worthwhile investments. Simplify your social media reporting process with DashThis and save hours each week so you can focus on developing digital marketing strategies.
Track your most social media metrics with Dashthis
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