The Perfect Social Media Dashboard in 3 Steps

“It worked! It worked! Alex, you’re the best!”

That was my good friend Mitch’s over-excited statement over the phone just yesterday.

I don’t know about being the best, but I sure gave him a rock solid piece of advice a couple of days ago which, it appears, has lead to wonders.

Mitch was recently hired as a digital marketer in one of the greatest agencies in the city. After his first day, we met for coffee and although he was enthusiastic about the job, something bothered him.

“My boss asked me to create a comprehensive dashboard for social media… for 10 of our clients! I just can’t seem to see the end of it…”

Luckily, this fell right into my field of expertise. I assured Mitch that there was a way he could actually nail his first dashboard for social media like a boss, AND in a nick of time.

Read on, Mitches of the world. You’ll thank me for this one later.

1. Choose the right KPIs for your dashboard

The possibilities of what you could be tracking in your social media dashboard are almost infinite, and you might have to explore a bit to find out what works best for your or your clients’ reporting purposes. However, these five KPIs for social media should get you off to a good start. Actually knowing what you’re doing might take a while (and a bit of trial and error, let’s face it), but what follows is bound to at least help you fake it ‘til you make it.

a. Number of followers per social media platform

Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube, you name it… If your clients are on these platforms, it’s to spread their message to the largest audience possible, so knowing the size of said audience is a good idea. Not only will you want to keep track of the total number of fans, but also the number of new fans, which will help you get a global picture of the audience’s growth.

b. Engagement rate

The engagement rate is the number of people who interacted with an online post compared to the number of people who saw it. On Facebook, engagement could mean either commenting, sharing, liking, or reacting with an angry face or a heart, for instance. Use this metric to find out what kind of posts work best to get people to interact with your brand.

c. Reach and impressions

The reach is the number of people who have been exposed to a certain message online, while the impressions are the number of times the message has been seen (a person seeing your message twice is two impressions). You’re gonna want to keep track of these two in your dashboard for social media, in order to adjust your marketing campaigns if needed.

d. Website visits from social media

Getting people to follow your clients’ social media pages isn’t the only thing you’ve got to work on; ultimately you wanna drive them to the website so that they learn more about the brand or product. Keep track of how many people landed on your clients’ website through a social media channels with this metric.

e. Conversions from social media

This is your ultimate goal for any social media campaign. You want people to buy the product, to subscribe to the newsletter, or maybe to sign the petition – basically, complete the goal you’ve set out for that campaign. Whatever a conversion is to you, you should keep track of this in your dashboard for social media to know how effective your campaigns are.

2. Create eye-appealing dashboards for social media

“I love to receive a cold, cluttered dashboard!” said no one ever.

As I told Mitch, whether it’s for your boss or your clients, creating an easy-to-read dashboard is a must at all costs. Social media reporting involves dealing with a lot of statistics and metrics of all kinds, and it’s very easy to get lost in the depths of data land.

So basically, don’t be a pain in the neck. Build visual reports anyone can understand at a glance and I can promise you’ll be on your way to glory.

3. Awesome dashboards for social media are impossible without the right tool

Now, you’ve figured that a great dashboard for social media needs to track your favourite KPIs, as well as to be slick and easy to understand. However, the time you spend building your dashboards is certainly not a detail to neglect.

You’ll agree with me that spending countless hours copying and pasting your data from one report to another is neither impressive to your boss, nor a way to make the most out of your time of this Earth.

This is the reason why choosing a dashboard software for social media is a crucial step to take that is bound to save you a huge load of time, which you’ll be able to invest into anything other than useless Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V until you can’t feel your fingers anymore.

Bonus: Do it all with DashThis

Building a dashboard should never be a mind-boggling kind of task. Keep in mind these three easy steps and, as Bob Marley might say, every little thing is gonna be all right.

1. Pick the right KPIs. These five are a good place to start:

• Number of followers per platform
• Engagement rate
• Reach and impressions
• Website visits from social media
• Website conversions from social media

2. Make your reports sexy.

3. Use a reporting tool.

I know this may seem like a lot to take in at once. The good new is, though, that I happen to be working for a company who can fulfill all your needs in terms of creating your dashboards for social media. Our tool is called DashThis, it tracks all the above KPIs and so much more, it’s slick, it’s automated, it’s awesome, and judging by Mitch’s blissfulness, it totally did the trick for him.

I’ll let DashThis and you get acquainted right here.