How to Create a Social Media report and explain it to your boss

How to Create a Social Media report and explain it to your boss

Social media has changed the way we do things. Things like interactions and brand recognition are now easier to manage and grow. While you may be killing it on social media through creating awesome content, sharing it and driving conversation and brand recognition to soaring heights, presenting your endeavors, progress and success to your boss is not only intimidating, it is also an uphill task.

Throw in the old school boss who knows very little about social media and holds the opinion that a social media manager does not deserve a seat on the ‘marketing gurus’ conference table. A social media report may be the answer to converting your ‘social-media-allergic’ boss into a believer and ardent supporter of your social media prowess and antics. How do you create a social media report that impresses your boss? Depending on your company’s social media goals and objective, here are some tips and tricks on creating a social media report that will impress your boss.

1. Share quantitative and qualitative metrics

What your boss wants to learn more than anything is that the ROI (return on investment) on social media is worth it. In fact, this one factor will determine if the boss decides to scrap off the social media budget. Nothing shows your boss how their money/social media budget is creating a buzz and making a kill better than your quantitative metrics.

Quantitative metrics are the big numbers. This may include the number of mentions the company/brand receives (especially from social influencers), the strength of your social presence and its impact on the company etc. Quantitative metrics may also include the social platforms that drive the most conversations, shares and conversion (in fact, your focus should be on those social platforms that sprinkle their awesome magic on the brand, it social presence and visibility).

To impress your boss, your social media report should also include qualitative metrics. Qualitative metrics are refined statistics. This includes the audience demographic i.e. the age, location and the gender of the people with whom the brand is interacting. It may also include topics and subjects driving conversation to the brand on the different social platforms, plus sentiments and nature of interaction (to help your boss understand the customer’s opinions, feelings, and attitude towards the brand).

Including social influencers and their sentiments towards the brand on this list may also capture your boss’s attention).

2. Show/present goals and objective achievement status

Every profit/brand savvy boss (whether they love or hate social media) demands that each campaign (social or otherwise, marketing or otherwise) must have defined goals and objectives. In fact, whether your boss is a social media whizz or not, he or she will demand that you outline your goals.

Therefore, it makes sense that the boss would love an update on the progress of achieving these goals and objectives. A good social report must reiterate goals and objectives. For example, if your goal was to reach and interact with 1,000 new people in a month, bring your boss up to speed on this. The best practice here is to use the qualitative and quantitative metrics to create a goal and objective presentation that measures the brand progress against the company’s goals and objectives as well as compare the goal achievement progress with that of other companies operating in the same field.

Important metrics that can help you to create a vibrant, comprehensive, and visually appealing SMR (social media report) include brand reach and engagements, interaction demographic etc.

3. Place emphasis on return actions

Your boss also wants to know that all social media campaigns will lead to leads, sales and conversions. What does this imply? It implies that if you fail to present this to your boss, he or she may not get a clear picture of how essential and effective social media is to the company’s bottom line. The report should reflect the type and number of social audiences that respond to social media campaigns, as well as the number of social users who clicked through the social link to the sales funnel. You may also wish to go further to include data on how many social users purchased other products available on the brand platform.

In closing

Fortunately, most company heads understand the importance of social media to a brand. Therefore, by compiling the above metrics and creating a visually compelling presentation using any presentation creation software, you are simply pushing your boss towards a direction that they are bound to head in. Not only will the above tips help your boss understand social media and the integral part it plays towards brand marketing and visibility, if they are the kind of boss we mentioned at the beginning of this article, you may turn him/her into a social media enthusiast (which may mean more funding for you)!