Understanding how to interpret and utilize analytics is not just a beneficial skill for social media managers, but any business owner operating and marketing digitally. When you know how to run an analytics debrief you can use this valuable information to improve strategies that help you boost exposure, engagement, lead generation AND sales.
RUle Of Thumb
Analytic analysis needs to be performed routinely to have any beneficial effect. Depending on how much time you have and what KPI’s you want to focus on, you can choose to run analytic analysis once a week, month, quarterly, or even yearly (although once a year would not be the most beneficial as strategies often need to be adjusted more than once a year).
I have some clients who opt for monthly analytics and others who have weekly analytics, so for this blog post I’m going to show you what our weekly analytic reports include.
My clients’ reports include Facebook and IG analytics, but for length let’s just focus on Instagram.
Page 1) Important Filing Information:
Every report I send out has a title page that includes information such as:
- Title ie ‘Weekly Analytics Report’
- Client’s Company name and branding
- Who the report is completed by (ie. your company or personal name)
- Your main contact or branding info (ie. your website, you can also include instagram handles etc.)
Page 2) Table of Contacts and Description
Some clients will read reports from front to back, while others might only skim or viewing particular sections, so it’s important to include a table of contents. It also helps to have a brief description of the report or package summary so they know what is included and what exactly they paid for.
Page 3) Individual Post Performance
Every SMM displays their reports differently. I like to begin mine with our Weekly Post Performances. This is the information you would find when you swipe up on an individual instagram post. I include a legend at the top that explains what each analytic means so that my client’s understand exactly what they are looking at.
So let’s go over the metric legend:
Post Insights
Impressions: the total number of times your post is seen
Reach: total number of individual accounts who saw your post
Likes: number of likes/double taps
Saves: number of times post is saved
Comments: number of comments
Reshares: number of times post is shared to stories or through DMS
Post Impressions
From Hashtags: number of people who found account via hashtag strategy/search engine
From Home: number of account feeds your post showed up on
From Profile: number of accounts who saw post from checking out your profile
From Other: number of accounts who saw post via saves, tags, mentions, or DMs
So each of these sections is listed on the report and then I fill in the information by clicking VIEW INSIGHTS on the individual instagram post in question. The finish product may look like this:
I also add a little explanation to further analyze how our content performed, so for example a blurb may read something like this:
- This post received more saves than usual which indicates that our audience found great value in the content and wishes to reference or utilize our info in the future.
- This post received more shares than usual which can indicate this particular content really resonated with them or that they believe their own audience could also gain great value from it
- Our hashtag number was very high so this means we had great reach. This specific hashtag grouping should be added to our TOP HASHTAG section in our bank and re-used in the future. Due to the extended reach, several new accounts had exposure to our account.
- This post had more comments than usual which means this content pillar is beneficial for boosted engagement. We will continue to make posts similar in style to add to our strategy.
Page 4) Progress Stats
The first portion of this page is the side by side weekly comparison using my favourite analytic tool (which has a free version) NotJustAnalytics.com . With this site we can see things like – follower development, our average likes, comments, and video views. You can also include the overall engagement rate too. With side by side comparisons I am able to not only show my client’s progress, but also continue to revamp our strategies based on these results. I also attach the follower chart as most of my packages offer growth strategies, so you can bet our line is always continuing to go up 🙂
Again I include a brief explanation of the analytics as well, ie. “This week we increased our growth, our average likes, engagement, and view count! We also have an increase in reach and content interactions 🙂 “
From Instagram I include the insights summary which you can access by clicking ‘Insights’. You have the option to set insights to 7 days, 30, 6 months and a year. For my client’s we are tracking weekly so I set it to 7 days. This screenshot shows my clients if our reach, impressions (post interactions), and follower count increased or decreased for the week.
At the bottom I indicate our top performing post of the week. This part is significant for strategy as it allows us to see if there are 1) any patterns in which day of the week we post, and 2)Which kinds of content are our top performers.
Last Page - The Summary and Goals
This page includes: Total Followers, Average Likes, Top performing Post, and Top Performing Hashtag Group. Some client’s will just skip to this page so it should cover all the key points. The most important part of this section is the SUMMARY and NEXT WEEK’S GOALS.
Pulling from all the key info I’ll do a debrief of our overall big wins or weaknesses. For example this is where we would discuss if we beat a hashtag record, or a post received less likes than usual, if we had any website leads etc. Then based on these key findings I create the goals for next week – for example maybe the goal is to increase website clicks, boost the engagement, or target more niche followers.
I also like to preface if there is any experimentation coming up or new strategies/features to the app. For example my client’s have a pretty strong hashtag strategy currently, but IG went crazy with the news that they recommend only 8-15 hashtags. So in this portion I would inform our client’s we are going to try this and there may be some hashtag inconsistencies in the near future, which we will note.
End of Month Analytics
At the end of each month I have an extra analytics page with a monthly summary (similar to the weekly summary). This page includes the top post and hashtag grouping for the month, as well as the follower count and average likes from the previous month compared to now.
There you have it! My method of Running an Analytics Debrief. If you want a template of my Analytics Reports you can snag your here!
