December 2021
Your school or district is rolling with social media, win one! Next step, reporting on and analyzing your social media activity. Effective reporting helps your school’s social media teams understand how your social pages are connecting with your audiences and share those successes with administration. Additionally, analytics help provide an understanding of the content that resonates with your audience and identify future content opportunities.
Schools know the value of learning from data and research. However, getting a regular reporting practice in place is a to-do that hasn’t been checked off the list for many schools yet. In a recent survey by Class Intercom, just 48% of schools reported reviewing their social media activity on a regular basis. This blog (and downloadable template and instructions) is intended to help those in school social media manager roles get their social media reporting started and help others improve upon what they have started.
What to include in your social media report?
The first thing to start with is to share what you have been up to on all the social media networks. Your social media report should capture the following in each reporting period (monthly or quarterly):
- What content was created
- How each of your social channels has performed
- What content is connecting most with your audience
- Future/upcoming social media and content recommendations based on analysis
What has your social media team been up to?
Before you can reveal your results, first give your report context by sharing what your school social media team has been up to and any observations over the reporting period. Be sure to share:
- A summary of content being created and any special social campaigns or initiatives
- Activity observations including highly engaging posts, comments, and shares
- Activity flags for any concerning comments or activity where a comment had to be removed
How are each of your social profiles performing?
Take a dive into how your social profiles are performing on each social network where you have a presence (i.e. – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram). Keep track of your reporting period change to observe your growth over time. Page performance analytics should include:
- Total followers and net reporting period change
- Total number of posts made
- Total post engagement (likes/reactions, comments, and shares)
- Total page impressions (how many people saw your post) – note that the validity of post impressions is currently somewhat inflated due to Apple iOS recent data sharing modifications.
What are your top posts?
The simplest way to understand the type of content your followers enjoy, is to evaluate the top performing posts (but never let this deter you from trying something new). Review all your posts for the reporting period on each social channel and highlight the top posts to analyze:
- The type of posts
- Time of day the posts were made
- Post impressions
- Total engagement (likes/reactions, comments, and shares)
What is next for your social pages?
Once you have evaluated the type of content your social media team has created, how your audience has engaged and how your following has grown, the next action is to determine your next steps.
- Outline any future social media strategy modifications
- Share new things you are looking to try
- Summarize upcoming social content, themes, and campaigns
Want to gain access to more useful social media management resources for your school(s)? Sign up for Class Intercom’s blog, we love sharing resources with school administrators and educators to help drive greater social media good.
