Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: Why You Should Focus on Quarterly (Not Weekly or Even Monthly) Social Media Data

It’s no secret that analyzing your social media performance on an ongoing basis plays a significant role in the success of your business’s digital presence. A strategic, easy to read social media report is key to proving the value of your online marketing strategy. These reports showcase all of your accomplishments, backed up by data. A well-executed report can also help evolve your overall marketing strategy, as you incorporate learnings from campaigns and evergreen postings. 

The need for social media reports is obvious, but how often should you be producing and reviewing said documents? While social posts can go viral or flop in a matter of hours, it’s crucial to focus on the big picture and not get stuck on the success or failure of each piece of content. With that said, reports can be created and sent on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, but we like to focus on the latter.

Quarterly reporting, occurring every 90 days, allows you to collect stronger data sets than you could with short-term reports. While monthly reports are helpful in terms of seeing the progress you are making on your evergreen and campaign content, they are often skewed by outlier posts that receive either very high or low engagement. By having more time to prepare and dig deeper into your data, you can make better strategic decisions than you ever could with surface-level data! 

Fun fact: When it comes to campaigns, it can take up to 90 days to build momentum around a digital marketing effort. If you don’t give your content enough time to perform, you could end up making strategic decisions based on only 30 days of data and analysis. 

In addition to giving your content enough time to perform, you want to make sure that you’re paying attention to the right metrics for your business. 

If you’re focused on brand marketing and are looking to raise awareness and affinity, you’ll want a report focusing on metrics such as reach, engagement, and brand sentiment. If you’re more concerned with performance marketing and are looking to deliver tangible business results, you’ll want to see things like click-through rate, cost-per-click, and cost-per-action at the forefront of the report.

When you look at reports on a weekly or monthly basis, it’s easy to get caught up on every single data point vs. the metrics that align with your overall goals. Yes, all metrics are generally important, but for your specific business initiatives, some matter more than others. 

Finally, to be able to plan out realistic and accurate goals for your future marketing efforts, you need to benchmark your results against your competition and see how you compare. Doing so can help you answer questions, such as: Which areas of the social media strategy should be revised, and how? What type and amount of resources are we going to need to execute this revised strategy? 

By giving yourself a full quarter to watch what the competitors are doing, you will get a better understanding of what their overall social media strategy is and how you can better compete with them during the following 90 days. From there, you can continue to monitor and learn! 

Even though quarterly reporting on your social media performance might seem like a change from what you are used to, it can be made easy with the right approach. Collecting and analyzing the most accurate data will allow you to create a comprehensive report with actionable next steps! 

Ready to have a killer social strategy based on the most accurate data analysis possible? Call, DM, or email us at sbellem@bbrookstone.com to get started. We would love to help you step up your social media game.