Reader First
What decision this document supports.
Social Media Reporting
Social Media Reporting Built Around the Reader’s Actual Question
Most social reports are exports: every metric the platform offers, arranged into a document nobody reads past the first page. Social media reporting should start from what the reader is deciding — whether to continue, whether to spend more, what to change — and contain what answers that.
We Report What Changes a Decision
A report that would look identical whether the channel worked or not is not a report.
Metrics Fixed in Advance
So they cannot be chosen after the fact.
Consistent Definitions
The same numbers meaning the same things each month.
Bad Months Reported
Including what we think went wrong.
No Vanity Padding
Impressions are exposure, not an outcome.
Reporting, Explained
What Should a Report Contain?
Four things, and a metric dump is none of them.
Discuss Your Reporting →- 1
What Happened
Against the measures agreed in advance.
- 2
Why
The explanation, which is the part that takes work.
- 3
What Changes
What is being done differently as a result.
- 4
What Is Not Known
Stated, rather than implied to be measured.
What Reporting Work Covers
Definition, cadence and a document someone reads.
What the numbers mean is covered by social media analytics.
How We Build Reporting
Agree the measures first. A report designed after the period is an argument.
Identify the Reader
And the decision they are making.
Agree the Measures
Before the period starts.
Fix the Definitions
So they hold across periods.
Write the Commentary
Why it happened, including when it went badly.
State the Actions
What changes as a result.
Honesty
Why Metrics Chosen Afterwards Are Not Evidence
With enough numbers available, something always went up.
How does post-hoc selection work?
A platform exports dozens of measures across several time comparisons. In any period, some of them improved. A report built after the fact can lead with those.
It is not usually deliberate deception. It is the natural output of assembling a report from whatever the data shows, under pressure to demonstrate progress.
Fixing the metrics before the period removes the possibility. The report then shows what was agreed to matter, whether or not it moved.
Why report a bad month?
Because a reporting relationship where results are always positive stops being informative, and readers work that out.
A report that says performance fell, here is what we think caused it, here is what we are changing, is more useful than one that found something to celebrate — and considerably more credible.
It also makes the good months mean something, which is the practical argument for it.
Something Always Went Up
A social platform exports several dozen measures, each available across a handful of time comparisons. That is a large number of numbers.
In any given month, some of them improved. A report assembled after the period, by someone who needs to show progress, will find them — not through dishonesty, but because that is what assembling a report from available data produces.
Agreeing three measures before the month starts removes the possibility entirely, and it is resisted for exactly that reason.
Free Reporting Review
Find Out Whether Your Reports Say Anything
Send us a recent social report. We will tell you what decision it supports and what it is leaving out.
Claim Your Free Marketing Audit
Enhance Your Brand Potential At No Cost!
- Expect a response within 24 hours
- NDA available upon request
- Dedicated product specialists
Social media reporting communicates what social activity produced to the people making decisions about it — using measures agreed in advance, consistent definitions and commentary on why.