Start now! End-of-year social media reporting tips

Contributed blog by Angie Ramirez, Freelance Writer at Government Social Media

It's the most wonderful time of the year! And you know what that means… time to reflect, reset, and showcase your hard work. 

Between the excitement of the holidays, winter festivities, and (much-needed) days off, it can be easy to let New Year's sneak up on you. But don't let 2023 slip away without looking back and seeing what worked (and what didn't) over the last year. 

End-of-year reporting can provide great data that can help you set goals for the new year and quantify your efforts and the importance of social media for government agencies. If you've never done end-of-the-year reporting before, now is the perfect time to start so that you have something to look back on and benchmark against year after year.. If you have done end-of-the-year reports before, this is a great time to compare your metrics, see how your strategy elevated your agency's digital presence, and find opportunities to refresh and update your reports. 

To help you get started early and avoid the end-of-the-year rush, I've outlined what you can start doing now to prepare for end-of-the-year reporting success.

Create or update your reporting template 

Ok, I admit it, I'm a sucker for beautiful reports. But unless you're a data visualization nerd like me, design may not be the first thing you think of when preparing social media reports. 

Tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite make data reporting so much easier. But these reports aren't always in your organization's brand guidelines, and they may be too in-depth for what your leadership team wants. Instead, I like to use these tools for my own analysis, and then I pull the most insightful metrics and plug them into my own year-end template.

A great social media report should be easy to read, on-brand, and full of actionable insights.

Think of your annual social media report as an opportunity to create a beautiful, branded document that recaps your agency's social media efforts over the last year. You can use charts or graphs to visualize growth and engagement. You can also include screenshots of your top posts to showcase what resonated most within your community. However, be sure to avoid industry jargon and use colloquial terms instead – or include the definition of those terms (like engagements, impressions, click-through rate, etc). 

It's also important to determine what format works best for your leadership team. Would a one-pager, a presentation, or a traditional report packet be most effective and easy to digest?

If you need help figuring out where to start or you need some help with design, tools like Canva can be a major asset. Canva offers a variety of 'social media report' templates that you can customize to fit your needs–helping you save time while creating beautiful, on-brand reports that your leadership team will love.

Gather comments and customer service examples

Follower growth, engagement rates, and video views — these are all important metrics that should be included in your social media report. But something that is often overlooked (and more time-consuming to gather) is how you have leveraged social media as a way to engage and serve your community. 

One of my favorite ways of showcasing the community impact of government social media channels is by including comments from residents in our community. I like to look back at campaigns and major agency initiatives and find comments that speak to public sentiment or indicate appreciation for the organization's use of social media as a communications tool. 

Social media is also a powerful customer service tool. As part of your end-of-the-year report, consider including examples of how your agency used social media to help citizens, whether by answering a DM, responding to a comment, or identifying community issues through social listening. 

To save yourself time at the end of the year, it's a great idea to save all-star examples in a folder as they happen. But if you haven't been doing this all year, now is an excellent time to start looking back to find those customer service stories. This can be time-consuming, but it's a powerful way to show the true impact of government social media.

Group campaigns

Social media can be an odd and unpredictable place at times, which means that your end-of-the-year "top posts" may not always align perfectly with your organization's communications goals. That adorable photo of a puppy you posted on National Dog Day that went viral? That's a big win for a social media manager but may be less impressive to a department director or government administrator.

One thing you can do to showcase your social media strategy and highlight how digital channels support communications goals is grouping posts into campaigns. If you have a social media management tool like Sprout Social, you can easily do this throughout the year by creating "Tag Reports" based on your campaigns. If you don't have a tool like this, you can search for posts natively and consolidate the data for each campaign. For example, your end-of-the-year report may include sections for different topics or departments, metrics for special events, a public information campaign, a crisis communications incident, or something else.

Think about the top communications priorities for your agency and how you can showcase your strategic efforts to meet those needs. 

Benchmark your performance

Benchmarking is a really important way to track your progress and the effectiveness of your strategy. 

For your end-of-the-year report, look back at last year and see if you met the goals you established. Compare how your social media channel performed this year over last year, and consider tracking how your agency's social media channels performed compared to similar-sized agencies in your field. Through benchmarking, we can contextualize our efforts, gather inspiration, learn from each other, and challenge ourselves to meet realistic goals. 

Set new goals for next year

The best end-of-the-year reports don't just look back; they look to the future, too. By reviewing your metrics and analytics from the last year, you should be able to pull actionable insights to help you set goals for the new year. 

As you set these goals, think about the overall communications priorities for your organization and how you can help meet those needs. Are there specific campaigns your leadership wants to see on social media next year? Do you need a new growth or engagement strategy to ensure you're reaching the right audience? Were there specific questions that came up throughout the year that you'd like to address through public education campaigns next year? Whatever goals you want to set for the new year, ensure they are realistic, actionable, and aligned with your organization's overall mission and priorities. 

You've worked hard over the last year to tell your agency's story. Now it’s time to showcase your hard work with a beautiful report packed with actionable insights. 

Meet the author

Angela Ramirez (Pitts)

Freelance Writer - Government Social Media LLC

Angela is an award-winning government communicator who is passionate about leveraging social media to build strong relationships between government agencies and the people they serve. Angela is an award-winning government communicator who is passionate about leveraging social media to build strong relationships between government agencies and the people they serve.

During her tenure with the City of Tampa, Angela proudly maintained a dynamic social media presence for the City, telling Tampa’s story through historic events, including the Super Bowl, the COVID-19 pandemic, major hurricanes, and more. She also helped establish a community-centric social media following for the City, growing the @cityoftampa Instagram profile from less than 1k followers to over 100k in under five years. Her passion for government social media continues as she strives to be a thought leader in the field. She takes immense pride in the connections she’s made with social media professionals across the nation. Angela earned her bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida and is currently completing her master's degree in Digital Strategy from the University of Florida. In her free time, you can find her scrolling Instagram Reels, spending time with her husband and dog, or planning her next big adventure.

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