Social Media Dashboard: Why You Need One and How to Create It

A social media dashboard is a visual representation of the key metrics that prove the impact of your social media efforts. Here’s how to create one from scratch.

Picture this: Your boss is asking you about the business impact of your social media strategy. You know you’ve moved the needle — brought in website visitors, converted some of them, and nudged brand awareness. But how do you prove it?

This is where a social media dashboard comes in handy. It’s a visual representation of the key metrics that prove the impact of your social media efforts. Your job as a social media manager is to convert the raw data of social media metrics into something easily understandable for you, your team, and your executives.

But that’s not all it is. A social media marketing dashboard also helps in:

Uncovering actionable insights about what kind of social media posts are getting the most traction
Finding which social media campaigns are giving you the highest return on investment (ROI)
Deciding where you should put your marketing dollars — for example, you’d like to put more resources behind social media platforms that have an outsized impact

This article is a complete guide for creating a social media dashboard: what social media metrics you should monitor, where to get them, how to build helpful data visualizations, and a lot more.

The most important thing about building a social media reporting dashboard is it should be tailor-made. As social media managers, you likely have to communicate with various stakeholders — all of whom have different levels of knowledge about your marketing strategy and social media in general.

C-suite executives might not know which social media channels the company is active on and why. They might also be unaware of the various features of different social media platforms. However, they also have concerns about whether the marketing dollars are well-spent. So, they need more explainers behind your marketing strategy. You need to add not just the engagement metrics but also prove you’ve made informed decisions to get the value of money & resources.

On the other hand, your social media team doesn’t need to know the thought process behind your social media marketing strategy. They likely had an input in formulating it. Their social media reporting dashboard needs to focus more on execution. Perhaps you’re experimenting with a new social media channel — so you need to create custom reports on how your social media posts are performing here and any valuable insights you’ve derived.

Maybe you’re working as a creato