If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably heard of a social media dashboard. But you might not be exactly sure what it is, or how it could help you.

Well, whether you’re managing one social media account or ten, it can be overwhelming to strategize content, create posts, and react to trends on the fly. Not to mention, tracking analytics across platforms, apps, and devices can leave you feeling like you’re chasing your tail.

By consolidating all of your social media accounts into one platform, you can quickly see what’s happening across the board and take action accordingly — without pulling out your hair.

In this article, we’ll teach you the basics of social media dashboard tools and how you can use one to save time and become a better social media marketer.

Bonus: Get a free social media report template to easily and effectively present your social media performance to key stakeholders.

What is a social media dashboard?

A social media dashboard is a platform that allows you to view all of your social media activity in one place. This includes scheduling and creating posts, tracking analytics, and interacting with your followers.

The best social media dashboards will also allow you to do things like track trending content, manage ad campaigns, and analyze results across platforms. Not only does this make social media marketing more efficient, but it also allows you to get a better understanding of your overall social media performance — something that is nearly impossible to do while toggling back-and-forth between native social media business profile solutions.

Want to see how a social media dashboard works in action? The video below shows an overview of the Hootsuite dashboard.

What is a social media analytics dashboard?

A social media analytics dashboard is the place where you can track, measure, and analyze the performance of your social media platforms. You can use a social media analytics dashboard to track how many likes and comments your posts receive, what kind of engagement your content is receiving, and how much new traffic you’re getting. It’s more specifically focused on analytics than a social media dashboard.

While there are many tools, like Hootsuite Analytics, that offer this as a service, you can also create your own social media analytics dashboard using our social media report template (sometimes referred to as a social media dashboard template). Or, create your own templates using Excel or Google Sheets.

Why use a social media dashboard?

Using a social media dashboard gives you a clear overview of your social media performance, so you can see what’s working and what’s not. It also allows you to track your progress over time and understand how your content is performing. This will allow you to save money and time on social media marketing for your business.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of a social media marketing dashboard:

• Gaining insights with a single glance: A social media dashboard displays all of your metrics in one place so you can quickly see what’s working and what’s not.
• Sharing performance with your team: Social media dashboards make it easy to share your performance with your team so you can stay on top of your strategy.
• Increasing your conversion rates: By understanding your social media metrics, you can shape your marketing strategy to increase your conversion rates.
• Generating revenue: Insights provided by your social media dashboard help you make informed decisions about the sales funnel.

What features should a social media dashboard include?

Looking for your next social media dashboard? Here are the features you can’t miss.

Performance tracking

A social media dashboard should make it easy to track your performance across all your social media channels, including impressions, reach, and engagement metrics. The more data you can gather, the better you’ll be able to understand what’s working and what’s not.

For example, if you see that your posts are getting a lot of engagement but not many clicks, you might want to focus on creating more shareable content. Or, if you notice that your audience is most engaged during certain times of day, you can adjust your posting schedule accordingly.

Content creation

A social media dashboard should also help you with content creation, by providing insights into what content is performing well and which topics are resonating with your audience.

Let’s say you’re trying to boost engagement on your Facebook page. By looking at your dashboard, you might notice that posts with images perform better than those without. By adding images to your next batch of posts, you’ll be giving your audience more of what they love.

Hootsuite Analytics showing the best time for a business to post on Facebook to get the maximum amount of impressions.

A good social media dashboard may also help with content creation by including image or video editors, or even AI-assisted help writing captions for your social media posts.

Hootsuite’s integration with Lately.ai uses artificial intelligence to help you create optimized copy for all types of social media posts.

Time-Saving

Another benefit of using a social media dashboard is that it can save you time. By bringing all of your social media data into one central place, you can quickly and easily identify patterns and opportunities. This would otherwise require hours of manual data entry and analysis, pulling figures from individual native platforms.

Messaging

Engaging with your audience is essential for social media success. A social media dashboard brings all of your social messages into one place, letting you quickly and easily respond to customers, no matter which platform they are using.

The best social media dashboards will also let you assign message replies to your team members. That way, your customers always get the best response, and nothing gets left behind.

Reporting

A social media dashboard should make sharing your results with stakeholders easy. Reporting proves the ROI of your social media efforts and helps make a case for further resourcing.

Choose a social media reporting dashboard that lets you generate custom reports. Bonus points if you can add your organization’s logo, and schedule reports to be sent automatically throughout the year.

Competitive analysis

If your customers are talking about you on social media, you want to know what they’re saying. But it’s not enough to just track your brand mentions. You also need to be aware of what people are saying about your competition. And you need to understand the larger conversations that are taking place in your industry.

Social media dashboards that offer social listening features can help you monitor conversations about your brand, or your competitor’s brands, online. This data can be used to inform new content or get ahead of important messaging opportunities.

Improved collaboration

Finally, a social media dashboard can also improve collaboration within your team.

By sharing a dashboard with your team members, you can give them visibility into your social media performance and allow them to contribute their own insights. This can help to make your team more efficient and effective, and ultimately get you on your way to achieving your social media goals.

Get better at social media marketing

A good social media dashboard will not just help you become a better social media marketer by showing you performance data in one easy-to-analyze place. The best ones will offer tips and learnings to actually help you get better results.

For example, Hootsuite’s social media dashboard gives every customer a “social score” based on their performance over the last few months. Depending on your score, it will suggest areas of improvement and tactics you could use to improve your score (and get better results on social media).

Want to know your social score? Try Hootsuite free for 30 days (risk-free).

Can you create your own social media dashboard?

Of course! You can use our template to make your own social media reporting dashboard (find that above). Or, you can choose a true social media dashboard solution that will let you track your performance and also manage all of your social media in one place. *wink*

A social media dashboard that will save you time (and make you a better marketer)

Social media managers and small business owners are always looking for ways to save time. A social media dashboard can help you do just that. By consolidating all of your social media reporting into one place, you can easily see what’s working and what isn’t. This will save you valuable time and help you improve your social media strategy going forward.

Hootsuite offers a 360-degree view of results from all of your social networks in our social media metrics dashboard. You can also

• get insights into the best times to post for your audience and channels to maximize your engagement,
• monitor and reply to messages from one place, improving your response time,
• create custom automated reports to prove your ROI,
• and track conversations about your brand on social media, heading off PR crises before they happen.

Try a Hootsuite Pro Trial and get access to all these features, plus live social media coaching sessions every Monday. Past sessions have included How to Get More Instagram Followers, How to Grow on TikTok, and more.

Free 30-Day Trial (Risk-Free!)

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