Reports can be super unique to clients and consultants. No two consultants will do it the same way and no two clients need the same information.

You can talk it through during onboarding, but I’ve found that clients really need to see a report to decide if what I present is what they need. So we tweak the information presented in reports as we go. And this tweaking happens throughout the relationship, because client needs change as they become more sophisticated clients and the social media landscape shifts.

And as those shifts happen, I invariably start having trouble getting all of the information I need to fulfill client requests. They could say, “I need to know about this,” and I can reply, “You need to give me access to that then.” It could then be weeks or months or never before I get that specific information for their reports.

Why is it? Maybe lack of time or maybe not knowing what they actually want. Whatever it is, it becomes problematic and makes reports that much harder.

So if you’re a client trying to figure out what metrics to give your social media consultant access to, let’s talk about it.

Social media metrics

This should be a given and yet it is sometimes really hard to get a client to give up their social media metrics for reporting. Yes, it’s a real head scratcher.

A social media consultant simply can’t report on a significant part of what they’re doing if they do not have access to these metrics. And now that social networks are making it harder to get that information, it’s up to you as a client to give access to any social media management programs you have used in the past and/or your own past reports with this information. That way they can get and give a clear picture of what has happened and what is happening.

And even more important: They can find out what worked and build off of that. There is no more valuable information than what your audience has already responded well to. That’s one less experiment that needs to be done and one step closer to having a social media program getting you results.

Business metrics

I received an email from a client once that to me was a head scratcher. They said they were happy with where our strategy was. Now I needed to prove I could get people to sign up for their programs. Here’s where the problem was: I had no access to how many people were signing up. And no one willing to give me updates on that information. All I knew was how many people I was sending to the landing page of their events. That number was consistently going up. But I had no idea what content resulted in actual sign ups or whether sign ups were happening at all.

Want your social media consultant focused on business objectives? Then you have to give them an idea of what those are. I’m not saying to give them access to ALL of your information. But let’s say you have a live event coming up and you want social media to promote it. Your goal is to get to a certain number of attendees. Give your social media consultant a daily update of that number. Or at the very least, an update on the number the day after a social media post has gone out. But really, it should be daily. Then they can really see what kind of affect the post had on registrations and adjust as needed.

Asking for a social media consultant to affect these numbers and then not give them any kind of access to them? Then your consultant will just be throwing spaghetti at the wall, which isn’t helpful for anyone. If you want a clear and focused social media strategy that will affect business in a positive way, then tell your social media consultant what those objectives are and what the numbers are. Otherwise, they’ll be more focused on those social media analytics that may or may not be helping your business.

What would you like to see on your reports? Are you giving your social media consultant access to that information?