How do you make your social media reports and visualizations more user-friendly?

1 Know your audience

The first step to creating user-friendly reports and visualizations is to know who you are communicating with. Different audiences may have different levels of familiarity with social media metrics, goals, and terminology. You need to tailor your reports and visualizations to suit their needs, expectations, and preferences. For example, if you are reporting to a senior executive, you may want to focus on the high-level results, trends, and insights that relate to their business objectives. If you are reporting to a technical team, you may want to include more details, data sources, and methods that explain how you measured and analyzed your social media activities.

2 Choose the right format

The next step is to choose the right format for your reports and visualizations. Depending on your audience, purpose, and message, you may want to use different types of formats, such as dashboards, slides, infographics, or videos. Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages, so you need to consider what works best for your situation. For example, if you want to provide a quick overview of your social media performance, you may want to use a dashboard that displays the key metrics and trends in a visual and interactive way. If you want to tell a story or explain a complex concept, you may want to use a slide deck or a video that uses narration, graphics, and animations to engage your audience.

3 Use clear and consistent language

The third step is to use clear and consistent language in your reports and visualizations. You want to avoid using jargon, acronyms, or technical terms that may confuse or alienate your audience. You also want to use consistent terms and definitions across your reports and visualizations, so that your audience can easily compare and contrast your data. For example, if you are measuring your social media reach, you may want to explain what it means, how you calculated it, and how it differs from other metrics, such as impressions or followers. You may also want to use the same labels, colors, and symbols for the same metrics across different charts and graphs.

5 Add context and comparison

The fifth step is to add context and comparison to your data in your reports and visualizations. You want to help your audience understand the meaning and significance of your data by providing relevant benchmarks, baselines, or targets. You also want to show how your data changes over time, across different groups, or compared to your competitors or industry standards. For example, if you are reporting on your social media engagement, you may want to show how it varies by month, by content type, or by platform. You may also want to compare it to your previous performance, your goals, or your peers.

6 Incorporate visuals and storytelling

The final step is to incorporate visuals and storytelling in your reports and visualizations. You want to use visual elements, such as charts, graphs, icons, or images, to make your data more appealing, memorable, and understandable. You also want to use storytelling techniques, such as headlines, captions, annotations, or narratives, to make your data more meaningful, persuasive, and actionable. For example, if you are reporting on your social media sentiment analysis, you may want to use a pie chart to show the distribution of positive, negative, and neutral mentions. You may also want to use a catchy headline, a descriptive caption, and a few examples of actual mentions to illustrate your findings and implications.