The proliferation of social media platforms has offered multiple opportunities for businesses to grow. These platforms can be used to engage with customers, generate leads, boost sales, and much more. 

But is creating a presence on social media platforms enough? It’s important to find the right platform where the target audience exists and deliver valuable content to encourage reactions. 

But how do you determine your target audience? How do you identify the right platforms to concentrate? When is the most effective time to reach out to your target audience? 

Finding answers to these questions is easier said than done. 

Without a process in place, it feels impossible. This is where social reporting helps. You can make key strategic decisions regarding your social media initiatives based on social media reports.

And in this article, we’re looking into how to use Hootsuite for social media reporting. 

What is social media reporting? 

Social media reporting is, essentially, extracting important information from data provided by social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. on metrics such as no. of likes, views, reach, etc., over a period of time. 

The insights provided by social media reporting can help you make more informed, smarter, and refined social media decisions, maximizing ROI with every dollar spent on organic and paid campaigns.

Social media reporting offers you a plethora of information to generate leads, build customer relationships, boost sales, and create share-worthy content that your audience wants to read and consume. 

Importance of social media reporting 

From boosting brand awareness to generating leads and reaching out to potential customers, social media can be a goldmine for B2B businesses. However, navigating the enormous amount of data provided by social media can be confusing, overwhelming and tough. 

If you’ve ever had trouble attributing your growth to any of your efforts on social media, it’s time for you to learn about social media reporting. 

Social media reporting assists you in organizing a large volume of data and extracting crucial insights, in addition to providing detailed reports on ongoing campaigns.

Here are a few reasons why we think social media reporting is important for your business:

1. More creative content

Social media reporting can help you create more effective content by providing a detailed report on the ideal post length and the most engaging content – both in terms of format and topic that your audience responds to the most.

2. More effective outreach

Social media reporting can help you determine the best time and day of the week to interact with your current and potential customers. 

For instance: Carousels might perform better on Mondays and Thursdays, while other days, your reels might see huge engagement. 

You can also get insights about which topic resonates the most with your customers on which day, making it possible to run personalized outreach campaigns.

3. Better understanding of your audience 

Not all social media platforms are the same. As a result, you’ll require a platform-specific strategy. It is not just about providing content but also about reaching the right target audience on the right platform. 

As a result, social media reports provide detailed insights into the kind of audience your content is reaching to on each platform, allowing you to make informed decisions. As a B2B business, it is important to keep your efforts streamlined. 

4. Strong brand positioning

Social media reports help you in strong brand positioning by identifying new competitors and allowing you to put more effective strategies in place to stand out, or even build partnerships with other brands that will help you reach wider audiences.

5. Customized reporting 

Each organization has different objectives and goals for their social media outreach. The data extracted from social media reports can be used to achieve your social media goals. 

Obtaining social media reports is one aspect of your social media strategy. There’s a lot more to it, such as planning, research, and scheduling. Managing all of this manually, even if you have a social media team, can be stressful at times.

Many social media management tools do this to help you focus on the core areas of your business. 

Now, this is where we’re going to introduce you to how we’re using Hootsuite for social media reporting. 

What is Hootsuite?

What if you could have a platform that handled all aspects of your social media manager’s job? Hootsuite, a social media management platform founded by Ryan Holmes in 2008, does a similar (or even better) job.

It helps you plan, schedule, and synchronize your social media posts and gives you key metrics to help you analyze your social media goals.

You get a complete picture of your social media goals in one place, eliminating the need to check each platform separately.

The following statistics make it clear why Hootsuite is a leader in social media management –

• More than 18 million customers use Hootsuite.
• More than 20% of companies use Hootsuite to manage their social media accounts.
• Hootsuite was crowned as the Best Social Media Scheduling Software at the 2021 MarTech  Breakthrough Awards. 

What makes Hootsuite popular for social media reporting?

The best social media report provides you with a complete analysis of your social media plan, backed by the data. It can be anything from spreadsheets to presentations that gives you a clear understanding of your social media activities based on your end goals. 

There are many social media reporting tools; however, Hootsuite remains on the top of the list. This is because it provides you with actionable insights that are easy to understand.

Let’s have a look at the points below to see why Hootsuite is such a popular choice –

1. Easy to understand analytics 

Hootsuite gives you a unified view of all your social media channels. You can even set and change benchmarks over time. The information and figures included in the reports are easy to understand. These reports can even be tailored to your organizational goals.

2. Easy to optimize according to your goals

Whether your social media goal is to create awareness, increase engagement, or boost revenue, Hootsuite can help you do it. It provides you with insights that will assist you in taking action toward your future goals.

3. Improve your ROI

It’s important to monitor the return on investment (ROI) of social media campaigns to evaluate if the outcomes outweigh the costs. The dashboard’s easy-to-read graphs, tables, and KPIs make it simple to identify discrepancies and improve your future ROI.

4. Improve your customer support 

Customers wait an average of 20 seconds for a response to their question. As a result, providing quick, reliable, and engaging customer service is important. Hootsuite provides detailed information on response time and top performers. To improve overall performance, ask the top performers to share their strategies with the rest of the team.

5. Stay on top of user information

Hootsuite offers you a free analytics report every week. The reports give you information on the number of clicks, popular links, and other user data that you can use or send to your clients.

Hootsuite offers features that no other platform can match. Users may easily schedule, monitor, and evaluate their social media using the all-in-one features.

Let’s take a closer look at these features!

Hootsuite features that make it the best social media reporting tool 

Hootsuite’s most basic and important feature is still scheduling social media posts. However, over time, the platform has improved its functionalities. 

1. Schedule your posts

To schedule your social media posts, you have to simply select the platform and integrate it with Hootsuite. 

Manually, type the post content. Add images, videos or other media along with the post.

You’ll get a preview of how your post will look before you proceed. 

The preview won’t be exactly like the post on the platform, but it is enough to give you a general idea. 

Next, you can select a date and time to post with the “Schedule for later” feature. 

This is how you can schedule your posts in advance.

P.S – Hootsuite’s automated tool also provides a general indication of when your post will perform best based on its algorithms. Isn’t it great?

2. Streams

If you use multiple social media platforms or run an agency with many clients, we know how hard it can get to keep track of all these platforms. 

The best way to manage your accounts is to use “Streams,” a popular Hootsuite feature. 

With the feature, you can keep an eye on relevant social media activity. 

You can use the feature to show you posts related to a few keywords, hashtags, or posts from specific social media accounts.

You can easily build connections and start the conversation when you get a real-time update on social media activities. 

For instance: You can add the keyword “Crypto” as a stream on Twitter. 

You can easily view conversations regarding the same keyword. If you come across something important, don’t miss to add it to your calendar. 

3. Analytics

We think “reporting” is the ultimate goal of any social media platform. 

Hootsuite analytics offers you a complete insight into all the social media platforms in one place. You can even track your performance by individual social media profile. 

Since we are talking about social media reporting, we think this feature is of utmost use for every B2B business. 

The feature provides a comprehensive view of all social media channels within a single tool.

Over 30 individual report “modules” are available through a redesigned launch bar in Social Analytics. Users can choose from various modules in any combination to create unique reports, or they can choose from a number of pre-made report templates for quick reporting.

The best thing is that these reports can be customized according to your business or social media goals. 

For instance, you can monitor brand mentions, link clicks, demographics, top-performing content, and so on.

Now you don’t have to juggle between several measuring tools because Hootsuite analytics features provide a complete analysis to understand the effect of each social media platform. You can get reports regarding multiple social media campaigns with clear analysis to conclude. 

Once you have the detailed reports, you can adjust according to new campaigns and your reporting needs. It’s easy to share your reports not only with team members but any Hootsuite user. You can authorize clients or people from different departments to view reports with Hootsuite. Reports can be sent via email to the chosen recipients daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis.

Hootsuite users with any plan – Basic, pro and enterprise can use this feature. Downloading reports, however, require points*. You can select the desired action based on the points you have collected. 

*Hootsuite reports and analytics work on a points-based system. These points can be purchased separately in the final step of completing your analytics reports. A Pro user gets 50 points for generating reports every month. If you are a Free account user, you will be required to upgrade your Hootsuite account. Once you have finished adding modules to your report you can see the points counter at the top of your dashboard. If you exceed the available points, as an indicator, the number of points changes to red.

Hootsuite is making its features more relatable, useful and customized to help businesses and organizations to boost their social media campaign ROI. 

4. Assignments 

This is the most underrated feature of Hootsuite, which allows you to assign tasks to your team members. This feature can help businesses to expedite their customer support service. 

For instance – If someone has raised a query on Twitter regarding your product or service. You can assign this task to your I.T. helpdesk along with a private message providing context.

To assign tasks, you have to create Hootsuite accounts for an individual team member. 

Once that’s set up, any member of your team can send assignments to themselves or others.

Pro tip: Hootsuite can also be easily integrated with third-party tools such as Asana, Salesforce, Slack, and others, allowing you to push assignments right into your existing workflow.

What platforms can Hootsuite manage?

We’ve seen Hootsuite’s potential and what it can accomplish. Is the social media management tool, however, capable of integrating all social media platforms?

Hootsuite used to be restricted to solely scheduling and analyzing written content, but in 2016, the company added video integrations with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This will aid businesses in reducing the difficulty of managing video content while also increasing reach.

Today, video content is an important aspect of any company’s marketing strategy. Companies have benefited greatly from video platforms like Instagram reels, TikTok, and YouTube.

Hootsuite connects all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Linkedin, allowing businesses to manage video content and other social media activities.

Users can also monitor comments and interact securely as a team to manage several accounts, allowing them to respond to consumer inquiries faster.

Companies can use Hootsuite to manage not only their accounts but also the accounts of their clients.

How to create a report on Hootsuite?

You may collect data and create reports for social media platforms using Hootsuite analytics. If you manage an agency, you know how difficult it can be to generate social media reports. On the other hand, Hootsuite allows you to create several reports, customize and export them.

Let’s have a look at how to use Hootsuite to create reports step by step.

1. Go to the Analytics page.
2. Select Expand Navigation > Select New Report if the Analytics navigation is not displayed.

   

3. To discover a template quickly, type a search term into the top search box. On the left, you may also choose a report category. You can choose from the following categories depending on your plan:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram Business
• LinkedIn Pages
• LinkedIn profiles
• Custom report
• Amplify
• Team (for Enterprise customers with Team Admin permissions)
• Insights
• Impact
• Ad Analytics

4. For customized reports, you can choose from a variety of metric libraries. Choose a social network and look for a metric, or use the search field to look for specific metrics (those that start with the word ‘Post’).

Add metrics to your report

1. A single report can display up to 100 tiles, but you can add an endless number of tiles.
2. From the Analytics navigation, choose the report that will contain the new tile
3. To open the Metrics library, select Add metric. You can choose from numerous libraries of metrics depending on your plan.
4. Select a social network from the Metrics library and search for a metric. You may also search for specific metrics using the search bar.

5. Customize the tile before adding it to your report once you’ve chosen a metric. Select Customize to change the tile’s title or to choose a compare or sort by option. You can also modify the visualization type or make your tile a different size. Increase the size of your tile if your info isn’t being displayed.

6. Add the metric into your report. The Metrics library appears when you add a metric to your report. Once you’re done adding metrics close the “Add a new metric window”. 

And viola! Now you have your social media report customized to your social media goals ready in just a few minutes. 

Hootsuite pricing plans 

Hootsuite has various plans to help you manage your social media accounts, depending on your needs and budget. There are four Hootsuite plans to choose from Professional, Team, Business and Enterprise.

Let’s take a brief look at all four plans to see which one best fits your needs-

1. Professional Plan (30-day free trial)

A professional plan is for individuals looking to manage their social media accounts. 

Price – Rs.1260/month.

Features: 

• Add up to 10 social accounts
• Schedule unlimited posts
• Access messages in one inbox
• Schedule posts in advance
• Always post at the optimal time
• Schedule multiple posts at a time

2. Team Plan (30-day free trial)

If you’re a team of 3 members who manage a certain number of social media accounts, this plan is for you. 

Price- Rs.6600/month 

Features:

• Add 20 social accounts
• Schedule unlimited posts
• Access messages in one inbox
• Schedule posts in advance
• Always post at the optimal time
• Schedule multiple posts at a time
• Manage team access and roles with permissions
• Assign posts or comments to team members

3. Business Plan (Request a free demo)

If you’re a business handling multiple social media accounts choose a Hootsuite Business plan with maximum 5 users. 

Price: Rs.45000/month. 

Features:

• Add 35 social accounts
• Schedule unlimited posts
• Access messages in one inbox
• Schedule posts in advance
• Always post at the optimal time
• Schedule multiple posts at a time
• Manage team access and roles with permissions
• Assign posts or comments to team members
• Review messages before they publish
• Extend functionality with premium apps
• 24/7 priority support

4. Enterprise Plan (Request a free demo)

Are you an agency managing the social media accounts of multiple clients? This plan is for you.

Price: The sales team has to be contacted for a quote. 

This plan can be used by 5+ users and offer the following features:

• Add 35+ social accounts
• Schedule unlimited posts
• Access messages in one inbox
• Schedule posts in advance
• Always post at the optimal time
• Schedule multiple posts at a time
• Manage team access and roles with permissions
• Automatically assign posts or comments to team members
• Review messages before they publish
• Extend the functionality with premium apps.
• 24/7 priority support
• Receive a quarterly business review
• Get reviews and recommendations from the Customer Success Manager
• Hootsuite Social Advertising
• Promote unlimited posts
• Ad spend for more visibility of posts
• Report on team performance
• Custom solutions

Frequently asked questions about Hootsuite 

1. Can we use Hootsuite for free?

Yes. Hootsuite offers a free 30-day trial to its users on all the plans. This means you can cancel the subscription once the trial is over. 

2. Does Hootsuite allow you to post videos?

Yes. You can add video content to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and more with the help of Hootsuite. 

3. Is Hootsuite only for scheduling posts?

No. Scheduling is one feature of Hootsuite; apart from this, you can access social media reports from all the platforms and even assign tasks directly to your team. 

4. Can I access Hootsuite on mobile devices?

Yes. Hootsuite offers a mobile app for both iOs and Android users to directly manage their social media activities and conversations on their mobile devices. Now managing your social media is easy even when you’re on the go. 

Other Hootsuite alternatives

Are you looking for a social media management tool that is similar to Hootsuite?

Social media management can be done with a variety of tools. These platforms, however, are very similar to Hootsuite. These tools may offer more or fewer features than Hootsuite.

Let’s take a look at all of the alternatives we’ve tried.

1. Sendible 

Sendible is the best Hootsuite alternative.

It also allows you to connect to all major social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

You get an overview view of your social media accounts, similar to Hootsuite, as well as a social media inbox that allows you to respond to all messages, comments, and tweets from a single platform.

People may share your content without tagging you at times. To maintain track of your brand, Sendible has a tool called “social listening.”

It’s a useful platform and a great substitute for Hootsuite.

2. Sprout Social 

Sprout Social is a great alternative to the Hootsuite team and enterprise account. 

It also has a social inbox and a social media calendar to help you keep your team organized.

The built-in CRM/task management tool is what we enjoy most about this platform. The tool allows team members to add and request content approval in real-time. Cool. Isn’t it?

The features provided by this platform are exceptional; however, the prices are extremely high.

3. Buffer 

Buffer is another popular Hootsuite option, although we believe it is best for individual users.

Buffer is a basic scheduling tool that lacks features such as “streams” and “social media inbox.” Your social media postings can be easily created and scheduled.

Like Hootsuite, it gives metrics so you can observe how well your postings are performing.

This is your go-to social media management tool if you don’t have to deal with several clients and don’t need a lot of detailed analysis.

4.SocialPilot 

We’ve tried both Hootsuite and SocialPilot, and they’re both the same, in our opinion. However, with a few more features, SocialPilot might have outperformed Hootsuite.

Similar to Hootsuite, SocialPilot has a common dashboard that allows you to group different social sites.

While using SocialPilot to acquire your RSS feeds, you’ll be able to search for content related to your field. Hootsuite, on the other hand, lacks this feature.

If finding content isn’t a priority, Hootsuite will suffice to accomplish your social media goals.

Pros of using Hootsuite 

You may have realised the value of Hootsuite for social media analytics and why we love this tool. If you’re still not convinced we have a few more reasons for you to love it.

1. Having the opportunity to access all of your social media platform metrics in one location is really useful for a company trying to grow its online presence.
   
2. Analyzing social media engagement metrics to learn about your audience’s pain points and interests is simple.
3. The best thing is that you can download the report data and export them in PDF or PPTX  format in professional and team plan. However, with business and enterprise plan you can also export files to XLSX and CSV format in addition to PDF and PPTX format.
4. The platform’s metrics and reports are simple to understand. These reports can easily be shared with your team members and clients.
   

What can be improved?

Hootsuite is one of our favorite social media reporting tools, and we always recommend it to our clients. However, we believe that there are a few features that can be improved for a better user experience.

• For some people, using the Hootsuite dashboard can be overwhelming. Learning the UI can be difficult for team members. And so we believe the UI can be beginner-friendly.
• The cost structure of reporting here isn’t optimal because it’s based on the number of reports and the number of things you wish to measure.
• You can only use the ow.ly URL shortener. This isn’t a problem for most people, but if you have your own short URL or use a different provider for statistics, Hootsuite isn’t for you.

Hootsuite offers many bells and whistles, and we think users don’t need to know all of them. Small businesses can use basic features to manage their social media activities.

Conclusion 

With the increased use of social media and rising competition, getting comprehensive reports regarding your social media efforts is important. The reports offer you insights that lead to successful social media campaigns and increased ROI. 

Hootsuite is a one-stop solution to get actionable insights to maximize your social media engagement. Imagine getting analytics of all social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin in one place. This helps you save time and effort to check each platform. 

What organizations need in terms of analytics will vary from business to business. Hence, you can customize social media reports provided by Hootsuite to your social media goals.

Moreover, getting analytics is one part of these tools; there’s a lot more to it. You can also create, schedule, and manage all your social media accounts in one place. 

So, if you’re searching for a social media reporting tool that’s more than just a scheduling tool, give Hootsuite a try and see if it meets your needs.

Get Hootsuite today to meet your social media goals. 

And if you’re struggling with your social media marketing game simply contact us at Contensify. We’ll give you expert advice and map out a successful social media plan for your business.