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

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.

A social media dashboard needs to be personalized

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 creator on your own business. In this case, your social media dashboard needs to serve only you. You don’t need to include the standard social media metrics since you’re living and breathing them anyway. You need deeper insights about your target audience and what they love.

What a social media dashboard displays depends on who’s at the receiving end. Instead of relying on cookie-cutter social media dashboard templates that you have to spend forever tinkering with, it’s a better use of your time to build custom social media dashboards (and their templates) for your unique use case.

Here’s everything you need to ask to create the most impactful custom social media dashboards:

• Who is on the receiving end of this social media dashboard?
• What do they already know about my social media strategy?
• What’s their level of knowledge in social media marketing?
• Which social media analytics do they care about the most?
• How do they best digest information about social media performance?

Answering these questions will help you tailor the scope of your social media dashboard and eliminate unnecessary bloat.

The shortcut for creating custom social media dashboards

Can you find almost all social media analytics you need natively on your social media accounts? Of course. All social media platforms have in-built performance data.

But that’s a lot of busy work. And I mean, a lot. You’ll have to gather raw data from multiple channels > add it to Google Sheets > derive valuable insights by playing around with the numbers > create data visualizations > and put it in a PowerPoint presentation.

You can develop the muscle to do this quickly and create social media dashboard templates for recurring reports. If that’s the way that works best for you right now, great! Move ahead to the next section, where there’s a step-by-step guide to follow this process. But there’s a far quicker route you can take: Use a social media analytics software.

Analytics tools require you to connect your social media accounts to their software. Then, they aggregate all the real time data from multiple accounts and present it in their own native social media dashboard.

You can play around and tinker with the social media metrics here — filter the ones you need to examine your social media performance and create various custom reports. Most tools also offer the option to brand these reports with your logo, company colors, etc.

Take Buffer. We help you track performance and create a social media dashboard for Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn. Using Buffer, you can instantly know:

• Which types of posts perform the best on your social media channel(s)
• The best day, time, and frequency to post to maximize your results
• All key performance indicators analytics you get natively — follower growth, total reach, engagement metrics, audience demographics, hashtag performance, etc.

There are plenty of benefits of using an analytics tool like Buffer (over creating dashboards yourself):

• You don’t have to collect the data manually. Buffer connects to your data sources and does the gathering task without you lifting a finger. No copy-pasting numbers to a Google Sheet from multiple social media channels. Everything’s already available in a single social media dashboard.
• You don’t have to hunt for insights. Buffer doesn’t just collect data, it also does the work of analyzing it. Is your engagement rate suffering compared to last month? What’s the best time to post for your social media account? It crunches the numbers and tells you exactly what you (and your manager) need to know.
• You don’t have to create custom reports yourself. Look, I may be biased, but this is a fact: Buffer’s reports look way better than the same old spreadsheet. It infuses your social media reporting with not just accurate numbers, but the best data visualization. And you can brand it to call it your own.

And that’s not all: Buffer can do a whole lot more than build your reporting dashboard. It’s a full-fledged social media management tool that can help you store ideas, schedule social media posts, and respond to comments.

Try Buffer for free for yourself.

How to build your own social media dashboard in 3 steps

If you aren’t ready to take the plunge with analytics tools, here’s a 3-step guide to build your own social media dashboard from scratch.

Step 1: Collect all the data you need

The first step is collecting all the social media analytics you need to build your dashboard. Your data sources are the native insights on your social media accounts. If you’re tracking website visits, Google Analytics can also help you understand how much traffic comes via social media.

⚠️Note: You can’t view your social media analytics on X (formerly Twitter) if you don’t purchase the blue tick. It has scrapped native insights for non-premium users entirely.

All social platforms have varying degrees of depth in their key metrics. Social media pages (like Facebook pages or LinkedIn company pages) have slightly more thorough info than individual accounts. Here are some important performance metrics present on all social platforms:

• Total reach
• Follower count
• Follower growth
• Engagement rate
• Audience demographics

Facebook insights are on the Meta Business Suite (for Facebook Pages), for instance. It has all the details about your page followers — audience demographics, follower growth, link clicks, page visits, etc. You can even benchmark your social media dashboard against similar businesses on Facebook.

Similarly, Instagram insights show you data about your Instagram followers. How your audience interacts can differ widely based on the social channel.

You might also have different social media goals for different platforms. For example, maybe you use Facebook to build brand awareness and TikTok to increase conversions. Thus, your Facebook social media dashboard focuses more on overall reach, and TikTok’s social dashboard highlights click-through rates and influencer marketing results. Your social media dashboard should shift based on the direction of your niche marketing efforts.

Bella Rose Mortel, social media strategist at Beehiiv, says the best metrics to monitor are impressions, follower count, shares, and saves. She explains why:

“I think best metrics to monitor are impressions (goal of organic social is always reach and eyeballs), as well as follower count (account growth is an important indicator that you're doing something right), and also shares and saves in content because those are good indicators someone was like ‘hey look at this piece of content!’ or had the intention to save it to come back to later.”

Collect any and all the metrics you’ll need to build your social media dashboard. Where do you collect this data? I recommend Google Sheets because it’s easy to organize your data there. Plus, it’s easy to transfer to data visualization tools.

Instead of copy-pasting, you can also download analytics reports from social platforms and export them to Google Sheets. You’ll have your sheets divided on a channel basis rather than a timeline basis.

,Pro-tip: You can shift the approach of collecting your data based on the goal behind your social media analytics dashboard. For example:

• Instead of having sheets based on timelines (like I have templated above), you can also segregate your data collection based on each individual social channel — one tab for Facebook, another for TikTok, a third for Instagram, etc.
• If you have a strong advertising strategy, you can approach data collection based on your organic and paid efforts.
• If you’re running specific social media campaigns, dedicate one sheet to one campaign.

Think ahead about how you want to present the information on your social media analytics dashboard, and you’ll find the most convenient way to organize your raw data.

Step 2: Present the data in a visually-friendly way

Data visualizations can become the bane of your existence if you don’t know how to create them painlessly.

Many data sources, like Facebook Pages, visualize the data for you in their insights tab. But what if you want to create an aggregate dashboard of all your social channels? Or what if you want to brand it with your own logo, colors, etc.?

This is where data visualization tools come in. Using them, you can enter the data you have on your Google Sheets and create graphs, pie charts, whatever you need. The catch? They aren’t always easy to use, and they aren’t always free. Google Looker Studio is a marketer’s favorite, but I rely on ChartBlocks more. You can import your Google Sheets if you want to. There are plenty of designs to choose from to customize your charts, too.

Some other tools you can use to visualize your data easily:

• Visme
• Flourish
• Julius
• Deckpilot (you just need to prompt and upload your Google Sheet in this tool)

If you want to keep it even simpler, use the social media dashboard templates on Canva or choose from one of their pre-made chart designs that fit your needs.

Step 3: Put the final touches by organizing your various datasets

Transforming your rough data into fancy charts is just the beginning of showing your social media progress. Great social media reporting dashboards go beyond it to present the findings in an easy-to-comprehend way — without everyone scratching their heads and doing the work of “What is this chart telling me?”

Here’s a checklist for transforming your dashboard from respectable to phenomenal:

• Each chart should always have a title and date range accompanying it. This will show your audience what you are talking about and when exactly these results appeared.
• Put the key metrics and findings front and center. Your first reporting slide should present the key takeaways (in text) with adjoining numbers for reliability. For example, if your stakeholders care the most about follower count, discuss it right at the beginning.
• Share your conclusions at the end of each chart/slide. Show you’re making informed decisions by first showing the numbers, discussing what they signify, and what you can conclude. For example, if your goal is to increase Instagram followers and data tells you that Reels increase your follower count, you can justify why you’re focusing your marketing efforts on creating more Reels. Bella from beehiiv explains how she uses these insights to inform her own strategy, too: “The lowest performing posts based on impressions have always been an indicator of types of content to either stop doing or completely reframe. As an example, we saw that carousel posts on Linkedin got so much more engagement and impressions than just text posts, so we started putting our text on multiple slides and people seemed to resonate with it a lot more.”
• Show how your social media presence is benefiting the overall business. It’s easy to see results in a bubble (our follower count increased by 60 percent compared to last month!), but your numbers are empty of impact until they positively impact the company’s goals. Display how your brand’s online presence is affecting business goals.
• Highlight the caveats that affect your numbers. Was your campaign performance affected by the holidays? Did your follower count suddenly drop because of factors beyond your control (like changes in the platform)? Shed a light on these factors — especially in recurring reports — to ensure your stakeholders fully understand what’s going on.
• Present qualitative findings, too. Numbers are great but often don’t tell the whole story — especially in the most successful campaigns. Show how your audience engagement is from a qualitative lens, too. Did you get a lot of positive direct messages (DMs) about a campaign? Did you receive a string of comments from many potential buyers on a post? Add their screenshots and bring them to the dashboard. Qualitative and quantitative work in tandem to present the whole picture.

Want to fast-track this process? Use an AI presentation tool like Plus, which can take your prompts and turn them into slide decks that you can edit quickly.

My last tip is to create a dashboard template for your own use so you don’t have to do all this work manually every time — all you’ll have to do is edit the numbers.

Beyond individual campaign performance dashboards, every other dashboard will have more or less a recurring use. Perhaps you have a monthly dashboard for your social media team and a quarterly dashboard to present in a company-wide meeting. A dashboard template frees up time and resources to create content & nurture audience engagement.

Social media dashboard = your ticket to data-driven insights and smarter budgeting

An effective social media dashboard can do a lot of work to guide your marketing strategy: Does your Google Analytics show website visitors climbing due to a social channel? Double down on it. Does your ad spend on TikTok provide significantly better results than Meta? Cut Meta and invest more money in TikTok.

A dashboard can also help you negotiate for an increased budget for socials in your organization. Concrete insights from your dashboard prove social media’s impact, which increases the chances of stakeholders agreeing to invest more in marketing.

While creating your dashboard from scratch is a viable option, upgrading to a paid analytics tool as soon as possible is best. This will allow you to prioritize implementing your content strategy and leave the data tinkering to the tech lords.