A social media dashboard is a platform that consolidates key metrics from all your social networking profiles. With a centralized hub for tracking important data, you can use it to measure and analyze your performance on different sites with ease.
Monitoring these metrics is key to keeping up with a constantly evolving social media landscape and achieving success online. Instead of tracking these manually, though, read on to learn how a social media dashboard can streamline this process and find the different types you can use in your campaigns.
Let’s jump right in!
What is a Social Media Dashboard?
A social media dashboard is a tool for monitoring social media KPIs, such as reach, engagement, and conversions. The platform collects data from different social networking sites and conveniently presents it in a visual format, such as charts or graphs, providing you with in-depth insights into your current performance.
Analytics tracking isn’t all you have to look forward to either, as many of these platforms also come with social media management capabilities, such as:
- Social media post-scheduling
- Content planning
- Content curation
- Team collaboration
Because of its extensive capabilities, a social media dashboard is essential for brands and businesses that want to elevate their social media strategy. However, to fully and successfully utilize this platform in your marketing efforts, you first need to understand its key features.
5 Key Features Every Social Media Dashboard Should Have
Not all social media dashboards track the same metrics, so they won’t have the same capabilities. With that being said, there are some important features that every tool should have.
These include:
A Unified Interface
With a unified interface in your social media dashboard, you can monitor data from all your profiles more efficiently. You can track metrics, manage posting schedules, and keep tabs on all your accounts without having to switch between each individual app, which can significantly boost your productivity.
Plus, when you add new accounts to the platform, you’ll be able to see how they stack up against your current profiles right away. This is especially useful for social media managers handling different clients or businesses with multiple social media accounts.
Analytics and Reporting
Comprehensive analytics and reporting features in your social media dashboard can provide detailed insights into your campaign’s performance. What posts generated the most engagement? Which posting times had the most impressions? Once you have the answers to these questions, you can use them to refine your online strategy and achieve better results.
Campaign Management
A social media dashboard should have features that can help you manage social media campaigns more effectively. By using one tool to plan and schedule your content distribution on different sites, you’ll be able to maintain a more consistent posting schedule and maximize your impact on each platform.
Collaboration
Social media dashboards with features that promote collaboration can improve your team’s content workflow processes and efficiency. From providing feedback and updates to content reviews and approvals, these features allow you to coordinate with each other in real time and ensure consistent content quality.
Trend Tracking
Understanding social media trends will help guide your strategy to success, which is why features that help you track current trends are a must for social media dashboards. You can use these tools to identify popular topics and high-traffic hashtags that you can incorporate into your content to maintain relevance and appeal to your audience.
Top 5 Reasons to Use Publer as Your Social Media Dashboard
With in-depth analytics capabilities and features that streamline workflow management, Publer is the best social media dashboard app to use in your strategy.
As a powerful social media scheduling tool trusted by marketing agencies and global brands alike, our platform has all the features you need to keep track of your performance on different social networking sites.
By utilizing our tool in your social media marketing efforts, you can enjoy the following benefits:
#1. Real-Time Insights
The Publer dashboard provides real-time insights into your audience and activity on different social media platforms. This is essential for determining which content resonates with your audience, which sites are performing well, and how successful your campaign is.
Access to real-time data will also help you keep up with current trends, maintain relevance, and further solidify your presence online. With a social media dashboard, you can gain information more efficiently and make timely decisions for your business.
#2. In-Depth Analytics
Publer’s social media dashboard comes with a comprehensive analytics feature that tracks more than just your metrics; it also provides key information about your audience, including their:
- Demographics per social media site
- Top countries
- Most active hours
This data can help optimize your posting strategy, allowing you to publish content during the best times for each platform to improve its reach and engagement. Meanwhile, the standard social media metrics we track, like post clicks and video views, can help you determine how effective your current content strategy is for your audience.
On our analytics tab, you’ll also find a hashtag analysis tool to help you identify the top hashtags to use in your content and boost discoverability.
In addition to its benefits for the algorithm, research by Laucuka (2018) in Economics and Culture found that hashtags can also serve a communicative function, such as brand marketing and aggregation. Because of this, it’s even more important to be strategic about the hashtags you use in your posts, as they can reflect on your branding on the platform.
#3. Competitive Advantage
Our platform’s social media dashboard comes with a competitor analysis tool that can give you a key advantage by measuring how well your strategy compares to the competition. You can track their top-performing posts, social media metrics, and posting times to identify which tactics are most effective for reaching your audience.
By understanding what works and what doesn’t, you can update your strategy to better appeal to your target audience. Moreover, performing competitor analysis can help you identify gaps in your strategy and maintain a proactive approach to social media marketing.
#4. Simplified Workflow Management
Having multiple accounts is important for building brand awareness, but without a capable social media dashboard to simplify workflows, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Fortunately, with Publer’s workspaces, you have a centralized platform where you can connect all your accounts to streamline post-scheduling and performance tracking on different sites.
You can even invite team members onto the platform and seamlessly collaborate with them on different tasks with features like unified dashboards and content calendars.
#5. Increased ROI
Publer’s social media dashboard provides a thorough overview of each platform’s analytics, allowing you to make the necessary changes to your strategy and increase your ROI. Our analytics tab highlights your most popular posts per metric, helping you identify which strategies deliver the best results so you can allocate your resources more effectively.
5+ Social Media Dashboard Templates & Examples
From engagement rates to conversions, you can utilize different social media dashboard templates to monitor every aspect of your campaign online.
Here are some common examples of dashboards you can integrate into your strategy:
#1. Engagement Dashboard
A social media engagement dashboard provides insights into how your followers interact with your content. By tracking engagement metrics, you’ll have a better idea of what content types and topics are relevant or interesting for your audience so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
This kind of dashboard can help you understand user behavior and engagement patterns in your audience. Using this information, you can start optimizing your content to achieve higher engagement rates, connect with your audience, and build a closer brand community.
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#2. Brand Awareness Dashboard
Brand awareness dashboards can help you understand how visible your business is online. These track your post impressions, link clicks, and new followers to measure how many users are seeing and engaging with your content online. You can use this data to gauge your brand’s visibility and recognition among your target audience.
This social media dashboard example is crucial to increasing your presence on different platforms. By knowing how strong your audience’s awareness of your brand is, you can update your strategy to enhance these results.
According to data from the Pew Research Center, the majority of consumers make their purchases online, and having strong brand awareness will help you target this market and boost your sales.
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#3. Audience Growth Dashboard
An audience growth social media dashboard monitors the follower count and subscribers on all your accounts. One of the main goals of social media marketing is to grow your brand, and if your content isn’t reaching new audiences, it may be time to rethink your strategy.
Monitoring metrics like follower count and the source of new followers can help you zero in on the most effective platforms for attracting new audiences. You can also analyze trends to further optimize your strategy and amplify your growth across all social media sites.
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#4. Competitor Analysis Dashboard
Competitor analysis dashboards provide essential information about your competitors’ social media performance. Monitoring and comparing their metrics with your own will show you the parts of your social media campaign that need improvement. You can also use this information to make more strategic decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
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#5. Conversion Dashboard
A conversion social media dashboard shows how effective your strategy is at converting followers into customers. This is crucial for businesses that are using social media to generate leads and drive sales.
High rates in metrics like link, profile, and CTA clicks to your external website mean your audience is sufficiently engaged and interested in your brand and one step closer to making a purchase.
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#6. Platform-Specific Dashboard
As the name suggests, a platform-specific dashboard offers a look into an individual social media platform’s metrics. While a general overview of your social media KPIs can help you determine how successful your strategy is overall, it’s also important to know how you’re performing on each site individually.
Social media platforms have different demographics and content types, which means your approach should be tailored to each one. By diving into each site’s metrics, you’ll be able to see if your content is working or not.
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How to Create a Social Media Dashboard in 4 Simple Steps
To create a social media dashboard, tools like Power BI and Supermetrics are necessary to pull the data from social platforms and present it in an easy-to-understand visual format.
While this process can be quite tricky for beginners, you can try making your own social media dashboard by following these four steps:
#1. Set Your Goals & Targets
Before you start creating a social media dashboard, it’s best to set your goals and targets first. What do you want to achieve with this dashboard? Who is your target audience? We recommend using the SMART framework to help you determine your objectives.
The SMART method stands for the following goals:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Whether your objective is to improve brand awareness or drive traffic to your website, outlining these clearly will ensure that your dashboard aligns with your marketing strategy and allows you to measure success more accurately.
#2. Determine Key Metrics
After setting your goals, the next step is determining which metrics to track to evaluate your strategy’s effectiveness. You can even review the examples we discussed above to help you decide which type of social media dashboard you need. Just make sure you select one that monitors relevant metrics aligned with the objectives you set in the previous step.
For instance, if your goal is to increase engagement, then you’ll need to look into your likes, comments, and shares. In this case, the best template to use would be the engagement dashboard.
By determining key metrics, your social media dashboard will be able to provide you with actionable insights and help you stay focused on your goals.
#3. Track Your Data
The next step is to start tracking your data and performance on social media platforms. There are several ways to do this, and the option you choose will depend on your budget, team size, and social presence.
Here are the methods you can use to track your data:
Manual Tracking
If you’re just starting on social media, this method is a great and budget-friendly way to track your metrics. To do this, you need to monitor each of your social media site’s metrics using their native analytics feature.
Then, you create a Google Sheet to input and store the data. You can also use third-party tools like Google Analytics to gain more insights about leads and conversions.
While manual tracking definitely takes more work than other methods, it can be a good way to gain an understanding of each metric and help you shape your decisions moving forward.
Looker Studio
Looker Studio, formerly called Google Data Studio, is a data visualization tool that you can use to build a social media dashboard. This method is ideal for businesses that have had social media profiles for much longer and would have thousands of data points to track.
One way to monitor data using Looker Studio is by using partner connectors on the platform to integrate into your social media channels. This will automatically provide you with a report on your KPIs, but it also typically comes at a monthly fee.
Another option you can try is to make a Google Sheet and use Looker Studio to create a report on the spreadsheet. While this method is less visually appealing, it’s free.
Social Media Management Tools
Lastly, you can simply use the built-in dashboards on social media management tools like Publer to track your data across all your profiles. All you need to do is add your accounts to the platform, and our app will retrieve the data for you in real time. This social media dashboard is an excellent and convenient option for brands and businesses of all sizes.
#4. Check and Monitor Your Dashboard Regularly
Once you have a working social media dashboard project, be sure to check and monitor it regularly. Trends and consumer behavior can change rapidly on social media, and what’s working in your strategy now may not be as effective tomorrow.
We recommend scheduling routine reviews to measure your progress toward your goals. By constantly checking your metrics, you’ll be able to monitor any changes, identify areas in your strategy that need improvement, and make more informed decisions.
Key Takeaways
- A social media dashboard monitors your performance on social networking platforms by consolidating data from different sites into one platform.
- A unified interface, trend-tracking tools, and campaign management capabilities are some of the key features you’ll find on social media dashboards.
- When you use Publer as your social media dashboard, you’ll be able to access real-time insights into your strategy, gain an advantage over the competition, and increase your ROI.
- Engagement, brand awareness, and conversion dashboards are common examples of social media dashboards you can use.
- When creating a social media dashboard, it’s important to first have a clear understanding of your objectives. This will guide your target metrics and data-tracking methods.
Ervin Kalemi
