How to Automate Social Media Reports Without Using Spreadsheets

The biggest struggle for any social media team isn’t building a creative calendar or coming up with witty captions. Everything boils down to how they prove their work’s ROI with their monthly and quarterly reports.

Unlike a typical marketing report, which often revolves around clean funnels, campaign spends, and conversion rates, social media reports are a wild beast. There’s no single template or playbook. 

Every platform comes with its own soup bowl of metrics. For social media managers, they then must multiply each bowl by five to seven platforms, sprinkle in a few boosted posts, throw in Stories or Reels, and try to connect the dots. That’s where things start to get... messy.

And then come the oddly specific report requests. We're talking about reports like:

• “Show me how posts featuring SpongeBob performed in Q1.”

• “Track any caption that uses the word 'cozy’ and compare it with our winter campaign benchmarks.”

• “I want a chart of posts with blue as the dominant color vs. red.”

• “Can we measure the engagement rate of user comments that contain emojis vs. those that don’t?”

  
  

Yes, these requests do indeed happen. In the face of it, standard reporting templates don't just bend, they explode. So while social media reporting might look like rows and columns on a spreadsheet, it’s more like stitching together a patchwork quilt of data, context, creativity, and results.

No two teams or even two reports ever look the same. That’s why Measure Studio offers a reporting tool as unique as your needs. These reports adapt and shape themselves around your specific requirements.

How do I create social media reports on Measure Studio?

Now that we've touched on how unpredictable and chaotic custom social media reporting can get, let’s talk about how to actually do it without losing your mind or creating 14 different spreadsheets.

With Measure Studio, building a report that’s tailored to your exact needs is surprisingly easy. Its reporting feature is designed in such a way that you can wrangle your data without wrestling with it.

Here’s how to build a custom report in just a few clicks:

Step 1: Head to the Reports Tab

Navigate to the Reports tab from the left-hand menu.

Hit the “+ New Report” button on the top right and you're in.

Step 2: Give it a name & pick your starting point

Name your report something intuitive (not “Report_Final_v3”). Then choose a slide template to kick things off.

Whether you want to spotlight top-performing posts, compare platforms, or dig into audience engagement trends, there’s a template for it.

Step 3: Customize the slide

This is where Measure Studio's social reports tool will really start to shine. Depending on your template, you can handpick:

• Which account(s) or platform(s) you’re pulling data from

• A specific post, post group, or campaign

• The metrics you want to highlight (reach, engagement rate, saves, etc)

• Your desired date range

Once your setup looks good, click “Create Slide”.

Step 4: Add more slides and paint the narrative

Need to slice the data in multiple ways? Add another slide with “+ New Slide” in the top left.

You can keep stacking slides to build a full narrative with cross-platform breakdowns, paid vs. organic comparisons, and seasonal content deep dives. Go wild.

Step 5: Generate & download your report

Once everything’s in place, click “Generate Report” in the top right. Your report will download as a clean PDF, ready to send to your team, your boss, and your clients.

Whether you're creating social reports for one brand or ten, across three platforms or seven, Measure Studio has your back. And you can do it all in minutes, not hours.

What should a good social media report have? 

Wondering what exactly goes into a “good” report? At the very least, there are some baseline boxes every report should check. 

Whether you're building reports weekly, monthly, or quarterly, these components will make sure you're not just sharing data, you're showing progress. 

And yes, everything we cover below can be built out with Measure Studio, whether you're reporting on organic or paid, platform-specific or cross-platform, or diving deep with custom analytics filters.

Let’s break it down!

1. Realistic goals & achievable KPIs that frame everything

Every report needs a “north star.” Before diving into metrics, establish what success looked like this month or quarter. Ask:

• Was the focus on brand awareness, traffic, conversions, or engagement?

• Was there a specific campaign or business-as-usual content?

• Were there any paid objectives (e.g., lead gen, boosting visibility) alongside organic goals?

Then match these goals with relevant KPIs:

• For awareness, your focus should be on reach, impressions, and views

• For engagement, prioritize saves, shares, comments, and click-through rate (CTR)

• For conversions, watch for link clicks, sign-ups, and purchases

Note: Be sure to analyze and contextualize organic vs. paid performance. An organic win tells a very different story than one backed by $10K in ad spend.

2. Executive summary for busy stakeholders

Not everyone reading the report is in the daily weeds of social media. A solid report starts with a digestible summary:

• “Instagram Reels drove 60% of total reach this month”

• “LinkedIn engagement rate dropped due to fewer polls posted”

• “Paid campaigns on Facebook brought in 1,200 leads at a $4.75 CPL”

This executive snapshot should quickly answer what’s up, what’s down, and what’s next.

Tip: If your report includes multiple teams (e.g., paid vs. organic, platform-specific owners), break down the executive summary into segments per team.

3. Platform-by-platform breakdown with organic vs. paid

Each social platform is a different monster to tackle. What performs on TikTok likely tanks on X (Twitter). So break things down clearly by platform and measure both organic and paid data when necessary.

For each platform, include:

• Views & Impressions (including both paid and organic)

• Engagements (likes, shares, comments, saves, replies)

• Video metrics (views, average watch time, completion rates)

• Traffic metrics (link clicks, swipe-ups, profile visits)

• Conversions (form fills, purchases, sign-ups via UTM or pixel data)

If you run paid campaigns, highlight:

• Spend vs. outcome

• Cost per result (CPC, CPL, CPA)

• Best and worst performing ad creatives

And, if you're using cross-platform tools like Measure Studio, highlight any combined metrics for universal KPIs like total reach or engagement rate across platforms.

4. Top & bottom performing content

This is the storytelling section. Surface 3–5 best-performing posts across platforms and explain why they worked:

• Was it the format (carousel, short-form video)?

• The topic (educational, entertaining, trend-based)?

• The timing or frequency?

• The presence of user-generated content (UGC) or influencer collabs?

Also show what didn’t perform, and why. Maybe you posted too late in a trend's lifecycle. Maybe the creative didn’t land. Maybe the caption was off. By analyzing under-performers it's easier to know where not to focus next time.

For paid content, show which ads converted vs. which ones flopped, even if they had great engagement.

5. Talk about audience behavior trends

The tastes and preferences of audiences on social media change faster than you realize. What they loved last month might bore them this time around.

Social media managers can build strong reports that keep them ahead of the curve by focusing on:

• Follower growth or decline per platform

• Audience demographics (age, location, language)

• Engagement by content type (e.g., Reels vs. Stories vs. Carousels)

Custom analytics tools can also help uncover patterns like:

• Short captions vs. long-form

• Emoji usage vs. engagement

• Hashtag impact on reach

If you're running both organic and paid, compare behaviors in your analysis. For instance, paid audiences on Instagram skew younger and engage more with vertical video, while organic followers prefer carousel tips.

6. Contextual takeaways 

Anyone can pull numbers. A great social media report explains them. Add commentary alongside each data set to highlight trends, shifts, or anomalies.

Instead of just adding “Engagement dropped by 12%, mention “Engagement dropped by 12% this month, likely due to a 50% reduction in carousel posts. These have historically driven more saves and shares, so we may need to rebalance format types.”

Call out seasonality, algorithm changes, or one-off events that may have influenced performance. If TikTok suddenly tanked, was it a content issue or something platform-specific?

Use post benchmarking against previous performance to always put your best foot forward.

7. What’s next strategy

End with an action plan. What should the team start, stop, or continue doing next month? This is where insights make an impact.

Some decent examples can be:

• “Double down on Instagram Reels as they currently exhibit 2x reach vs. static posts.”

• “Reduce X posting to 3x/week; minimal engagement despite effort.”

• “Test carousel tips with boosted spend to increase saves.”

• “Launch a UGC tracking system to report on creator-led posts more effectively.”

Bonus: If you're reporting to leadership or clients, include a slide that outlines where you need their input (e.g., budget approvals, creative support, influencer access).

How do I customize a social media report?

Once you've got your baseline report built, it’s time to add some branding to it. Whether that’s to match your brand, align with a campaign theme, or just make it easier for stakeholders to digest, here’s how to do it using Measure Studio.

1. Head to the Reports tab

Click on the report you want to tweak. This could be one you just created or any report in your library.

2. Hit the “Customize” button

In the bottom left corner of the report, you’ll see a Customize button. Click that to start editing the report settings.

3. Personalize it for your brand

From here, you can update:

• Report name (so you’re not stuck with “Q1_report_FINAL_final” again)

• Default date range for new slides

• Your brand logo and brand colors

• A slide footer to add context or credits

Make your report look like your report, not a generic template.

4. Click “Save”

Once you're happy with the changes, hit Save in the top right corner and you're all set. The best part is you only have to do it once and then you can reuse or update as needed.

How do I make bulk updates to a social media report?

Need to update all your slide dates without clicking through each one manually? Quickly refresh your entire report in just a few clicks:

1. Open your report and head to the top left corner.

2. Click the three dots (•••) to open the options menu.

3. Select “Update Data.”

That’s it! All your slides will automatically update with the latest data and date ranges.

This saves all kinds of time if you're reporting weekly or managing multiple brands. Just one click and you're up to date.

How do I schedule social media report exports?

Manually exporting reports every week or month is just one way to do it, but there’s a better one. With Scheduled Exports in Measure Studio, you can get reports delivered straight to your inbox, or your team’s, on a regular basis.

It saves time, keeps everything organized, and makes sure no one misses their update. Here’s how to set it up:

Schedule Exports Directly from the Posts Tab

1. Navigate to the Post tab and click the Export button.

   

2. Choose your date range, metrics, and export format.

   

3. When prompted, click “Email or Schedule.” Select recipients from the list, then toggle on “Schedule Recurring.” Pick how often you want the export sent (e.g., weekly or monthly) and set your preferred time frame.

   

4. Give your recurring report a custom name, and hit Save.

You can also export reports directly from the Dashboard tab, not just the Posts section. This includes platform-specific metrics dashboards, audience insights, and trend overviews across accounts.

Just like post exports, you can customize the date range, choose the metrics you care about, and schedule these exports to be sent automatically to your inbox on a recurring basis.

You can view and manage all your recurring exports by clicking your name in the top-right corner and navigating to Exports. Here, you’ll see:

• A list of scheduled exports

• Who created them and when

• Easy edit or delete options

Now you never have to worry about missing a report or scrambling to export it at the last minute. Schedule once, and let Measure Studio handle the rest.

How can organic and paid social teams use this feature?

Measure Studio’s reporting capabilities are built to support the nuanced needs of both organic and paid social teams because most brands today are running both, often side by side. 

The beauty lies in how flexible and collaborative it is. Whether you're managing community-driven content or performance-focused ad campaigns, the reporting system adapts to your workflow, not the other way around.

For organic social teams, Measure Studio makes it easy to showcase what’s working and why. You can quickly identify your top-performing posts, track engagement trends, and compare results across platforms without traversing across five native dashboards.

The ability to filter by post type, campaign, or content theme lets you tell stories with your data, not just present numbers. Organic teams can also build customized reports for different stakeholders like content strategists, brand managers, or clients by focusing on audience growth, UGC performance, or engagement insights specific to their interests.

Paid social teams, on the other hand, get powerful tools to track campaign effectiveness without relying on complex spreadsheets. You can slice performance data by campaign, objective, or creative type and clearly showcase metrics like spend, CTR, CPL, or conversions.

Measure Studio also helps you spot which ads actually moved the needle, and which ones just looked good on the surface. By adding context to your data like highlighting the creative that performed best, or campaigns that under-delivered, you're not just reporting on results, you're identifying patterns.

For teams that manage both paid and organic efforts, Measure Studio brings everything under one roof. You can break out paid vs. organic performance on the same slide, uncover how each supports the other, and tell a cohesive story across your entire social strategy.

Wrapping up

A good social media report isn’t just a bunch of numbers, it’s the story behind your content’s success. The tricky part is that creating those reports usually takes way too much time. And bless your troubled soul if you're pulling data from multiple platforms.

That’s where tools like Measure Studio come in. They let you create clear, customized reports with just a few clicks, saving you hours of work. With less time spent on gathering data, you can focus on understanding what’s working, what isn't, and being able to pivot your social media strategy quickly and confidently.

When reports are easy to make, you’ll actually want to use them regularly. That means you're not just tracking the past but shaping your next moves in a way that makes sense and shows real progress to your team or clients.

So go ahead and build reports on Measure Studio to optimize how your team approaches social media.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I create custom social media reports quickly with Measure Studio?

Measure Studio lets you build tailored social media reports in just a few clicks. Start by choosing a slide template that fits your needs, pick the accounts or campaigns to include, select the metrics you want to highlight, and set the date range. Add multiple slides to create a full narrative with cross-platform data, then export a clean report that's ready to share.

Can I automate the delivery of social media reports using Measure Studio?

How does Measure Studio support both organic and paid social media reporting?